Mount of Olives

NOTE:  Our last Sunday Retreat. We are finally here –Palm Sunday–the last Sunday of Lent, Passion Sunday, the beginning of our Holiest Week of the Year.  From the Vigil of the Passion (8:01pm – gotta love Goggle) until the Great Easter Vigil (8:08pm) we have be blessed with 168 hours and 11 minutes. While we have duties, obligations, appointments and assignments (the stuff of life!) let’s try to lift our consciousness and focus on the transformative significance of this week.  Let us keep vigil with Christ.  Let us enter deeply into His passionate love story.  We are, after all, His focus.  He is our lover…and we His beloved.  Let us pray for one another.

Today’s Liturgy of Palm Sunday gives us two proclamations of the Gospel according to Luke.  Like bookends, Chapter 18 and Chapter 22 should smack us in the face.  Jesus faces the same fickle world as we…but it seems His is on steroid.  He enters Jerusalem as an ersatz triumphant King and seemingly dies a blasphemous reject.

Tucked within both passages proclaimed by the Church today is the naming of a simple place: The Mount of Olives. Had I not mentioned it, you might not even give notice. Mentioned only twice in the Old Testament, it is here where David goes to weep…and weep bitterly.  He weeps over the death of his son Ab′salom.  Significant?  I think so. 

While from a human perspective, the story of David and his reengage son is a study in conflict, you would think he would have wanted him dead.  It seemed Ab’salom wanted that end for his dad.  But when word came of his death, David was mortally grieved. While rebellious, could Ab’solom be a symbol of our sinful rebelliousness that Jesus carried to the cross?  And like David’s weeping, was not the Divine passion on display in the heavens and in the quaking of the earth as the Son of God hung dead on the cross?   I think so…and all of this at the Mount of Olives.

The second Old Testament reference to this place is in Zechariah 14:1.  The previous chapter relates the shepherd being struck and the sheep being scattered.  What follows this first verse in Chapter 14 is the unfolding of the future conquering universal kingship of the messiah.  Significant?  I think so.

Each of the remaining New Testament references to the Mount of Olives are all connected to Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and His ultimate ascent to His Throne – the cross.  That is with the exception of John’s Gospel! Remember last week?  Last week’s Gospel from John began with Jesus just having emerged from none other than the Mount of Olives.  Then He encounters the great drama on display between the accusatory scribes and Pharisees and the adulterous woman.

What is so special about this place?  Historically we know that this was a cemetery some five or six centuries before the birth of Jesus.  We know that is was also a sloped hillside with abundant olive groves.  These trees rich with the precious bitter and savory fruit, whose precious oil is used for some of the most expensive purposes—like anointing kings, and the bodies of the dead are present right there. But its seems that in the New Testament references, what makes the Mount of Olives important is that this is a place where Jesus goes to pray.

Why did Jesus come?  What was His mission, his purpose, His very reason to be God-with-us? Jesus came to forgive and to save.  In the singular encounter with the woman caught in the act of adultery, we see it in one humble gesture and dialogue. Jesus came to the lost, to forgive and offer more.  Salvation is so much more than forgiveness.  It is true transformation and abundant living.

And from where did He come?  Jesus reveals this salvific gift from the center of a Divine relationship.  It emerges on the scene from Mount Olive, a place of prayer.  The prayer that happened there was expressive of the deep communion of the Son with the Father in the power of the Spirit. 

Prayer would be the precursor to His ministry.  Prayer would be the sustainer of His way.  When bread and fish were multiplied and an earlier crowd wanted to make Him King, Jesus retired to pray.   Knowing he was to be put to the test, He went to His special place, the Mount of Olives, to pray.  He even prayed for a pass. But only if His Father willed it.  Prayer would be His strengthen and connection, even when He could not long feel it.   Even when His closest friends gave into sleep, the Mount of Olives would be like the eye of the storm.

It is from the Mount of Olives that Jesus hands Himself over (tradere – to hand over, surrender) for us and for our salvation…for the forgiveness of our sins and for the restoration of our eternal relationship.  He really hands Himself over, not to the Temple Guards and the Sanhedrin, but to the will of His Heavenly Father.

So here we stand.  We are now six weeks into this journey and we are with Jesus at the Mount of Olives.  Is there anything that we have in common with Him?  I think so.  When was the last time you panicked or felt like changing plans or direction?  Or thought there has to be an easier way or that God loved you so much He really wouldn’t want you to go through anything difficult?  Well, look to your brother-Savior Jesus.  He’s been there, and then some, but He kept His focus on the Father and His will, and His heart aligned with the Holy Spirit.

So here we are.  Let’s walk with Him this week.  With our hands bound, our heads low, our backs bruised, faces like flint, but with eyes, ears and hearts attuned to the Father’s voice and the Spirit’s prompting.  Holy Week, significant to our spiritual lives?  I think so.