Be Watchful!

 

This past weekend, the pastor at my church was discussing Palm Sunday.  He talked about how followers praised Jesus with shouting and palms when he came into Jerusalem for his last Passover and then a week later those same followers were shouting to crucify him.  Our pastor’s take on the two stories was that this crowd expected Jesus was the Messiah and wanted him to become king, and when he didn’t act as they expected, they turned on him.  I love our pastor.  I always learn a lot from his sermons, and I respect his opinions, but I can’t say I agree with his take on the Easter story.  Now, let me say that he may be right.  The people shouting praise one week may be the same crowd yelling condemnation the next – the Bible certainly doesn’t provide us with a list of names from the crowd – and I’ve heard his opinion expressed from the pulpit other times, but I’m still not on board.  I think the Palm Sunday crowd did have a problem, but I don’t think their problem was the extreme action my pastor believes it was.  I think their problem was one many of us face today – inaction.

 

First, let’s look at the purpose of the Passover celebration.  The Passover was a time for the Jewish nation to remember God’s faithfulness to them as a people.  It was a meal infused with beautiful symbolism and a time for telling the story of how God provided salvation for his people when they were enslaved in Egypt.  It was literally a time to remember how he poured out vengeance on the Egyptian people but passed over the houses of the Jews which were marked with the blood of a sacrificial lamb.  According to Spangler and Tverberg in their book, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, the Jewish people in Jesus’ day also saw the Passover as a time to look for the coming Messiah backing up their belief with Exodus 12:42 which describes the Passover requirements saying, “Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come.”  The purpose of the Passover for a devote Jew, then, was not only to remember but to be alert and watchful.  It was a night that the Lord had commanded them to keep vigil – to see what he would do.  And that year, the people had someone to watch – Jesus of Nazareth.  They had seen him performing miracles and wonders for three years, and they celebrated his entrance into Jerusalem for the week of Passover.  It seemed to be the right person and the right time.

 

But there was a problem.  The Passover meal involved much preparation and often travel.  Jewish men were required to travel to Jerusalem for three significant feasts, and Passover began the Feast of Unleavened Bread which represented one of the required feasts for travel.  As seen in Luke 2 with Jesus’ own family, the men often brought their wives and children as well.  Even with a car and the convenience of fast food restaurants, I’m still exhausted at the end of a long trip, so I can only imagine how people felt as they entered Jerusalem after walking or riding on animals and carrying all their supplies.  They must have been weary by the time they sat down to enjoy the Passover feast which began at sunset, and due to the rich ceremony, didn’t typically end until approximately midnight according to Spangler and Tverberg.  Going to bed to be up the next morning for temple services would have been a logical desire. 

 

Look at the disciples.  No one could have better predicted that Jesus was the one for whom they should be keeping vigil.  In fact, Peter had already proclaimed in Matthew 16:16, “Thou art the Christ.  The Son of the Living God” when Jesus asked his disciples who they said he was.  But, on the night following the Passover feast, Peter could not keep his eyes open in the garden while Jesus was praying – and Jesus had specifically told him to keep watch!  Here is a man whose belief should be the greatest and whose command to keep watch was not even one he had to remember from centuries ago, but instead a request made minutes before he began falling asleep.  Not only that, but he kept falling asleep after Jesus’ repeated requests to keep awake.

 

So, would it be logical for all involved in the feast to want to sleep?  Yes.  A long travel and a late meal and an early temple service the next day were all good reasons to head to bed.  The problem I see is that the command had been to stay awake and to keep watch and to expect the Messiah, and from where I’m standing, no one was doing that.  And because no one was doing that, most of them missed God in action.  Because his followers were sleeping, the stage was set for the unbelieving Jewish leaders to have their way.  A fact they had counted on when they secretly plotted his murder in Matthew 26 saying to each other that they would arrest Jesus and kill him, “‘But not during the Feast,’ they said, ‘or there may be a riot among the people’” (Matthew 26:5).

 

According to their plan, Jesus was arrested in the garden after midnight and his trial happened immediately following.  At sunrise, a crowd was yelling to crucify him, and Pilate was washing his hands.  Maybe this crowd was the same who had been joyfully shouting “Hosanna” earlier, but I don’t think so.  I think those people were the ones mentioned in Luke 23:27 who are found following him up the mountain and wailing while Jesus carried his cross and the same ones the leaders feared would cause a riot if they were aware of the trial.  I think they had finally wakened from their sleep to realize they missed Jesus’ entire trial and there was nothing left to do.

 

Clearly as Jesus’ sacrifice was part of God’s plan to bring salvation, there was nothing his followers could have done.  Sleeping or awake, his trial would have played out the same way, but I find it ironic that they were asleep at the exact time they should have been expecting a Messiah.  The Rabbis had it right when they taught the people to expect another salvation experience during Passover, but after 1,400+ years of waiting, the people went through the motions of the celebration but were no longer waiting with expectation.  What would they have done differently if they had known that night was going to be the night?  Would they have stayed awake?  Would they have supported Jesus during his trial?  Would they have waited expectantly outside his tomb?  Would they have been able to see the power of God from the beginning? 

 

The Jewish people of Jesus’ day were not the only ones who should have been watching for a Messiah.  We have also been given an order to stay alert and keep watch.  In Matthew 24 and 25, Jesus discusses the end times, and he says, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42).  The English word “watch” is translated from the original Greek word, Gregoreuo, which means “to watch, give strict attention to, be cautious, active.”  It is the same word Jesus used with his sleepy disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, and interestingly it is the word one of those disciples, Peter, used when he wrote to Christians scattered throughout the world in 1 Peter.  The word gregoreuo appears only a few times after the gospels, but I love that one of the times it appears is in 1 Peter 5:8, and I think Peter – who had not been watchful at the crucifixion – had learned the true meaning of the word enabling him to give clear instructions on how it should be applied.

 

So, how should we be watchful?  What does that lifestyle look like 2000+ years after Jesus’ command in Matthew 24?  I think 1 Peter 5:6-9 gives insight.  It says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.  Be self-controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, standing firm in the faith.”

 

Being watchful involves knowing that God will show up.  It means letting go of anxiety and all our own efforts to “figure it out” and just believing that his promises are true and will be fulfilled.  It means exercising self-control and trusting God enough to follow his way instead of creating our own.  It means being aware that the devil is real and present and seeks to steal our faith.  One of my greatest desires is to be a person who lives with confidence that the Lord will work in miraculous ways so that I can be present and alert and aware while he is working instead of experiencing the awareness after the miracle has happened – and the accompanying guilt for not trusting him all along.  I know I won’t always understand what God is doing – in fact, I have a feeling that I will rarely understand what God is doing, but I want to be there.  Unlike Peter or the sleepy Palm Sunday followers, I want to walk the journey with Jesus knowing that he is not a God of disorder and that even when I’m confused, he isn’t.  I want to be the follower that goes the distance and who knows that no matter how black “Good” Friday seems, Easter Sunday is right around the corner.