Devotions for Holy Week: March 29-April 2 Because it is Holy Week we break from our regular cycle of devotions.

Monday of Holy Week – Prayer of the Week Almighty and everlasting God, You sent Your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take upon Himself our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross. Mercifully grant that we may follow the example of His great humility and patience and be made partakers of His resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. My mother used to admonish us to be a little careful what we prayed for. We might get it. In February of his senior year, my son was studying hard for his AP exams. He eagerly watched the weather reports of a threatening storm system which could bring snow. In Portland even an inch or two of snow paralyzes the city and they call off school. The storm skirted north of us and we only got rain. Portland never cancels school for rain. My son turned his eyes upward and prayed, “God, I could really use a couple days off from school.” That was late February 2020. Two weeks later his school and almost every other school in the nation shut down for the rest of the year. We pray in this prayer that God would mercifully give us to follow Jesus’ example of humility and patience so we can partake in the resurrection. Think about that for a moment in Holy Week. Jesus will demonstrate his humility and patience at his trial, scourging, crucifixion, and death. We are praying for an opportunity to partake in resurrection. Only dead people get resurrected. You know that, right? Do you really want to follow Jesus’ example of humility and patience? That sounds pretty painful. I do not truly think that the COVID pandemic is a result of God answering my son’s prayer to get a couple of days off from school. But this prayer, what if God gave us what we ask for here? Humility and patience are virtues which are forged in suffering and trials. Resurrection is what God does to corpses. As we come into this Holy Week, this prayer urges us to remember that this is not a TV show we watch through a screen or some events separated by time and distance. Jesus is living our lives and he is dying our death. Our only hope is to be joined to him. We do not get to pick our connection to Christ. We do not automatically plug into the Christ of powerful miracles and massive crowds. We all join him in dying. We pray today for the requisite patience and humility which he showed, and which we need. God answers prayers. Pray this one with confidence.

Tuesday of Holy Week – John 12:12-19 12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, 15 “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!” 16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him.” In the second half of the fourth century BC, history was dominated by a young Greek warrior- king named Alexander. We often call him “the Great.” I am betting that his mother never called him that. As he stuck east and shattered the armies of the Persian empire, he turned south, through the lands of what is today Lebanon and Israel, on his way to Egypt. Several cities resisted him and were quickly conquered. The wiser communities capitulated. They came out to meet him with palm fronds held aloft and singing words of welcome to their new king. It was better than fighting and, while the Persians had been a pretty good empire, they could sense that the political winds were shifting. It was time to get on board with the new regime. That history was relatively fresh in the days when John wrote this. The practice of welcoming a conqueror instead of opposing him with palm fronds held aloft was established throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. The crowds on that first Palm Sunday were making a political statement with those palm branches and their shouts of acclamation. The Pharisees at the end of the passage are aware of it. John approves; although, he questions the motives of the people. They have misread the signs. He wants us to remember the words of Zechariah 9. We will hear those words tomorrow. It is a king coming whom God foretold long ago. I think sometimes we imagine that when we clutch those palms we are joining in some serene worshipful moment. We are. It has become that. But we are also joining in a political statement as well. The Jewish people were fed up with Roman rule and their own people’s misrule of their land and lives. When they shout and wave the palms as Jesus rides in, they are making a revolutionary claim – Jesus is the new man in charge. John tells us that they had seen the signs Jesus had done and they wanted change. The palm fronds were a revolution of sorts, a new king, a new kingdom. We sing the words of the crowds on Sunday mornings when we come to the Sacrament “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of Lord!” He comes to dry every tear and undo every evil. He comes to shatter the bow and shield. He comes to cast down the mighty from their thrones and rule with justice. The Pharisees of every age are right to be afraid of him.

