Gospel.com Blog

Thursday. Four days after excited crowds welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem. One day before the horror of the crucifixion.

This is the day that tradition calls Maundy Thursday—the day of the Last Supper, the day that Jesus would wash his disciples’ feet; the day of the betrayal. It marks the beginning of the end of Holy Week, the first act in the divine drama that unfolds over the following three days. On Maundy Thursday, we’re getting close to the joyous celebration of Easter—it’s like a tiny speck of light at the end of a tunnel. But the next few days make for a long, bleak tunnel.

Here are two items to help you think through today’s significance:

• The Already Not Yet blog has been posting a series of Easter devotionals that walk through the major scenes of Holy Week. Today they offer a glimpse of the Last Supper—which they note is probably the most awkward social gathering in all of history (how would you react if the guest of honor accused somebody at the table of planning to betray him?). If you’ve not been following their devotional series this week, it’s worth heading over and getting caught up.
• At Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Jill Carattini focuses on one of the most curious events of Maundy Thursday: Jesus’s washing of the disciples’ feet. What is the significance of this act—and why would Jesus choose to do this, of all activities, on the very night he would be betrayed and condemned?

It’s Thursday, and at this point in the Easter drama, things are looking bleak. They’re going to look even worse tomorrow, on Good Friday, when all hope seems to die.

It’s a sobering thought. But as you ponder this, either at home or at a Maundy Thursday church service, don’t forget that Easter is coming.

One of the more debated events in history is the death and resurrection of Jesus. You can find books and web sites devoted to proving that it did happen, that it didn’t happen, and every variation inbetween.

For Christians, the truth of the resurrection is rather important and worth some serious study.

Answering the question, Can Any scientist today accept that Jesus was resurrected is the ministry of Scibel. The article begins from this assumption:

No one can be certain of all the details of any past event, but here is how it could have happened if all the four accounts are accurate from the viewpoint of their respective sources.

The article is replete with diagrams like the one to the right and does an thorough job of detailing the resurrection from each account given in the bible. If you’ve always wondered how it all happened and why each gospel account seems different this article should help explain some of the reasons why.

From Delve Into Jesus is an article titled, Why did Jesus have to die? The question is an extremely valid one. If Jesus is God and could do all things, then why did he have to die? Here’s the article summary:

When we sin, God’s perfect justice requires that we pay the price. This price is too high for any man to pay for it would require perfect sacrifice, which we cannot do. Jesus Christ took our place and died on the cross to pay the debt because He loves us.

When you read the story of Easter (see yesterday’s post to read it if you’re not familiar with it), what most stands out to you?

The story of Jesus’ betrayal, death, and resurrection is of course packed with interesting and important elements. But what always jumps out at me is the fascinating array of characters who populate this Easter drama. It’s the people of Easter who make the story come alive—and who add to it the ring of authenticity that you wouldn’t get if it were just another moral fable.

Think about the heroes and villains of the Easter story, and you’ll see that this isn’t the black-and-white morality tale you might expect if it were a piece of comforting religious fiction. Instead, we see a cast of very human characters reacting to the presence of Jesus—the story’s only perfectly good character. Some of the “heroes” don’t behave quite as heroically as they should—think of Jesus’ disciples falling asleep in the Garden, or of Peter disowning Christ rather than risk being associated with him. And the villains aren’t exactly brilliant, cackling evil masterminds—think of weak-willed Pilate, guilt-wracked Judas, and the religious leaders terrified that Jesus’ message will erode their own power and influence.

One of the most vivid ways to get to know the characters of Easter is through The Twelve Voices of Easter, an online audio drama from Back to the Bible that lets each of the twelve characters of Easter speak for him or herself. If you’ve read the Easter so many times that it’s started to lose its punch, this is a great way to approach the events of Holy Week from a different angle—with six days left before Easter Sunday, you could listen to two “voices” per day and be done on the big day. Most of the famous Easter characters are present in the drama (Judas, Pilate, Mary Magdalene), but also some of Easter’s less-well-known players, like the centurion and Cleopas.

