Title symbol and truth
Matthew 21:1-11
Before the sermon, pour out your frustrations. It is sad that because of the lack of vocabulary, I cannot fully convey the wonderful feeling that comes from reading the Bible and being moved by the Holy Spirit. I pray that the Holy Spirit will take away this sorrow.
What is a symbol? According to the dictionary, it is the promise of a social group and refers to the work of expressing abstract objects and concepts that are difficult to explain in words as concrete objects. Or, referring to the object, representation, or symbol, it is said to be a symbol.
The Lord was very worried about how to make his disciples understand Jesus, who entered Jerusalem as the Messiah, the Christ. The Jews at that time had painful memories. I had the bitter experience of watching the temple be polluted by foreign powers. I became a vassal and had to lead a difficult life. Because of this, the Jews waited for a Messiah who would bring political restoration. They wanted to defeat the enemies by force and to rule the whole world according to God's will, where the Jews gathered around Jerusalem.
If Jesus rode a horse and entered Jerusalem with a spear, he might have known that he was the Messiah of helplessness and could have been able to revolt. In fact, records at the time indicate that such uprisings occurred. This can be exemplified by the preservation and administration of Jerusalem by the Maccabees, which arose when they were ruled by the Greeks.
But Jesus' coming was not for that purpose. No matter how many people wanted political restoration, Jesus had to reveal the truth.
Truth (眞實) means that there is no lie and that it is true.
These days, the truth is being misled. The words of the victor in court become the truth. But it never argues that the court is polluted. A world where people with more power believe that they have the truth. A world where people with more money believe that they have the truth. It doesn't matter if it's false or not. Trends matter.
It is this trend that pressured Jesus. But Jesus was only telling the truth.
Jesus came to this earth as the Messiah, Savior, and Christ. But they had a different view of the Messiah. It wasn't something I could afford to pass. And he couldn't pretend he wasn't the Messiah. Because the Lord's time was coming.
We have to enter with the foolish disciples who do not understand even if they explain it in words. So, the decision he made was riding on a donkey, a symbol of peace. This symbolic act was meant to make himself known to his disciples and followers, rather than the laborious framing of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. To show the truth that it is not for temporary domination of the world by force, but for eternal shalom. Jesus
proclaimed the kingdom of God. But even so, in the minds of those who dreamed of a world ruled by the Jews, only the kingdom of the Jews came to mind.
What is Shalom? This is the greeting Israel has always greeted. Shalom is freedom. Shalom is reconciliation. Shalom is hope. Shalom does not speak of static peace. Shalom is dynamic peace. This is peace through the Lord.
You can have different views about your entry into Jerusalem.
The first is the explanation that many people cheered and welcomed them. However, this is a really difficult explanation to understand. If Jesus' entry into Jerusalem led to a large gathering of people, then the Roman garrison at Caesarea should have come running. And Jesus would have been arrested and questioned. Perhaps not immediately, but later, the accusations of the Jewish leaders could be brought in, and it would have been recorded by the Roman governor and would have been a major problem when Jesus was interrogated.
Second, a small crowd would have cheered. No one can riot at the gates of the city of Jerusalem in broad daylight. To the extent that some of the disciples and followers had interesting happenings in the eyes of others. In fact, even this was not seen by the religious leaders of the time.
It's a little dangerous to think about how many people must have followed the 5,000 men who the Lord fed them. How many people did Jerusalem have at the time, but could thousands of people follow it? Think of 40,000 to 80,000 people. If we say that the Book of Records alone is 5,000, we mean 1/8 or 1/16 of Jerusalem's population.
A crowd of followers of Jesus appeared from a village called Nazareth and entered Jerusalem. According to the traditional belief, when the Messiah enters Jerusalem carrying an iron rod on a white horse, Jews from all over the world will gather. The Messiah will conquer the whole world and hand over his dominion to the Jews. But now Jesus enters. Even if it looks bad, it enters.
I think he wanted to show the followers of Jesus the path he should take through a symbol once again. You want the truth to be etched into their hearts.
The story of borrowing a donkey is not so awkward. It is understandable if you go back to 2,000 years ago that it was possible for a seminary student wearing a square hat to borrow car expenses from strangers in the daytime in Seoul during the Japanese colonial period.
Jesus is understood as a prophet from Nazareth. It is not understood as a savior. The problem is that the disciples who were serving Jesus nearby dispersed when Jesus was arrested, questioned, and dragged around. The Lord's heart, who was looking forward to this, must have come to us with pain as it overlapped the shaking palm branches.
That's right. In life, we don't know how difficult it is to tell the truth and put it into practice. Yet the Christian life is the truth. No matter how much you can't express it, you have to tell the truth, even with a symbol. In fact, our bodies are symbols. Our lives are symbols.
If you read the book of Jeremiah, you don't know how miserable the life of a prophet is. Finally, God informs the Jews who do not understand and do not understand through symbols. If you look at the book of Ezekiel, you can see the case of making things that are difficult for a human being to bear as a symbol.
The way we live should be expressed as a life that confesses Jesus as the Christ and resembles Jesus. Soon, our life should become a symbol. On Palm Sunday, we hope that the life of Jesus will be truly expressed through us.