“Palm Sunday is one of the enigmas in the Christian calendar. It speaks of joy and celebration, and of worshipping Jesus as the King of kings, and yet of course it leads us into the events of Holy Week, the memory of sorrow and suffering, and finally death on a cross.”              Nick Fawcett

 

Yesterday was Palm Sunday and these words from Nick Fawcett remind me that the Christian faith requires us to hold joy and celebration in tension with sorrow and suffering. We are fortunate indeed if we travel through life avoiding sorrow and loss, yet even in this we can find a joy and peace that sustains us in these experiences.

As a Street Pastor I am sometimes asked a question which I have never been asked in a church, how do I know God loves me? I have met people who are desperate that God should reveal himself personally to them, and then they could believe! In answering this question I find I can only point them towards all that God has done in Jesus. For the truth of Easter is that God has revealed his love for us in a quite remarkable way. The one who the Psalms describe as from everlasting to everlasting and whose love is higher than the heavens gave of himself , and in Jesus identified with us. Jesus took all that separates us from God upon himself, on the cross, in order for us to have a new relationship with God and with one another.

Because of this we discover that Good Friday is really Great Friday because love proved stronger than darkness and that the joy and celebration of Palm Sunday finds its ultimate fulfilment on Easter Sunday when we celebrate that death was not the end, just the beginning.

May you know the presence of Christ this Easter.

Trevor