Dead Ends

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, was the start of Holy Week. A week where Christians across the globe reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice for us on Good Friday and celebrate His resurrection on Easter Sunday. It’s a special time that unites all followers of Jesus, regardless of denomination or language or spiritual practices.

The thing about Easter is, it’s easy to celebrate something we can look back on and know all the good things that came from that weekend. We see how Jesus, the predicted Messiah, accomplished the mission of saving people from their sins. We know He had to die in order to do that; it’s why we can call His death “good”. We also know that He rose again and defeated death. It’s all in the past, it’s all finished work, all we have to do today is believe it.

But what about the followers of Jesus during that very first Holy Week? That wasn’t a nice Sunday School story they could hear in the comfort of their Westernized church buildings. No, these Christians had to live out that week. The highs, the lows, the joys, and the fears. I don’t imagine they would have named that week “Holy” as they lived the betrayal by Judas, the injustice of Jesus’ sentencing, the angry crowds, the violence and shame of Jesus’ flogging, and the [perceived] finality of Jesus’ death. These events were anything but holy, they were a dead end to the hope and faith of Jesus’ followers. Or so they thought…

That first Holy Week started on the highest of highs. In all 4 of the gospel books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) we see the account of “Jesus’ Triumphant Entry”, what we know as Palm Sunday. On that day, Jesus was headed back into Jerusalem with His disciples while crowds of people came out to lay down palm branches and robes along the path of Jesus. “They shouted, ‘Praise God! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hail to the King of Israel!’” (John 12:13b)

The people not only recognized Jesus as their King, they also publicly worshipped Him. Palm Sunday probably felt like the pinnacle of the disciples’ faith and their journey with Jesus. He was the awaited King of Israel and was rightly being honored as such. I’m sure they thought, “People finally get it! Our king is here and will start ruling over his kingdom. All is set in place. The mission is complete.”

But this elation would last only a few days. Come Thursday, the night of The Last Supper, Judas would betray Jesus. This betrayal led to the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus; something the disciples never saw coming. And suddenly, everything has changed. On Palm Sunday, Jesus is recognized and worshipped as Israel’s King. By Good Friday, Jesus is mocked, rejected, and killed in the most shameful way possible. How could circumstances change so suddenly and so drastically?

Confusion and doubt set in as Jesus’ followers wonder how the Son of God could be defeated by man. What went wrong? What did they misunderstand? Was Jesus really the Messiah, the King of Israel, or were they mistaken this whole time?

Despite the repeated attempts by Jesus to warn the disciples of His impending death and resurrection, they assumed He was speaking in parables. That is, until they stood at His trial, mourned at the foot of His cross and watched the massive stone cover the only entrance to the tomb where His body lay.

This was the dead end for the disciples. Certainly all this wasn’t part of God’s plan. Except that it was.

It would take days of mourning and multiple eyewitness accounts for the disciples to see that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then it would take 40 more days spent with Jesus, after His resurrection, to understand the purpose of why He had to die. They missed the warnings and predictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection because they misunderstood the greater purpose of Jesus’ mission on earth.

Jesus came to this earth knowing His time here was leading to His eventual death and resurrection. It was all part of the plan. Salvation could only be accomplished through these events. What seemed a dead end to the disciples at the time was actually the fulfillment of their freedom and their hope!

What would it mean for us today to see this truth in our own circumstances? When we face a circumstance that looks grim, we wonder if God has forgotten about us, or didn’t plan far enough, or isn’t really all-powerful. It feels an awful lot like a dead end. But what if He’s been working all along in ways that we haven’t seen because we haven’t lived it out yet? What if, despite what feels like the loss of something, we actually gain something far better on the other side?

When I was living through the death of my marriage it sure felt like a dead end. The thing I had planned my life and my future around, suddenly gone. “What does this mean? What do I do?”, I asked myself. “You have no future”, my pain answered. Thankfully, my pain wasn’t the only one who answered my fears and concerns. God answered as well. “Divorce isn’t the end of your story”, He said. “It’s just a part of it.”

And boy am I grateful I chose to listen to God’s voice. Because on the other side of that dead end, He already had a new road paved for me. It would take me months to see a speck of this truth, and years to fully grasp it. But as I look back, I can see the many ways that God was working through that pain, that “death”, to bring about salvation, restoration, freedom and hope.

-Stephanie Lauren Auman