Our news is saturated, and so too my mind, with COVID-19.
Many a commentator laments the absence normalcy.
Rather than futilely seek that which is beyond us for the moment, I want to suggest another path. A path to ground us.
We find it today in Mark’s Gospel.
Jesus enters Jerusalem amid cheers. The crowd pours out pent up nationalistic hopes into him.
In the past I have reflected on this episode of Jesus’ life, I have quipped, “I Love a Parade”.
To get grounded, we need to turn into deeper water.
This text is the one a many church reads on the Sunday before Easter Day. That Sunday is often called Palm Sunday, taking its name from the “leafy branches” they laid on the ground.
Instead, ground yourself in another name for this day. It’s Lamb Selection Day.
In Exodus 12:3 we read, “Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household.”
This verse does not seem like anything specific until you read Exodus 12:6
“…you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.”
If you think about the week between “Palm Sunday” and Easter Day, then Palm Sunday is also Lamb Selection Day.
As the people cheered, they were unknowingly selecting the Lamb of God. God’s perfect, sinless one, to be offered for the sins of the world.
Jesus has told his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die. They have been unable to hear him.
Fill your mind with more than COVID-19—fill it with the reality that Jesus road into Jerusalem knowing what await him.
Today we go deeper into the eternal plan of God to redeem his world from the sin that has infested it.
Today we must ground ourselves in the reality that we too have selected Jesus as the Lamb that will die for us.
Might you take a few moments and ponder what Jesus might have been thinking as he rode into Jerusalem? Does it take you to a place deeper than the issues of the day?