Monday in Holy Week (04/06/09)

So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify.
--John 12:17

Well, this was turning out to be more of a Passover festival than anyone bargained for. Jerusalem, the holy city, was filled to the rafters with visitors who had come to celebrate the most important date on the Hebrew calendar. Were the authorities concerned about crowd control? It's hard to tell. One might be forgiven for thinking that they may have had some plans in place if things got out of hand.

Of course, they had Jesus pinpointed on their collective radar screens. Over the last couple of years or so, they found it difficult -- if not impossible! -- to manipulate or control Him as they saw fit. For them, Jesus was what we might call a "loose cannon" -- the proverbial "bull in the china shop" of their polished religious sensibilities. And His followers were not keeping silent. Was a riot brewing?

They had a plan. It was presumably to be a covert operation. Jesus would be quietly murdered, and Lazarus (whom Jesus had raised from the dead) would meet the same fate. This was deemed appropriate in order to keep the peace and to save God's honor. After all, we can't have these maverick itinerant preachers running around spouting heresy and sowing seeds of subversion. But now they had a crowd of Jesus-followers on their hands that grew larger by the minute and would not keep silent. This was not going to be a quick, clean hit. Things might get messy.

Pull up a seat for this. Don't "DVR" the Holy Week story so you can watch it at a more "convenient" time. If your twenty first century religious sensibilities are polished enough, you'll likely skip it and look forward to milk chocolate Easter eggs and Sunday brunch at the club. It will surely be peaceful, and it may even honor God.

But think about it: what were those peace-loving, God-honoring folk trying to do at the first Holy Week?

PD