“Love Like a Rock”
A Pre-Passover & Resurrection Day Meditation
Parts of Jerusalem are crowded with churches. The western flank of the Mount of Olives where it cleaves the Kidron Valley is a smorgasbord of holy sites, each jealously guarded by its denominational benefactor. Like bees collecting pollen, visitors from around the world traverse the hillside dipping into one site and then another, gathering spiritual sustenance. But that was not my experience; where others sought pollen, I saw only spiritual pollution.
I grieved the first time I stood at the top of the Mount of Olives and looked down at the churches clustered below, and at the minarets and domes rising within the walls of Jerusalem itself. Each one appeared to me as sentinels, an invasion of “my” homeland by foreigners and their gods. Moved to tears, I stepped away from our tour group and quietly chanted the “v’ne’emar,” a short section of synagogue liturgy taken from the prophet Zechariah:
“And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be one, and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9).
As a Jewish believer in Jesus, my heart ached for my people, and yearned for Messiah’s return when all human religion will be exposed and deposed by our King. Little did I realize that just a few years later, within one of these same disparaged edifices, God would conquer my hardened heart.
My disdain for these churches calcified through subsequent tours on the Mount of Olives. One church really irked me. The current building is not even remotely ancient. Built on the ruins of a Byzantine church destroyed by an earthquake in 746 AD, and a later Crusader chapel abandoned in 1345 AD, it was consecrated in 1924. To make matters worse (in my thinking), the church had a Tower of Babel vibe to it. Its twelve domes contain the official seals or coat of arms of the various nations that contributed to its construction, including the seal of the United States of America. Hence, its modern name, the Church of All Nations. It was here my hardened heart melted.
Once again, I found myself among the “bees” on the Mount of Olives. As we dipped into the Church of All Nations I was as aloof and disinterested as ever, dutifully performing my job as a tour host by keeping our group moving, making sure no one got lost in reverie, or photography. Several stopped briefly to see the USA seal and snap a photo in the too dim light. At the front of the sanctuary we turned left, passing the church’s altar area. In stark contrast to its ornate surroundings the altar, a twenty-foot square of naked bedrock, emerged hard and cold from the tiled floor.
By tradition this is where, on the eve of His betrayal and horrific crucifixion, Yeshua (Jesus’ Hebrew name) cried out in deep anguish, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).
Another biographer reported, “And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44). The “cup” was the Father’s plan for Yeshua’s impending suffering and death. In spite of His personal torment, Yeshua did what His Father asked – He willingly offered His life to pay the spiritual debt of others. Hence, the church’s ecclesiastical name, Basilica of the Agony.
One or two of our group stopped to photograph this barren rock outcropping, forcing me to pause. In that instant I was overwhelmed by where I was standing and the exchange that took place here – the one person in all human history who did not deserve or need to die, chose to be put to death, so that every other human being ever born, all of whom deserved and had to die, might not die but live.
For a brief moment the church and the people around me disappeared and all I saw through tear-filled eyes was God’s love for humanity as real and solid as the rock before me. My hardened cynical heart melted as the implications of Yeshua’s life-for-life exchange washed over me.
The approaching Pesach (Passover) and resurrection season (Easter) is like the stone-floor altar in the Church of All Nations – rock-solid reminders that God’s love is real, costly, and free. The reality of God’s love is proved in time/space history by Passover and Calvary when God personally worked redemption. The cost of His love is foreshadowed in the demise of Passover’s lamb and fulfilled in the sacrificial death of His Son. The freeness of God’s love is displayed every time we who are unworthy remember the reality and cost of God’s love. We who deserved death find life through faith in the Lamb’s sacrifice.
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us” (Romans 5:8).
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atonement for our sins (1 John 4:9–10).
May this season find our often cynical, sin-hardened hearts melted by the nature of God’s amazing love and the life it brings. May our apprehension of God’s love move us to share its reality, cost, and freeness with those who have not yet experienced it…to the Jew first and also the Gentile (Romans 1:16).
Written by Dan, Life in Messiah Board member
Do you recognize any areas in your life where your heart might be hardened?
Have you ever been to a Passover Seder? Contact us to request a speaker or find out if we have a Life in Messiah Passover Seder in your area.
Will you consider inviting a Jewish friend to a Messiah in the Passover Seder and pray they will discover God’s love in Messiah for them this season?