{"id":144,"date":"2005-03-20T14:18:03","date_gmt":"2005-03-20T22:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=127"},"modified":"2005-03-20T14:18:03","modified_gmt":"2005-03-20T22:18:03","slug":"the-telos-of-the-passion-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/03\/20\/the-telos-of-the-passion-week\/","title":{"rendered":"The Telos of the Passion Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today Christians around the world celebrate Palm Sunday, the start of the passion week. In my home church, the children’s choirs came down the aisles with palm fronds, a group of the kids performed a sweeping, graceful liturgical dance, and we sang great old hymns with the organ and trumpets blaring. In doing this we recalled Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, as the crowd shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” just days before Jesus would be crucified and rise again. (John 12:12<\/a>)<\/p>\n

It’s unlikely the crowd present on that first Palm Sunday appreciated how Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem represented an acceleration towards the divine telos<\/em> of history. In fact, John 12:16<\/a> tells us that even Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand the triumphal entry until after Jesus had ascended to heaven. But here was the tip of the spear, thousands of years of waiting, finally arrived. Even as the lambs were being driven towards the city for sacrifice during the passover, the Lamb of God rode in willingly. Soon sin would be defeated once for all.<\/p>\n

Now we wait for the final act of the divine telos<\/em>: when Christ returns victorious, judges sin, and establishes His Kingdom in fullness. The final scene is described in Revelation 21<\/a>: \u201cNow the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.\u201d At the right time, Christ came to offer himself on the cross. At the right time, he will<\/em> come again.<\/p>\n

As we celebrate this passion week, those of us who name Christ as Lord eagerly anticipate his return, and proclaim the invitation Christ himself gives: “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” (Rev. 21:6<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today Christians around the world celebrate Palm Sunday, the start of the passion week. In my home church, the children’s choirs came down the aisles with palm fronds, a group of the kids performed a sweeping, graceful liturgical dance, and we sang great old hymns with the organ and trumpets blaring. In doing this we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-2k","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}