Let Jesus Get Your Attention

As we take our first steps into Holy Week, I wanted to draw our attention to a particular scene along Jesus’s long road to Jerusalem. As he walks with his disciples through Galilee on his way to Capernaum, he does something surprising. He actually tells them exactly what’s about to happen to him, Mark 9:31:

“He was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.’ But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.”

Before Jesus was cruelly betrayed, badly beaten, unfairly tried and convicted, brutally nailed to a cross, and then slowly suffocated to death, he told them that he would suffer. He told them he would die. He even told them he would rise from the dead. And he told them not once, but three different times (Mark 8, Mark 9, and Mark 10). But they didn’t get it. 

In fact, they got it all wrong. Listen to what happens in the next verse, verse 33. What did they start talking about after he described how he would die?

“And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you discussing on the way?’ But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.”

He told them he was about to be killed, and they walked away arguing about which of them was the greatest. He told them just how low he would have to go, and they just kept trying to climb on top of one another. The Son of God was about to humble himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, and all they could think about was themselves. Can you imagine? 

I hope you can, because I think we can be tempted to do the same thing — to walk the familiar steps of Holy Week, to hear again about all he had to suffer for our sin, and yet still be all wrapped up and distracted by self. As we hear the greatest, most devastating, most thrilling story ever told again, there’s a strange temptation, isn’t there, to walk right by the crucified and risen King, to focus on what we get out of it all and then let our minds wander anywhere but him.

Here on Palm Sunday, my exhortation for us is this: Let’s enjoy slowing down and focusing even more on Jesus. Let’s kneel down together, spread our cloaks and palm branches out across the road, and gladly lay aside self, gladly lay aside all arguments, complaints, and grudges between us, gladly let Jesus get all our attention:

“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!”