Psalm 27.12
Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes,
   for false witnesses rise up against me,
   spouting malicious accusations.

From John:
I prepare and post these devotionals approximately 36 hours before they go out, so as I finished writing this post and prepared it for posting, Notre Dame was still smoldering.

Today’s psalm gives us balm for this wound as well:

One thing I ask from the Lord,
   this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
   all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
   and to seek him in his temple.
For in the day of trouble
   he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent
   and set me high upon a rock. — Psalm 27.4-5

Our joint suffering with and for one another is part of being made one in Christ. May our prayers continue to rise for our brothers and sisters observing Holy Week in the midst of such tragedy.

Reflection: The Path of the Betrayer
By John Tillman

Wednesday is the day that it is most likely that Judas sought out the religious leaders to betray Jesus. It is amazing that it took this long.

John tells us that Jesus knew early on who the betrayer was and that, early in the week, the idea was already placed in Judas’s heart, by Satan. His motivation could have been simple revenge for being corrected publicly about Mary’s offering. His motivation could have been merely financial. (He was already stealing from Christ’s ministry fund.) But it is surely more complicated than any one, simple reason.

By Wednesday it was evident that the nationalistic dreams of the disciples and the crowds who waved palm branches (a symbol of the Maccabean revolt) were not shared by Jesus. He didn’t attack the Romans. He met with Greeks. He even failed to endorse a religious exemption for paying taxes to an idolatrous government.

For our reflection, it is valuable to remember that all the disciples felt let down by Jesus in the political realm. Peter rebuked Christ for predicting his death and fought to prevent his arrest. Surely Judas and others felt the same. (Judas seemed shocked to remorse when Jesus was convicted.) Even up to the moment of Christ’s ascension to Heaven, the disciples asked, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

Like the disciples, our longing for political salvation is far, far greater than our longing for spiritual salvation. This is because we don’t want to be made better people. We prefer others be forced to subject themselves to our weaknesses and sins—to accept us the way we are.

We are setting ourselves up for disillusionment if we mistakenly believe that Christ’s mission is to set us up in power, to bring us earthly authority, or to establish any kingdom other than a heavenly one.

By the end of the week, Judas will be dead and Jesus will step fully into the role John the Baptist first identified him as: The Lamb of God. He is the rejected one, the one who washed his betrayers’ feet, the one who submitted to death, the one who forgave his executioners. If we want to rise with him on Sunday, we must be prepared to die with him on Friday.

Jesus and Judas both offer us a path to follow.

What do we long for more than we long for Christ? Not letting go of it is choosing the path of Judas.

Prayer: A Reading
…Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, approached the chief priests with an offer to hand Jesus over to them. They were delighted to hear it, and promised to give him money; and he began to look for a way of betraying him when the opportunity should occur. — Mark 14.10-11

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 21 (Listen – 3:08) 
Psalm 26-27 (Listen – 3:13)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Learning from Judas

Jesus Christ Superstar shows Jesus’ last week of ministry as the looming failure that Judas must have perceived it to be.

Read more about In the Face of Betrayal

Imagine his face looking at Judas…The look you imagine on Christ’s face in these moments says a lot about what you believe about who Jesus is and what his character is like.

Psalm 25.15-18
My eyes are ever on the Lord,
   for only he will release my feet from the snare.
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
   for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart
   and free me from my anguish.
Look on my affliction and my distress
   and take away all my sins.

Reflection: Following Through Jerusalem
By John Tillman

During his dramatic entrance to Jerusalem, Jesus allowed himself to be worshiped (Even by those he knew would turn against him in a few days). When Jesus entered the Temple, he violently disrupted an economic center of oppression and made room for more foreigners to enter the outer court of the Temple. Matthew’s account adds that afterward, the blind and the lame, who would not have been permitted to enter the Temple, came to Jesus there and he healed them. These actions undermined the religious leaders’ superiority, threatened their wealth, and countermanded their teachings on the nature of sin.

Jesus represented a direct threat to their power structure and their methods of retaining power and control. So the religious leaders, instead of being ready to listen, ready to rejoice, and ready to accept the freedom and healing Jesus was bringing, were ready to challenge him.

The challenges of the religious leaders were meticulously designed logical traps. They were loaded, hot-button political questions, intended to turn the crowds against Jesus. Jesus answered every one of them masterfully.

To say his answers were skillful implies some level of craft or deceit. That’s what we expect from those answering tricky questions. But it was Christ’s undeniable truthfulness and solid basis in scripture that forced even those opposing him to publicly admit he answered well. Scripture says he “silenced” his opponents.

In our social media, drama-driven world, we often long for someone to silence our critics and win our battles. We equate winning arguments with advancing the kingdom.

But we need to remember that Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem to shame his enemies, but to be shamed on the cross. He didn’t come to slaughter his enemies, but to be slaughtered.

The crowds and outward successes of Christ’s entry to Jerusalem may have given his disciples a wrong impression of Christ’s true mission.

When Jesus calls us to follow him, it isn’t just to follow him to sit on some Heavenly throne. James and John longed to sit there, but Jesus knew they didn’t understand what they asked for. The path leading to glory with Christ is the path leading through suffering to death.

If we desire to rise with him, we must expect to suffer with him, and be prepared to die with him.

