holy tuesday

Holy Tuesday is the third day of Holy Week. On the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem and overlooking its grandeur, many great biblical events occurred. Jesus would have taught his disciples here often, and spent time in private devotion. Here is where, in just a few days, he would ask for the cup of his fate to be removed from him (Matthew 26:39).

Like a flashback after the temple cleansing, we see Jesus overlooking the city, weeping for his people. “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37b). As the disciples hear this, one of Jesus’ teachings comes to their minds. The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) speaks of those who are alert and keep watch, ready and waiting for their bridegroom to come. As Jerusalem enters its greatest redemptive festival, will the Jews be prepared to receive the “Lamb of God”?

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.” Matthew 25:13

wait in the right way

GET READY, GET SET

for Christ to make his move

Have you ever run ahead of God, or lagged behind, because of the wait?

In Matthew 25:1-13, Jesus tells his disciples a fascinating, but confusing parable about the Kingdom of God. It’s a parable about 10 virgins who are waiting for a bridegroom to arrive to begin a celebration.

Five realize that he could be early, or he could be late. They are prepared with enough oil for their lamps, either way. The other five, called “foolish,” are only prepared for him to come on their terms; on their timetable. They won’t have enough oil if he is late. They are not prepared. Verses 10-12 show us the final scene: “But while they [the foolish virgins] were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’ But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’”

Waiting can be hard work. Most of us don’t like to wait because we feel as though waiting is a waste of time. We demand that God work according to our timetable, and when He doesn’t, we can get very, very bent out of shape. We run ahead of Him, doing what we think needs to be done, instead of waiting to see the best plan that only He can reveal.

In this parable, Jesus is teaching his disciples, and us, that we can wait anxiously and end up diverting God’s best plans for our lives. Or, we can wait well – being prepared by staying in the place of humble worship, keeping our fingers on the pulse of God’s character by taking in His Word, and restraining ourselves from spiritual laziness so that we don’t miss what God is doing due to spiritual numbness. Wait well – and be ready for Christ to make his move.

PRAYER

for Holy Tuesday

Lord, I believe that waiting, and waiting well, is the way to my heart becoming completely yours. When I have been impatient or lazy and have missed You, or run ahead of You, I ask for forgiveness. Teach me to wait in the right way.

QUESTION

for Your Easter Reflection

• Is there an area of your life where you believe you may be jumping ahead of God?
• If not is there an area in which you might be spiritually lazy, not ready to perceive God’s next move?

Brian Doerksen | Scars On His Hands

I first heard this song sung by Brian Doerksen at a small worship gathering.

It was his first new original song in several years, and it restarted my songwriting engine.

It’s written in the vein of the ‘spirituals’ and is about this profound realization that the King we serve and love is not like the kings of the earth.

• This King has scars on his hands…
• This King has suffered so he doesn’t recoil from our expressions of grief.
• This King knelt down and was not only a servant, but a slave; a servant who has no option to leave…

That’s what it says in the great Christ Hymn in Philippians 2!

We are at the end of Lent and moving into Holy Week
but this is still a good prayer to pray

rain down on me

almighty God

shower me with your grace

flood me with your mercy

for I am a dry and barren land

consumed by the rot of my sin

burden beneath the weight of my transgressions

pour out your loving kindness

drench my heart with your presence

renew my soul refresh my purpose

reignite my passion

rain down on me as I own my iniquities

rain down on me as I humbly confess

rain down on me as I enter your presence

rain down on me almighty God

holy monday

Holy Monday is the second day of Holy Week. The most notable of moments remembered on this day is that of Jesus “cleansing the Temple.” Picture the scene. Jesus has entered the city during one of the most important faith festivals of his day. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims are milling about everywhere. They have made a pilgrimage from many countries to celebrate the great feast of Passover (Deuteronomy 16:16). Offering sacrifices and paying their taxes, the Jews engage the services of animal sellers and money changers, who provide a service on behalf of the priests. Even the faithful poor are buying small doves to offer as their act of worship. A loud, smelly “marketplace experience” has been created in a sacred space, during a time meant for worship and repentance. Jesus sees this, and becomes enraged. Flipping tables and forming a whip of cords (John 2:15), he shouts, “My house will be called a house of prayer!” (Matthew 21:13; Isaiah 56:7).

“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He over-turned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.” Matthew 21:12

turn the table on idolatry

SEE WHAT GOD SEES

and put a stop to injustice

Is Jesus inviting you to partner with him in challenging injustice?

