By Wednesday of what Christians call “Holy Week,” it’d become clear that the path toward peace wasn’t going to be paved by victory marches and military parades, but by a growing realization that Jesus was not the deliverer the people had expected.
This 1st century Jewish community had grand visions of things being restored back to the way things used to be. The Messiah would come on his warhorse to kill the Roman occupiers and make way for the restoration they had been praying and pleading for for generations.
A restored temple.
A restored land.
A restored throne.
The path toward restoration required violence. There was no other way. It’s just the way things are.
But Jesus didn’t enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on a warhorse; he entered on a borrowed donkey.
Jesus, a brown-skinned Jewish rabbi from Palestine, came to save us from the idols of nationalism, militarism & institutional religion…and modeled/invited us to the liberating, nonviolent love of God that is as accessible today as it was then.
Jesus didn’t come to restore the status quo, but to disrupt it for the sake of a renewed, restored world. A restored “kingdom” where the first will be last and the last will be first.
Where creation rests and renews.
Where people aren’t political pawns, but divine image bearers.
Where the idol of safety is exchanged for lives of faithfulness.
Where humanity not only pauses in awe of the birds, but joins in their song.
Where horses of war are stabled for the donkey’s of peace.
Where the palm branches of love pave our path toward healing.
Sometimes we expect a restoration of our own making rather than a restoration of God’s making. We have a vision for the way things “should be” so that we can return back to normal and will do anything to get there.
In the midst of a pandemic, our guess is that many of us are feeling that way. We want things to return back to normal. We have an expectation of how things should go based how things have gone in the past. That makes a ton of sense and we often feel that way too.
And, this Holy Week, we are keeping our eyes and hearts open to ways that God might be bringing about restoration in unexpected ways. Ways that give birth to new life in us and our world like we couldn’t have imagined.
Sometimes restoration looks like things being put back together. And, other times, restoration looks like giving birth to something brand new.
As followers of the king who came on a borrowed donkey, let’s participate in both.