Prayer: The Morning Psalm
…For with you is the well of life, and in your light we see light.
Continue your loving-kindness to those who know you, and your favor to those who are true of heart. — Psalm 36.9-10

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 20 (Listen – 4:18) 
Psalm 25 (Listen – 2:18)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about The Context of The Widow’s Mite
Can we learn to live like the widow? Are we able to live in faith, despite our systematic victimization, despite our poverty, and despite the existence of corruption?

Read more about Where is the Love?
John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple is the most violent, showing Jesus making a weapon and wielding it. It’s probably why we don’t read it as often. It’s unsettling to see Jesus this way.

Psalm 24.8
Who is this King of glory?

From John:
First, we look at a few verses from our Leviticus reading that bear special reflection on “Tax Day” in the United States.

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. Do not steal. Do not lie…Do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights… — Leviticus 9-11, 35-36

Reflection: Who is this King of glory?
By John Tillman

Today, as American citizens prepare to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” on “Tax Day,” the calendar of the church, marks the week that Jesus began to walk resolutely into the teeth of the Roman Empire. That’s the part we don’t like. We like the triumphal entry and the triumphal resurrection. The middle bits are like verses of a hymn that we too often skip.

On Palm Sunday churches around the world remembered the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. Many in the Jerusalem crowd must have had the ending stanzas of David’s 24th psalm in mind:

Lift up your heads, you gates;
   be lifted up, you ancient doors,
   that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?

But Jesus was not the king they were expecting. And Jesus is not the king we often wish for either.

Some want a glorious warrior-king to defeat the foreigners and rule though vengeance and retribution. These believers want the second-coming of David the giant-killer on a horse, not the first coming of God’s suffering servant on a donkey.

Some expect a liberating mage, with heavenly signs, miracles, blessings, and plagues to confound and punish their oppressors and bless and free the downtrodden. They look for a second Moses, a liberator and lawgiver, not the Lamb of God who comes to be imprisoned, cursed, and slain.

As we follow Jesus through Jerusalem this week, may we not misunderstand him or mistake him for someone else. Let us have eyes to see what many wished to see before us, and ears to hear what many wished to hear. May we let go of our heroic versions of kings and watch the lamb of God, ride his borrowed donkey, straight to his borrowed tomb.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Deliverance belongs to the Lord. Your blessing be upon your people! — 3.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 19 (Listen – 4:39) 
Psalm 23-24 (Listen – 2:03)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Face Like Flint :: A Guided Prayer
When Jesus set his face like flint, determined to go to Jerusalem, the disciples expected a fight. Many of them seemed to expect to win. In what ways are we willing to accept victory with Christ but not suffering?

Read more about The Untied Donkey
In the ancient world donkeys were used for ceremonial purposes. Whereas horses were symbols of war, donkeys were symbols of peace and often used to enact treaties.

Psalm 18.3, 16-17
I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
   and I have been saved from my enemies.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
   he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
   from my foes, who were too strong for me.

From John:
Using the example of the psalms, including today’s psalm of David, Martin Luther emphasizes that without calling on the name of God in faith, we stand surrounded by the armies of sin, without hope of victory.

We often think of David as a heroic performer of great deeds of good works, but David recognized that he was overmatched when it came to sin and did not rely on his own strength. In our modern, humanistic age, there are messages all around us of the power of our good works. We can do it. We can save. We can learn. We can fly.

As Christians, we confess our feet are earth bound but, through Christ, we know our feet will one day do better than fly. We will tread the City of God.

Reflection: Three Armies of Sin :: Throwback Thursday
By Martin Luther

Sin has hemmed us in with three strong, mighty armies.

The first is our own flesh, the second the world, the third the evil spirit, by which three we are without ceasing oppressed and troubled; whereby God gives us occasion to do good works without ceasing, namely, to fight with these enemies and sins.

The flesh seeks pleasure and peace, the world seeks riches, favor, power and honor, the evil spirit seeks pride, glory, that a man be well thought of, and other men be despised. And these three are all so powerful that each one of them is alone sufficient to fight a man, and yet there is no way we can overcome them, except only by calling upon the holy Name of God in a firm faith.

As Solomon says, in Proverbs 18, “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is set aloft.” And David, in Psalm 116, “I will drink the cup of salvation, and call upon the Name of the Lord.” Again, in Psalm 18: “I will call upon the Lord with praise: so shall I be saved from all mine enemies.”

These works and the power of God’s Name have become unknown to us, because we are not accustomed to it, and have never seriously fought with sins, and have not needed His Name, because we are trained only in our self devised works, which we were able to do with our own powers.

*From A Treatise on Good Works, 1520

Prayer: The Greeting
Lord, you have been our refuge from one generation to another.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or the land and the earth were born, from age to age you are God. — Psalm 90.1-2

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Leviticus 15 (Listen – 4:59)
Psalm 18 (Listen – 5:47)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Steeped In Sin
Sin is not just some bad things that we sometimes do. Sinful actions are “sins” but sin is more than actions. It is a condition. Sin is pervasive. It seeps into every crack and corner of our souls.

Read more about Taking Sin Seriously
The grace Jesus offers is so costly that the powerful drop their stones and walk away from it. They cannot bear the cost to their pride. The lustful won’t look at it. It is too costly to give up their lusts.