Jesus sat upon a donkey and rode in the city of God with the disciples lining the road shouting “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” They could not keep quiet. “If they did”, Jesus told the Pharisees “then the stones will cry out.” So began the week leading to the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus and the redemption of all men and women who could reach out for it. Simon Peter in Acts 2:21 told us “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” The new covenant was now in place and the conclusion of the long plan for the restoration of mankind was in put into motion. Glory be to God and praise his eternal name forever and ever.

On that day when Christ approached Jerusalem he was over taken by the emotion of the moment. Jesus knew that he had to be rejected by the people he had come to save in order for salvation to be given to all men and women in all the nations of the Earth. It is ironic that five days later the priests of the temple would reject his claim to be the messiah and the Romans, to appease the Jews, would sentence Jesus to death by crucifixion and in doing so bring about a promise made to Abraham nearly two thousand years before, “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” (Genesis 22:18)

It is said in scripture that Jesus wept that day knowing of the rejection to come and because of that rejection God would bring war against the Jews, utter destroy the temple and scatter the majority of the Israelites to the four corners of the earth. Christ knew what the future held for both himself and God’s chosen people but he cried for those who would be lost. Through his tears he rode on and entered the temple court yard only to find it a market full of cheats and thieves who swindled both the rich and the poor with the assistance and collusion of the temple priests.

Christ responded to the scene with the righteous indignation that only Christ, the Son of God, has the authority to express. He scorned them and named them for what they were, thieves and cheats. Jesus constructed a whip drove them from the “house of prayer” that was his (and ours) Father’s house. Those in the temple came outside and Christ healed those who where lame and those who were blind. The children witnessed the miracles and cried out “Hosanna to the Son of David” and the temple priests became indignant and questioned Jesus and he asked them in return “have you never read, ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise?” This greatly upset the priests and at that time the double their efforts to kill him.

That night Jesus left for Bethany where he would rest in preparation for the trials that were ahead of him. What must it have been like for our Lord during that week as he anticipated his coming execution? Even though he was God and he knew of the events that would unfold, he was also a man who knew pain and suffering. He was familiar with the agony that many of those he had healed during his earthly ministry had experienced and he knew that once he took on the burden of mankind’s sins the physical agony of scourging and the cross would pale in comparison. Being God, sin was more abhorrent to him than anything we could imagine but being man he must take on the burden of our sins and die for our atonement. He would not refuse the burden and his acceptance of our sins leads to our acceptance of his righteousness.

For a long time I never understood the purpose of the cross and while I still don’t understand the divine mechanics behind it, I understand (or rather believe) that a trade takes place with Christ as he hangs nailed to the cross and suffers the humiliation that in truth should be ours to bear. We exchange all the disobedience of God’s will that we have done or will do in our lives and it is replaced with the righteousness that is Christ’s and allows us to kneel in prayer before the presence of God cleaned of our sins because the weight of that burden has been given to Christ Jesus and he has willingly accepted it on our behalf.

When I sit in prayer and I give thanks to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit I always try to remember to give thanks for the sacrifice that Christ Jesus as made for us. It is in those moments when my heart feels so close to God that I can almost touch him that I realize how really insignificant my words are because words are too little to match the sacrifice that Jesus made. The actions of my life, even if I were to live the remainder in total obedience and compliance with God’s will, would be inadequate to the task of giving thanks that were equal to the burden that Jesus bore for me and for all those who believe. This is the importance and significance of the gift of grace. There is nothing that we can say and nothing we could do, that would make us in any way remotely deserving of this depth of love that was shown to us by our Creator. God blesses the creation and the created weep.