Palm Sunday

 

Nobody... but nobody... is going to disagree with me when I say that what our world desperately needs is peace.

In my lifetime we’ve made astonishing progress in technology and science.  In primary school I still dipped a nib-pen in an ink-well on my school desk and used blotting paper if I ended up with too much ink on my page.  By the time I got to high school we were using ball-point pens.  Today we use keyboards and tablets.  The silicon chip has revolutionised just about everything we do.  In the 1970s I began a career in IT with a computer that would not have fit in our kitchen but I now have more computing power in my mobile phone than I ever had on the IBM mainframe computer I used in the 1970s.

My generation has lived through the greatest changes ever in human history.  But we have not yet begun to solve the problems of hatred and war.  War still rages in the Ukraine and the Middle East continues to be a seething cauldron of conflict.  Technology has certainly not brought us “peace on earth”.

On the home front things are no better.  We build huge houses and fill them with an endless list of modern gadgets and toys for the boys.  But divorce has reached epidemic proportions in our society – and domestic violence... with physical and verbal abuse… is painfully common.  All our gadgets and technology have not helped us to live in peace with each other.

On a personal level we have just as much of a crisis.  Thousands of folk have everything they want – except peace of mind.  They worry and fret... they’re restless and stressed out.  They’ve tried counsellors and tranquillisers... meditation and recreation but a deep and lasting inner peace is as allusive as ever.

Not surprisingly the Bible, also has much to say about PEACE.  The word appears more than 200 times in the Scriptures.  However we need to understand what peace is... we need to define it because there are various definitions of peace.

First – there’s the kind of peace brought about by a UN peace-keeping force.  They define peace almost exclusively as an absence of hostility.  When there is no more conflict... when the fighting is over and the war is finished… when the bullets stop flying and the guns are laid down then we have peace.  Basically it says: Change the circumstances and then you may have peace.

Then there’s also the popular peace of the New Age movements.  For them peace is a state of mind.... an emotional factor.  And you get it through crystals and thru meditation techniques, through Yoga or by sitting at the feet of a guru.  It’s first and foremost an inner contentment... it is a calmness of mind in which we can be trained.  Basically it says: Learn to ignore your outer circumstance and you can have inner peace.

Today is Palm Sunday and on Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem… not on a war horse to overthrow the Roman occupiers… but on a donkey.  He was rightly hailed as the Prince of Peace who offers the kind of peace our world can’t even begin to dream about.  The kind of peace Jesus brings and that the Bible talks about is what the ancient Hebrew people called ‘Shalom’.  Shalom is more than an end to hostilities; it’s more than getting beyond the turmoil in our minds and hearts.  Shalom is wholeness and wellbeing; it’s restored relationships and confidence about the future.

Palm Sunday is of course the quiet before the storm; it’s the celebration before the lamentations begin.  Palm Sunday is an oasis of peace in the turmoil of Lent.  Lent is preparing us for Good Friday and the story of the judicial murder of Jesus Christ.  But before that horrible day with its tragic darkness there is this moment of celebration as the people hail Jesus as King.  But we mustn’t separate Palm Sunday and Good Friday.  The Prince of Peace is able to give us peace only because on the cross He paid the penalty for the human rebellion that robbed us of our peace and contentment.  Jesus died on Good Friday and arose again on Easter morning so that shalom – wholeness and wellbeing and restored relationships might be a reality for us as we trust in His saving work.  If you want that kind of peace in your life, why don’t you put your trust in Him?

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