The King We Need, Not The King We Want: KevinH

This past Sunday we celebrated Palm Sunday, a remembrance of Jesus entering Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna” and the laying of palm branches before his path, symbolizing triumph and victory.

The people were expecting a Savior, one who would deliver them from Rome’s oppression.  Instead, they got a Savior who delivered them from the oppression of sin and death.

The people were expecting a King, who after triumphing over Rome, would take his rightful place on the throne, ruling over a liberated national Israel.  Instead, they got a King who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, ruling over a Kingdom full of liberated people that transcends borders, ethnicities, and earthly political understanding.

The people were expecting a Warrior who would victoriously combat and strike down the enemy, Rome.  Instead they got a Warrior who victoriously defeated powers they could not perceive, by allowing Himself to be struck down.

The people were expecting a Judge, who would justly punish the Romans for their evil deeds.  Instead, they got a Judge who brought grace and mercy to those who justly did not deserve it, by taking on the punishment, Himself.

The people should have gotten an idea that they’re expectations were off when Jesus rode into Jerusalem not on a strapping, majestic horse surrounded by a powerful army, but rather on a lowly donkey with a bunch of outcasts and misfits.  But they seemingly didn’t, and surely they were left with much consternation, confusion, and despair, when their expected Savior and King died on the cross at the hands of the Romans and the goading of many of their own.

Are we any different today?

Do we expect God to answer our prayers the way we expect them to be answered?

Do we expect “success”, if we only follow the ways of God?

Do we expect that God will, or at least should, deliver us from terrible situations we deem to be too hard, painful, or unjust?

Do we expect that we can accurately interpret prophecies and read the “signs of the times” so that we can have a pretty good expectation of when and how Jesus is going to return?  (How did that work out for all the religious experts the first time around for Jesus’ coming?)

Do we expect God to deliver for us a Christian nation… all the more by sending us politicians who are supposedly meant to make it happen?  (Or maybe our expectations are the other way around on this one, thinking that God expects us to do whatever it takes to bring about a Christian nation.)

When God doesn’t meet our expectations, it may do us well to remember that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways… to remember that God is working and thinking on a level that is so much higher than us that we can’t even begin to grasp what that level is.  God sees and knows so vastly more than us, and while He is playing master-level chess, we’re not even playing checkers, we’re lucky if we’re playing tic-tac-toe.

But above all, when God is not meeting our expectations, especially when that is leaving us with great feelings of pain, anger, and despair, may we remember Jesus.  Even as God is not checking out to be what we expected Him to be, may we remember that Jesus left His throne in Paradise to live among His very own created people who rebelled against Him in sin.  May we remember that Jesus voluntarily subjected Himself to experience all the lousy pain and suffering of this earth, physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and ultimately suffered a horrific death, the extent of which its horrificness we probably can’t even fully comprehend as to what it meant to become sin.

God may not be meeting our expectations here on earth, but Jesus knows what it’s like to live through the earthly experience, too, and probably got it worse than most of us ever will, even as He deserved none of it and could have stopped it at any moment simply by saying a word.  But He didn’t ever stop it, carrying it all the way through to the end.  That must count for something.