We would never cry “Crucify Him!” But haven’t we?
Holy Week commemorates the events leading to Christ’s resurrection. Long ago the same people who greeted Jesus with excitement and, “Hosanna!”, later cried “Crucify Him!” – Why? Failed Expectations. They expected immediate political deliverance – what do we expect? Anthony Bloom, former archbishop in the Russian Orthodox Church, said in his Palm Sunday message on April 4, 1993,
How many are those people who have turned away in hatred from Christ because He has disappointed one hope or another.
I remember a women who had been a believer for all her life and whose grandson died, a little boy, and she said to me, “I don’t believe in God anymore. How could He take my grandson?” And I said to her, “But you believed in God while thousands and thousands and millions of people died.” And she looked at me and said, “Yes, but what did that do to me? I didn’t care, they were not my children”
He goes on to say,
[S]omething happens to us in a small degree so often that we waver … when something which we expect Him to do for us is not done, when He is not an obedient servant, when we proclaim our will, He does not say, “Amen,” and does not do it
So we are not so alien from those who met Christ at the gates of Jerusalem and then turned away from Him.
What do you do when God doesn’t meet your expectations?
– fritz
Read Metropolitian Anthony’s whole message here.
Patrikin - Kinship through The Father 