Going up to Jerusalem - Lent and Holy Week 2009

Details of the season of Lent can be seen in the Calendar of Seasons. This season prepares us for the season of Eastertide. The date of Easter is calculated on a lunar calendar.

HOLY WEEK

Going up to Jerusalem In the Hebrew version of the scriptures which arranges its books in a different order from what we know as the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 36.23 ends with the words 'let him go up'. These words of encourgement which were spoken to the Jewish exiles at the end of their 70 year Babylonian exile referred to their return to Jerusalem. Going up to Jerusalem is an unforgetable experience. On a church trip we may go up amid dramatic scenery up from the Jordan river/Dead Sea. We may also go up the historically significant route from Ben Gurion airport. Jesus would have gone up to Jerusalem many times, some of his visits are recorded in the New Testament.

As we approached Holy week, we considered the most significant going up of Jesus to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a place of sacrifice and Jesus, the Lamb of God proclaimed by John the Baptist (John 1.29), was going up to the place where the lambs were to be sacrificed at Passover. On Palm Sunday we find Jesus on the Mount of Olives looking over the Kidron Valley towards the splendid Jerusalem temple. He fullfils prophecy by entering as a king on a donkey (Zechariah 9.9). Throughout the week before Good Friday, Jesus was never far from the temple and those Passover lambs. Even today one of the Gates of Jerusalem is called the Sheep Gate.

Sacrifices in the temple were ordained by God, yet could only cover over sin for a specified time. (Hebrews 10.1-4) Jesus on Good Friday offered up a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world (1662 Book of Common Prayer). He offered his sacrifice not in a copy of the heavenly sanctuary, but in heaven itself (Hebrews 8.1-5).