by David Cassidy,Christ Community Church
Like millions of other people I temporarily took up crystal ball gazing as a vocation for a day and filled out an NCAA tournament bracket. I did this despite the fact that all such previous attempts met with disaster. I am about as good at this as I am at installing ductwork on a skyscraper – which is to say, not good at all and in some sense downright dangerous. Nevertheless I fearlessly plunged ahead and when I was finished I was as confident of victory as Marco Rubio last July.
Sigh. I never learn.
Of course I had Middle Tennessee beating Michigan State. Sure, Northern Iowa beats my Longhorns on a half court buzzer beater. Stephen F Austin over West Virginia? Yale stomps Baylor? I saw that all coming. NOT! Oh I got a few right – I’m running along at a 65% clip right now, which ranks me about three millionth in the country.
Prophesying is a tough business. Especially when it’s for keeps. In fact, the Hebrew people took ‘prophesying’ very seriously and if you spoke a prophecy that was false, well, you were toast – literally. It wasn’t just your bracket that was broken!
The truth is that the real Hebrew prophets were 100% accurate. This wasn’t because they studied statistical probabilities and made the best guess they could. No, they spoke as ‘holy men of old, carried along by the Holy Spirit’. That’s why they could ‘look ahead and speak’, as Peter describes it in Acts.
The ancient Hebrew prophets saw some things they couldn’t understand but said them anyway. Among these, they saw their future King riding into Jerusalem on a donkey rather than a war horse. They said that vision made them ‘prisoners of hope’. Imagine it – a humble king, riding victoriously into Jerusalem to liberate his people. And he did. We mark the fulfillment of that ancient prophecy starting today, Palm Sunday. The week before us is called Holy Week, the seven days in which so much of what the ancient prophets foresaw and forespoke came to fruition. From children shouting ‘Hosanna!’, to a mob crying ‘Crucify’, to a stunned group of disciples seeing the One they knew to be dead and buried standing among them again and saying, ‘Peace’ – ‘Shalom’ – this week is like no other week, and it demands our full attention.
My bracket is broken, but my soul has been shattered from the start. The good news is that while there’s really no hope for my capacity to predict the future, I remain a ‘prisoner of hope’ to the One the Hebrew prophets saw long ago. The Savior is our hope, for this life and, most significantly, for the life to come. The promise of this week amid the loud Hosannas of the children is that soon all things will be made new. The blessed hope is ours.
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