Holy Week - Make it Personal

 

Today marks the beginning of what we call Holy Week.  It’s Palm Sunday and hopefully today you’ve already had a chance to attend – in person or virtually – a worship service. It’s important that we celebrate Jesus’s “triumphant entry” as it is referred. His riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The Jews and others of His day thought He was doing so to attend the Passover Feast. They weren’t wrong, but they were only partially right. He was also going so that He would be in position to perform the single most meaningful, unselfish and world transforming act in history: Voluntarily going to the cross and being put to death, not for what the Jews accused Him of, but rather, for all our sins. Your sins. My sins. All of them. It had to be that way. No one understood it. Many still don’t. But on the third day, when He rose, He did so so that we no longer had – or have – to be slaves to those sins ever again.

Last night I had a very interesting dream. I’ve been having a lot of them lately, particularly of a certain theme, but this specific dream was different. You know how you can have a dream and wake up feeling the feelings you were feeling in the dream? Fear, anxiety, happiness… the list could go on. That happens to me relatively often. But in this dream, I woke up remembering my thoughts and what I was thinking during the dream. And more to the point, my thought processes and what I had “discovered” during the dream. I’ve had revelatory dreams before but not like this.

            It involved a very personal situation so I will be somewhat vague in my description. I have been praying for healing in a certain area of my life. In the dream, I was initially in the same mindset I have been in, for months. Wanting something to take place that I felt would bring the healing for which I’ve been looking. Then, some things transpired in the dream and suddenly the healing had taken place! The emotions I could so vividly feel in the dream – that I continued to feel when I woke up – told me everything was back to normal. I remember thinking in the dream, “But wait, x and y and z haven’t happened, this can’t be healed…” And then I felt it. Life and love in a situation that has been absent for a long time. And then my immediate next thought, in the dream, “Well, OK then God, we’ll do it your way. It doesn’t need to be my way.”

            I realized when I woke up – and had confirmed during our worship service this morning – that I have been getting in God’s way. Not that He needs me to do anything so He can do something, but so that I can be who He wants me to be when – and after – He does it.

            You’re asking now, what this has to do with Holy Week and Easter. I would say it has everything to do with it. Jesus did something 2000 years ago that only He could do. Only the Son of God could take upon Himself every sin of every human before, during and after His life, and die for those sins, so that we don’t have to. And only Jesus can do all manner of other things that we want to be so. We can’t do it. But He can. His way, not our way. He’s doing them all the time. We just need to open our eyes and look around. Maybe you’ve gotten a little “spirit-blind” where you can’t see Him moving. This is the perfect time to regain your spiritual senses.

            This week, in advance of Good Friday, I ask that you prepare a little. Think of all that it meant to you – you personally – when Jesus hung on that cross. Think of what he was carrying of yours while he was there. Not in a depressing way, not in a “I’m such a terrible person” way, but in a grateful way. In a “where would I be without you” way. And think of all the other things He’s done for you, too. The cross was just the beginning…

            And then, on Easter Sunday morning, you will rejoice with even greater enthusiasm. The meaning of what took place two millennia ago will be deeply personal. You’ll have a renewed understanding of what it means that Jesus defeated death – for you. Yes, He did it for all humanity. But, it’s OK, be selfish for a minute, He did it for YOU!!! It was your death that he defeated that day. Thank you, Jesus!!!

So… Now, that you’ve made it personal. Now that you’ve been a little selfish in accepting and going deeper with what HE did for you that day. Now it’s time to make it inter-personal! Don’t be afraid to share. Talk about it! Even – and especially – with those who don’t understand or haven’t learned what this whole Christianity thing is all about. This week and the week following Easter should be the easiest of times to share our faith. The world may want to make Easter all about bunnies and candy and pastel colors, but we – YOU – know the truth. Share it.

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

(Roman 8:31-37 NLT)