Comes Now The King

Programming note: I’ll be on C-Span at 8:00 a.m. this morning. My office is a block from my church so I figured I could pull this off.

For those of you new here, as we enter Holy Week, I have to train myself to start the mornings with pieces on the highest order of topics. This week, over three billion people will celebrate the single most important event in human history — an event even non-Christian scholars often list as the most important event, even as they might just list it as the execution of a carpenter in Jerusalem.

Every year about now, I come under extraordinary pressure to not write about this stuff or talk about this stuff on radio. This past week, for example, there has been a pressure campaign to get me to stop talking about my faith and Christianity by a handful of Christian Nationalists who’d prefer not to have my views heard.

Those of you who are paid subscribers, thank you for your subscription. It makes it possible for me to do this without the fear of reprisal or threats to my livelihood. No morning post this week will be behind the paywall, so everyone can share these.

This week, I’ll send out the show notes at noon. As news warrants, I’ll provide you with what you need to know. But the mornings are for the most important thing, the resurrection of Christ.

A little over two thousand years ago today, Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem. People were laying palm branches in front of Him as He entered on a white donkey. They were praising Him and welcoming the arrival of their Messiah. The king had come. (Matt 21:1–11)

Before the week was out, they’d be mocking Him, spitting on Him, calling for the murderer Barrabas to be released, and the Christ would be executed as a criminal. That day, the sky would go dark at noon.

I know people today who look at the world and say this cannot be what God wanted, or God does not have a plan, or this could not be God’s plan, or just that God must be looking down at all of this crying, trying to figure out what to do or what went wrong.

God has a plan. On Palm Sunday, God looked triumphant. By Good Friday, God was mocked. The second person of the Trinity was dead. His disciples were in hiding.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve committed the first sin. Then God declared, at the time, that the woman would have a child who would crush the head of the snake even as the snake struck his heel. (Gen. 3:15) Eve then gave birth to a son who promptly struck his brother and killed him. The one who tended the sheep, Abel, was so valueless to his parents that his name meant nothing. Names had power, and Abel’s name meant “vapor” or “transitory.” Essentially, Abel meant nothing. But Cain, the first son born, meant “to possess” or “to acquire.” He was going to get them back to Eden. The family was so invested in the idea of Cain as the fulfillment of God’s prophecy that he was raised a gardener to prepare him to possess and tend the Garden once they got back in.

Abel was meaningless. They had him tending the sheep. Even in the days to come, shepherds were treated as outcasts.

Then they had Seth, meaning “appointed.” It would be him. It was not. Generations later, it would be Noah, whose name meant “rest” and was a play off the Sabbath. It was not him, though he saved humanity.

Thousands of years later, the plan came to be. Plague, war, slavery, genocide, executions, murders, exiles, conquests, and destruction all came between. Then, at the end, a Roman Governor handed the Lord to His own people, and they handed Him right back to die. Like the first shepherd, the Good Shepherd would die at the hands of those who believed they would possess the land.

And through it all, God had a plan. On the third day, the plan came into the light.

We live in an age of plague, war, genocide, executions, murders, exile, conquests, and destruction. We live in a fallen world. We lack patience and convince ourselves that this cannot be God’s plan because it is not how we want it, as we want it, when we want it.

God told Abraham that his descendants would be in slavery for four hundred years “for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” (Gen 15:16) He could have done it immediately. Why did He not? I do not know the full mind of God. But I do not doubt He had and has a plan that is still playing out in the fullness of time.

Who are you to decide God must not have a plan? Who are you to decide this plan is unacceptable? “[W]hen the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Gal 4:4–7)

Christ died. Christ rose. Easter came and is still coming and in the fullness of our time, He will return.

God does have a plan. Be patient in this fallen world. We will be redeemed and all things will be made new. He is coming soon.

Enjoy your Palm Sunday.