I fire up the Twelve Voices every year during Holy Week because they shed some extra light on the human hopes, fears, and motivations that run through Easter week. While the Easter story is primarily about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, it’s also the story of ordinary people tainted by sin. They’re everyday sinners like you and me—they’re not diabolically evil; but almost everyone in the Easter story is flawed and broken. Everyone here, hero or villain, needs the salvation Jesus offers. Their presence in the story reminds us that Jesus’ sacrificial death wasn’t carried out just to save humanity on an abstract, cosmic level: Jesus died for the everyday sinners right there around him. The cowardly disciples; the foolish mob; the scheming religious leaders. You and me.

One of my favorite pieces of music is Bach’s Mass in B minor. The mass flows with dynamic ascents and descents brimming with deep emotion. Every lofty analogy one can make about it is true; yet, it retains worshipfulness through its simplicity. To me, the yearning melodies and emotionalism of Bach’s work create a soundtrack to what we remember during the week of the Passion: those final days before Jesus’ crucifixion.

For the Christian, this week breeds mixed emotions. While we remember Jesus’ death we do so with full knowledge that on Sunday–on Easter, he arises. For the disciples who lived these events the experience was far different.

For them, the week trembled with excitement quickly followed by dread and then let-down. Finally, Jesus was being properly venerated. Finally, they would see their Rabbi get the adulation he deserved. And then in the midst of all that uplift, in the midst of all his previous cryptic sayings coalescing into sensibility, he is brutally killed.

He didn’t mean to take the earthly throne. He knew he was going to suffer death, and for these early followers of Christ it deeply affected their entire worldview.

Many desert him, others leave him, Peter denies him. From riding into the city exalted to hovering crucified. This is the Passion week.

We’ll be showing you resources around the gospel.com community related to the passion week, but maybe a good place to start would be by rereading each gospel account of the passion week:

Matthew’s account

Mark’s account

Luke’s account

John’s account

Easter is a holiday marked by irony and paradox. During Easter week, we celebrate life attained through death. We worship a mighty king who ruled over no earthly nation. We read about people who saw God-become-man with their own eyes, yet failed to recognize him.

Today is Palm Sunday, and the bitter irony of Easter is nowhere more evident than in this famous scene, described in all four of the Gospels:

The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written,

“Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion;
see, your king is coming,
seated on a donkey’s colt.”

At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.

Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

The cruel irony is that within one week, the crowd that gladly welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem would be calling for his brutal death. Jesus was welcomed through the city gates like a king, but would soon be driven out of the same city, by many of the same people, to his death. The architect of their own salvation was staring them in the face, but when Jesus turned out to be a different sort of saviour than the people wanted (perhaps they hoped he would lead a violent revolution against their Roman oppressors), they turned their backs on him.

Is this just a quaint moral fable from Bible times? Can we, safely looking back with the benefit of thousands of years of hindsight, condemn the crowd for its fickleness? Not so fast. Jill Carattini, writing for the Slice of Infinity devotional, has some sobering words to consider this Palm Sunday:

It is this drama that is still religiously enacted. What I long to imagine was a fickle crowd—an illustration of the power of mobthink, or a sign of a hard-hearted people—only reminds me of my own vacillations with the Son of God. How easily our declarations that he is Lord become denials of his existence. How readily hands waving in praise and celebration become fists raised at the heavens in pain or hardship. Like a palm laid down and forgotten, the honor we bestow on Sunday can easily be abandoned by Wednesday.

It’s not enough to condemn those who welcomed, and then rejected, Jesus during Palm Sunday and the subsequent Easter week events. We must ask ourselves—this week, and next week, and every week—whether our own lives are marked by that same ficklness, that same waffling between devotion and rejection. And we must never cease giving thanks that Jesus’ love for each of us proves stronger than our faithlessness.

If you’re not sure who Jesus is, or why Easter is so important, learn more about Jesus’ life and his challenge to us today.