I Will Be Brief

This week seems a perfect storm of destroying devotion.

What?

This past Saturday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder. I know this anniversary was not a decade marker- and Obama is president- so it might not be necessary to remember Martin Luther King Jr. anymore, but whatever the reasons, it didn't carry the same eventfulness as last year's anniversary.

I mean last year was a "commemoration". Last year, we were all remembering what MLK meant to us. And of course by remembering I mean constructing self-congratulatory narratives that let "we" be self congratulating.

Again... what?

Then we had Palm Sunday. I'm always struck by Palm Sunday's conventions. The palms of course. The little bits of object lesson that have us identify with the crowds saying, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus." But not too much with the crowds saying, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus."

That's confusing. What're you getting at?

I know it's a lot of material to cover, so we seldom get to the "stuff" between the entry into Jerusalem and the bloody exit, but these crowds saying, "Yay, Jesus," soon say, "His blood be on us and on our children."

Well... we're THE CHURCH. When we say, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus," that's what we mean.

Somehow, we're different. We don't see ourselves as subject to similarly self-serving motives or the possibility of sin.

Right, we are different. They were Jews. Remember? They had certain expectations of a Messiah that Jesus just wasn't going to fulfill. Didn't you know that? That's why we're different.

Our confident praise is something like, "If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets," without realizing what it means to say, "If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets."

Uh, you had me then you lost me

So Jesus' dies for our sin (though not because of our sin) and reconciles us to God, a God that justifies us, that we can attach ourselves to wholly and confidently in a way that satisfies our deepest needs.

Oh, okay. Right. I get that.

It's difficult to be wary of our offering praise to a God that satisfies us. It just makes sense to attach ourselves to God, to fix ourselves on this God with intense devotion and say, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." It's difficult to find it anything other than proper because we've been washed white.

You said you would be brief. I still don't get what this has to do with Martin Luther King or why it's a storm of devotion destroying.

Oh... right. I guess tomorrow will be a bit of a reveal.