Wednesday of Holy Week – Zechariah 9:9-12 9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. 11 As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. 12 Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. Have you ever ridden a donkey? My parents, in their retirement, bought some property in Missouri and my mother got herself a couple of donkeys. I had a parishioner in Oregon who also had a donkey he would bring to Palm Sunday services. There is no way to look regal and elegant on a donkey. A human being is just a little too big to really fit on the back of a donkey. Your legs stick out too close to the ground. The animal has ears that are just too large. And they bray. A donkey braying is nothing like the whinny of a horse. You cannot but smile. Why does Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem? In the ancient world if you wanted to look like a king you rode a horse, especially a big horse. That made you look like a king. But not in Israel. In Deuteronomy 17, God had warned the people about appointing a king. If they did, He said, the king should not have horses. David seems to have taken this to heart. We read in I Kings 1 that when David was old and dying, he had Solomon placed upon his mule as the sign that he would be next king. In Israel, unlike the rest of the world, kings rode on donkeys or mules. Pontius Pilate and his Roman legionaries, unaware of Jewish culture and history, watched Jesus ride in and thought him nothing but another peasant on a donkey. What was all the fuss about? The Pharisees and Sadducees, however, knew their Old Testament well and could not have missed what Jesus was doing. And they were afraid. They had reason to be afraid. God’s Messiah came to usher in a kingdom which fills the world. Through forgiveness he has set us free from the waterless pit of our guild. From the stronghold of God’s Word, we are the prisoners of hope, looking forward to the fulfillment of all of God’s promises, including the day of Christ’s glory when the battle bow is broken, and he speaks peace to the nations.

Maundy Thursday – I Corinthians 10:16-17 16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. I had the privilege of being present while Christ reconciled to old enemies once. They had had been fast friends many years before. Then, they fought, and enmity divided them. It was bitter and hard. Now they were old men, and it was time to reconcile. We spoke together of Christ, his blood, his work, his peace, and forgiveness. I had a sense in that room that we were in the presence of God as we had that conversation. The next Sunday the one came back to church for the first time in years. As he walked up to the altar he was joined by his former friend, former enemy, newly reconciled brother in Christ. Together, in that tiny little church, they knelt on knees which would not be able to do that much longer. They put out their hands and I put the body of Christ into them, the same body into each hand. They ate. They were united in fact. Nearly 2000 years ago Jesus instituted this meal on this night, the night in which he was betrayed. He died to reconcile old men who fight sometimes. He died to reconcile all of us. He died to make us one body, His body. There is much to be said about this meal. People have written whole books about the Lord’s Supper and its meaning. I have read some of them. I am better for it. But in these days of division and partisanship, in days of polarization and strife, God’s people need to hear what this bit of I Corinthians says to us and to believe it. We who are many, different and sometimes hard to get along with, we are one body, for we partake of the one bread that is a participation in the body of Christ.

Good Friday – Hebrews 5:7-10 7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. 8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. I must admit that this passage used to perplex me. It says that Jesus’ loud cries and tears were heard. But I thought that God had denied his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to “let his cup pass from me.” Heard but denied? I have come to realize that I was thinking of saving from death all wrong. When I pray for God to save me from death, I really think of God saving me from dying. Jesus was not praying in the garden not to die. He prayed that His Father would raise Him from death, saving him from death, not from dying. He was all set to die. God heard that prayer and said yes. We know it. Easter happened. We come this day to the solemn observation of Jesus crucifixion, death, and burial. We will hear that terrible tempter’s voice whisper in our mental ear that Jesus has lost. He has given up His spirit. His body has sagged in death on that cross. He is a loser. God did not help Him. The believer, however, knows something Satan does not. While death looks like the end to Satan and to us, it does not look that way to Jesus or to His Father. Have you ever noticed in the Gospel readings that Jesus does not seem to see dead people as dead? The daughter of the synagogue ruler in Mark 5 is asleep according to Jesus. The widow of Nain’s son on the bier is someone Jesus can talk to. Even Lazarus, dead in the grave for days is able to hear Jesus’ voice. Jesus prayed that his Father would lift Him from the grave because Jesus knew something about that grave which is impenetrable and mysterious to us. God is life. Death is like a shadow to the sun. The sun never really sees shadows. God never really sees death; it flees before him like shadows flee before the light of the sun. Jesus, participating in our humanity knew the terror of death and so He prayed. His death was really death. God heard Him. Remember that when you listen to the passion story read today. Remember that as you go about your life on this solemn Saturday. Remember that as you come to Church on Sunday. God heard His prayer. God rescued him and us from death.