Lent Meditation Day 14
At last Jesus and the disciples completed their journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.
A Note from Ruth
These meditations are a reflection of my personal journey through Lent at a time when I was experiencing deep spiritual growth and learning what it means to grow in community as a student at the Academy for Formation and Mission. In part, I wrote them to process my own thoughts, but mainly to share those contemplations, because I felt they were meant to be experienced by others. My hope was to encourage others to go deep, to see God and Lent with a new perspective, and to self-reflect in a way that brings hope.
So much happened along the way, and word spread. When Jesus was at Lazarus’s house in Bethany, where Mary anointed his feet, people began to gather to see him and to see Lazarus, because they had heard the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.
Along with these people who followed him the few miles to Jerusalem, there was a large crowd already gathered in the city for a festival as well.
And we have Jesus’ entry into the city on the back of a borrowed colt, which makes me think of Mary’s ride to Bethlehem with Jesus in her womb. Jesus rode toward both the place of his birth and the place of his death on a donkey. This is certainly not a grand entrance or exit.
Yet the people gathered around. They threw down their cloaks and waived palm branches. They shouted hosannas. I wonder what this felt like to Jesus. Surely he knew that the end was at hand, and that he journeyed toward his final days, yet people welcomed him with shouts of praise.
I often ruminate on the words in the reading of the nativity that describe Mary as pondering the things that happened at Jesus’ birth and keeping them in her heart.
Maybe Jesus was doing the same in this moment. Maybe he was pondering in his heart the praise of the people, and also the road that lay ahead of him. Would they worship him later when they learned that his reign was not like that of an earthly king, and that in fact the kingdom that he would preach would challenge the social norms? And that in the end he would die a death of humiliation and shame?
Jesus may sometimes take a different path in our lives than we would expect. Sure, there are those moments when the love of God and an overwhelming sense of peace catch us by surprise. But what about those times when we feel a twinge of discomfort, and we realize that the Holy Spirit may be showing us something in our lives that we need to change?
May we offer our praise in the wonderful, triumphant moments on our faith journeys. May we offer our praise in the hard times, too.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.