Lenten Reflection #33: Palm Sunday
“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the king of Israel!”
John 12:13
I remember in the old westerns when an outsider would come into the camp of the cowboys or the cowboys would encounter the Indians and they wanted to talk, they would say "I come in peace" or they would say someone had sent them. Sci-fi movies used the same type of line when the people of earth confronted the aliens, "I come in peace."
On the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem, the day we remember today as Palm Sunday, the people exclaimed, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."
In whose name do we come? Whose name do we represent?
As followers of Jesus we come in peace, love, hope and joy. We come in the grace and forgiveness that flows from a live lived in the name of Jesus.
We are blessed when we live and relate to others in the name of the Lord. Blessing, according to Matthew 5, means that we will see God. We will encounter Him. We will be comforted by Him. We will be called "children of God." We will enter His kingdom.
Names in the bible are more than names. They illustrated who the person was. They had deeper meaning into a persons character and they described them at there core. Jesus even changed peoples name to call them something that better illustrated the content of there character. He tells Simon that he will called Peter, which means rock, because Peter was a rock. Elijah means the "my God is the Lord".
For us to live in the name of Jesus means to live as Jesus would live. To live with the character the Jesus and to love like Jesus love.
In our day there may never be parades of palms but we can come and live by the name of Jesus. People may never shout "Hosanna", but may it be said of us that we come in peace, love, joy and hope. May they say of us that we live in the name of Jesus.
In Christ's love and mine,
Doug
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