Monday of Holy Week 6 April

DAILY BYTE- Authentic Worship – Praise

On the Monday of Holy Week, we pause to reflect on the joy we demonstrated yesterday, as Jesus triumphantly rode into Jerusalem. We remember the festive waving of the palms, as we shouted, Hosanna! But on Palm Sunday, we also are introduced to the passion and cross of Christ.

Authentic praising and rejoicing, as Jesus sets his face toward the Holy City, does not exist without acknowledging suffering, pain, and sacrifice. While it is appropriate in many times and seasons, if we only engage in happy-clappy kinds of praise, we misrepresent the gospel. We do ourselves and one another a disservice by preventing the full range of emotions that exist in our personal, communal, and scriptural lives to be expressed in praise and worship to God.

There is holy space for all those emotions this week. Holy space for everything we need and want to express to God. Just as our lives can often feel like one big, unfolding drama, this Holy week is dramatic! It includes moments of pure joy, deceit, friendship, denial, the deepest love the world has to offer, and the deepest pain. The drama that unfolds in this week, as Jesus approaches his destination of Jerusalem, evokes so many thoughts, memories, guilts, griefs, and praises.

If we do not share them with God, it is only to our own detriment. God wants to hear them all. God’s ears are open to our praise, hearing the shouts, as we enter the city with him. God’s ears are open to our pain, as we slowly follow Jesus to the cross.

Can you allow yourself to praise authentically this week? Can you allow the story of Jesus’ approach to the cross to touch and inform your life so deeply that it evokes all sorts of emotions and expressions of praise in your life? What are some of your praises? What emotions do these praises evoke in you? Throughout this Lenten series, we have explored what it means to set our faces to Jerusalem and how we are both enslaved and freed on that journey. How might God be freeing you to praise this week?

PRAY-AS-YOU-GO

Praiseworthy God, as we enter into this unfolding drama of your crucifixion and resurrection, free us to be honest with you about the ways we are dying and the ways we are rising in our own lives. Free us to praise you in whatever form that praise may take, as long as our expressions to you are authentic and true. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Psalm 71:1-14

In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you. I have been like a portent to many, but you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, and with your glory all day long. Do not cast me off in the time of old age; do not forsake me when my strength is spent. For my enemies speak concerning me, and those who watch for my life consult together. They say, “Pursue and seize that person whom God has forsaken, for there is no one to deliver.” O God, do not be far from me; O my God, make haste to help me! Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed; let those who seek to hurt me be covered with scorn and disgrace. But I will hope continually, and will praise you yet more and more.