Palm Sunday (03/23/24)
[On Palm Sunday] the people shouted that peace had come. "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Yet when Jesus wept, He said to the city, "If
you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."
This grand panorama speaks of the
world inside each human being. It is in our minds, in the spiritual sense of the Word, that Jesus rides in triumph. When we see the wonder of His truth, sense its power over all things, we crown Him. All the events of Palm Sunday tell of those times when we acknowledge that the Lord, the visible God, rules our minds through the Word which is within us. It is a time of great rejoicing. Like the multitudes of Palm Sunday, we feel that this vision will sweep all that is evil away,
and the Lord will easily reign within us as our King and our God.
Such happy times do come to us, and we can rejoice in them, and hail our Lord and King with
jubilation. "Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!" Peace comes through conjunction with the Lord whom we have seen. Yet the Lord Himself knows that there are battles to come from those who know no peace. This too He warns us of in His Word. In the natural Jerusalem of the Lord's day the rulers had used falsity to destroy the truth, and they brought much grief upon the Christians. In the spiritual Jerusalem in our minds there are false values which would destroy peace. Before we get to
heaven there is going to be a battle between our vision of the Lord and our self love which will abuse the truth to make that happen.
So the Lord wept, out there on
the mount of Olives, as He looked down upon the city. His weeping was a sign of mercy, for He grieves over the states in us which will hurt us and which are opposed to our peace. Yet His grief is an active force, it is mercy, working to eliminate those states. Jesus promised that Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed - not a single stone left standing. It is true that the natural Jerusalem was razed to the ground, but this is not what He meant. He promises us - even as He warns us of the battles
to come - that He will triumph, and that our Jerusalem - our excuses for doing evil - will not stand. They will be decimated by His Word.
[The Lord] wept from mercy,
and He promised an end to weeping, for "His tender mercies are over all His works." (Psalm 145: 9)
[PM Buss Sr, NCL “Weeping at Easter”]
