The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

Psalm 118

This is an in-between week for our Connect Devotionals.  We’re not at the start, middle or end of a series; instead, we’re in something of an in-between moment.

Our Fractured series has been moving us towards an important series of days, the week that began with Jesus riding into Jerusalem aboard a humble donkey, cheered on by a crowd of his followers, and ended with Jesus crucified, dead and buried the following Saturday.

Yes, that’s not the end of the story; we know what’s coming.  But let’s stay in the in-between, just for a bit.

Our four Gospels focus the majority of their time and attention on this one week, especially the events of Thursday and Friday.  Since we believe that this week changes the world for all of time and eternity, there is value in s l o w i n g ourselves down, taking it all in.

The week began aright!  Yes, Jesus was and is Israel’s Messiah!  Yes, Jesus is worthy of our praise and adoration!  Yes, in Jesus God’s Kingdom comes, on earth, as it is in heaven!  Yes, the steadfast love of God endures forever, and it is that enduring love that rides into town!  So yes, that day so long ago in Jerusalem, that day in particular was a day God had made, and we should rejoice and be glad in it!  Psalm 118 is both a promise and a guide for us as we move towards worship this Palm Sunday.  “Open for us the gates of righteousness; we will enter and give thanks to the LORD!” (verse 19, slightly modified).

And yet there is this: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone …” (verse 22).  God was building something different from what they, and we with them, thought, expected, anticipated.  They thought they understood what was happening – but they didn’t, not really, not fully.  They thought they were –finally!—about to get to “the other side,” but they were in-between without fully realizing it.

We want to join those people in singing and shouting our praises to Jesus.  They may have spoken better than they understood; we who know more fully should at least not be out-shouted as we gather for worship this Sunday!

And we are invited to re-enter the in-between tensions of the coming Week – Jesus’s “cleansing” of the Temple, increasing conflicts with the religious establishment, numerous parables of judgment, a final meal, betrayal, arrest, denial, scourging, crucifixion, a grave, all the elements of the ways in which we, too, rejected God’s redeeming capstone.

So full-throated joy this Sunday!  And then: let us keep following Jesus, all the way through.  Even through all the still in-between aspects of our own lives.

The crowd welcoming the King into Jerusalem “paved” Jesus’s way into the city with their cloaks (coats).  What would you like – or need – to “take off” or let go of, in order to enter into joy-filled worship this Sunday?