In Matthew 21:12, we see Jesus in a holy rage that seems out of character with the “God of Love” we so often talk about in churches. Jesus seems to lose a measure of control as he encounters the market scene in the temple: “Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “

• Why would currency exchanges and dove booths be so appalling, so revolting, as to demand such a harsh, physical display of disgust?
• Who would have been the most likely to be undercut in their currency exchange having travelled from a far away land?
• The poor and uneducated.
• Who would have been the most likely to only be able to afford the smallest creature, a dove, to offer in the worship setting of that day?
• The poor and the uneducated.

Jesus’ heightened response may have been, in many ways, toward the kind of misguided worship systems that ultimately devalue the poor. Today, systems (religious and otherwise) powered by money-making  greed and carelessness with the weak and vulnerable are no less worthy of a royal table turning than those in Jesus’ day.

Injustice always flows from idolatry and misdirected worship.

• When we forget who God is, we forget who we are.
• When we forget who we are in God’s eyes, we forget the value of others.

We can all participate in a world that crushes the weak and the poor, without even being aware of the part we play. Ask God to show you if there is someone to be cared for, someone who needs you to be their voice, in your neighborhood, town, or city. Show them the grace of God, and let your actions be marked by generosity.

PRAYER

for Holy Monday

Lord, give me eyes to see what you see when you look at the world around me. I want to participate in acts of love and justice, carrying your love to the world.

QUESTION

for Your Easter Reflection

• Is there an opportunity to weave more care for the poor and the socially vulnerable into your life?
• If you got involved, what kind of effect do you think it would have on both your public and private life of worship?

Here are some activity sheets for families that can help you Journey Through Easter

easter 1 The Anointing at Bethany

easter 2 Washing the Disciples Feet

easter 3 The Last Supper

easter 4 Gethsemane

easter 5 Jesus Crucified

easter 6 The Empty Tomb

Dear OCCers,

Easter is a time of year when we, as the Body of Christ, embrace the power of the resurrection once again. With the apostle Paul, we recall the reality of Romans 10:9-10, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

Over the next week, I want to point us to the center of our faith — the resurrection of the Lord Jesus at Easter. I trust as you read and reflect, you will be encouraged and renewed as you follow Jesus from  Palm Sunday to the day death was conquered — and Life won the victory.

This Easter season, my prayer for all of us is that we experience, in a fresh and profound way, the resurrection life of Jesus at work in us. And that we will be able to live that life with our family, our job, and our streets. Be a beacon of love in Orillia and area, showing that Jesus’ resurrection not only changes our past, but our present and future as well.

Picture a scene in the early years of the church.

A young girl, a former prostitute who has been transformed by a dynamic experience with Jesus (and the love of his followers), is about to step into a pool filled with the cool waters of baptism. She is surrounded by other women of every age and social status in society. Their eyes meet hers, framed in smiles of loving acceptance. Joyful tears stream down every face in the room.

With a few words from a leader, and a profession of faith spilling gratefully from her trembling lips, she is immersed into the waters beneath her. In the next moment, as she rises from the water, with laughter and hope filling the gathering, she begins a completely new life defined no longer by who she was – but by who she now is in Christ. “Behold,” Jesus said, “I am making everything new” (Revelation 21:5).

• Baptism has always been the perfect visual for what happens when the Easter story becomes our own story.
• We die with Christ in the image of immersion, entering his tomb with him cut off from the very breath of life.
• Then, pulled from the waters by saving hands reaching out to us, we are raised with Christ from our spiritual and physical death.

The message of Easter, and the “Holy Week” that leads up to it, is quite straightforward. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, no form of death has ultimate hold on us anymore.

• We are in union with Christ (Romans 6:3-5);
• we are incorporated into his body, the church (1 Corinthians 12:12-14);
• we receive the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38); and,
• cleansing from our sins (Hebrews 10:19-22).

We are each, quite literally, a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), born again by the overflowing Grace and resurrecting love of our Lord. When we acknowledge the risen Jesus as our Lord and King, we are raised with Christ (Colossians 3:1) to a new and living hope, and we are set on a course of inner and outer transformation. We have risen with Christ.

At Easter, Jesus did not rise to make bad people good. He rose to make dead people live. Easter is your story, and mine. “On the third day,” we say with the great creed, “he rose from the dead.” This Easter, with him, we rise.