HAILED AND BE BROKENED TO BE MOULDED

“Hail our King,.. Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!” This was the song of Jews on this day as Jesus entered Jerusalem. The ordinary Jews who perceived the messiahship in Jesus took Him solemnly into the Jerusalem city from where king david reigned. On the contrary, the leadership in Jewish circle felt threated by this act. It is not the mere fear to roman empire that they wanted to get rid of Jesus, it is their fear of losing their own power and control over people. Jesus, who knew all that is going to happen to Him in Jerusalem allowed the thing to happen so. Jesus allowed the people to do as they wished. Today, He is hailed as King but soon for the very same reason He had to undergo the most cruel death in the history. Jesus embraced the joyful acclamation as well as sorrowful passion as they encountered Him. As today’s first reading says, “I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward . I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (Is 50:5-6) Jesus accepted the events as they approached to make it a remarkable history. He came down to live like humans without exercising His divine prerogatives (Phil 2:6-8). He allowed failures, brokenness, struggles to come along the way. Though He had power to restrict and by pass them, still He allowed all these to affect His human life to complete His humanity without any mark of selfish exercise of His divine privileges. Today, we try to be smart to avoid trial and tribulations. The more we become secure to by pass them, the faster we break down if anything contrary happens. The real smartness is facing the situations without any reservations. The smartness consists in tackling the challenge, than restricting.

Palm Sunday is the commencement of Holy week. We read the passion narratives from the gospel of mark to see the coherence of events that had happened from palm Sunday to holy Saturday. This reading is the summary of Jesus’s wonderful way of encountering the situation in a sublime way to make it a history. In our times, we are preoccupied with planning our history, we decide how things should happen. The execution of those plans are not real history. They are only success of the plan. They make be at the most, success stories. The historical story is that which has ups and downs, rises and falls, praises and curses. The making of unplanned things to fall in line as well as allowing oneself to be learned, moulded, adulted by them is a historical story. The modern view of planning in the name of security make us slave to material satisfaction. The biblical view of gaining the better in life and life after in the name of Jesus would make us to pursue higher goodness and larger happiness. Let this Holy Week be a time to resituate our life from the biblical view. Let us uproot our slavery to security to inherit the glory that is gained by embracing the history as they come to us.  


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