A Reflection on John 12:12-19

We need a savior. Trapped in our homes, we search for salvation from an invisible enemy. Our leaders give us daily reports on the progress of the virus, and our progress toward fighting it. It looks like we are losing ground every day. More cases and more death cause our spirits to fail. The enemy is winning, we need a savior.

However, our savior is not coming, at least not in the way we expect a Savior to come. Jesus didn’t come to free us from our homes, or to bring us a vaccine, or an antidote or our current circumstance, instead Jesus came to bring freedom from captivity to sin, freedom from the result of our missing the mark, and freedom to truly live.

I wish nothing more than to preach that Jesus came to conquer CoViD-19, and that we don’t need to stay in our homes because Jesus has made us immune from the effects of this nasty disease, but that simply isn’t true. Just as so many that were sitting on the side of the road as Jesus came into Jerusalem, thought that Jesus had come to kick out the Romans, and liberate the nation, Jesus has bigger plans than we do, a greater focus, and longer view on salvation.

Jesus didn’t come just to save the day, but rather Jesus came to save us for all eternity. Let us look at how the Gospel of John captures the moment that Jesus entered Jerusalem and was greeting as a conquering Savior and King.

12 The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, 

“Hosanna!” 

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  

“Blessed is the king of Israel!” 

14 Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written: 

15 “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion; 

see, your king is coming, 

seated on a donkey’s colt.”  

16 At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him. 

17 Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. 18 Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” 

Hosanna! Save us now! Jesus came to do that, but not in the way that the people expected as he rode into the city, as a Man of Peace, not a conquering warrior. May we too allow Jesus to conquer our hearts with God’s Peace on this Palm Sunday, allowing the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and Prince of Peace show us how to be more than conquerors through the Peace that surpasses all understanding.

The Expectations

The people of Israel were shackled by Rome. They kept hoping that someone was going to break them free from the bondage, a bondage that was set upon them from a conquering government. Throughout history Israel rose up, and each of these rebellions was squelched, and resulted in a half-blood king put in control with the authority given by Rome. The government put in place was established to keep peace in the region. Even with these “peacekeepers” in place, it was still apparent that the people were under Rome’s control. 

Through the experience of being in the control of Rome, people are always looking for a liberator. The people have heard about Jesus, and that he was healing people, shaking up the establishment by spending time with the people that were cast aside, and even bringing back people from the dead. Jesus certainly had the power to throw out the Romans and bring freedom to the people of Israel.

Just like the people of Israel, we expect Jesus to swoop in like a Superman, and bring us salvation from all the evils of the world. This has only amplified in recent years. We look to the government to help, for the evils of the world. Whether the evils be seen as war with other countries, greed, corruption, hunger, illness, and oppression. Unfortunately, even the most powerful in the world cannot eradicate the source of this evil, because it lies within our sinful nature.

When we expect our heroes to save us, we need to make sure that we are no longer contributing to the problem. Sin gets in the way, it blocks our path to the Father, and leads to some horrific circumstances. Sin leads to war, hopelessness, hatred, pain, disease, famine, heartbreak, and ultimately death. Israel set up a system to deal with sin, but it involved death, and was a cycle that became never ending and unredeemable. The nature of the unredeemed sin contributes to further suffering and further death.

The world needed a conqueror to break us free, and the Justice League nor the Avengers would be capable of breaking the world free from the effect of sin. That is where Jesus stepped in to save not only the day, but our lives for all of eternity. Our first step away from the tyranny of sin, is recognizing that the conqueror we want is much much less than the role of conqueror that Jesus Christ came to fulfill.

The Reality

We got a foretaste of how Jesus came to show the world what His mission was in the world. Throughout the Earthly ministry of Jesus, people were healed, freedom from sin was proclaimed, the lame walked, demons were cast out, and even the dead were brought back to life. All of these miracles gave people the hope that Jesus was coming to change the world, and they got their Hosanna voices primed.

Jesus, however, did not come marching into Jerusalem with an army. Instead he came on a symbol that was the antithesis, a donkey. The donkey was a symbol of coming in peace, thus telling the world that he was coming to bring peace and not war, coming to make peace between man and God, coming to deal with sin once and for all.

Like many of you, I wish that God would make a single finger snap and this entire pandemic would all go away. That is the conqueror I want, but instead of giving us what we want God gave us what we needed. In Jesus Christ, God dealt with sin and death, God took care of the root problem, in order for God’s people to be able to rise up against the effects of that sin.

The people of God can then rise up and bring the Kingdom of God to the World and overthrow the oppression, the evil, the illnesses that run rampant. The people of God come armed with Hope, Peace, Joy, Mercy, Faith, and Love, and against these no weapon or disease can prosper, not even CoViD-19.

As much as we are frustrated that the effects of sin are still present among us, we have the knowledge that Jesus conquers all, and that death has already been defeated. This doesn’t make hardship obsolete or invisible, but it makes it manageable because of our faith that God is bigger than any problem we have on Earth, and that through the mercy of God, and the saving power of Christ Jesus we are saved. Saved by a loving God that sent Christ Jesus to die on a cross, and raised Him from the dead, so that sin and death would forever be conquered.