On Palm Sunday each year, we remember the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. The people throw their cloaks on the ground and wave palm branches as they sing a song that welcomes the king into the city (taken from Psalm 118). Jesus adds to the spectacle by deliberately choosing to ride the donkey, acting out a prophecy from the Scriptures (in the prophetic book of Zechariah) about the king coming in humility and peace and riding on a donkey.

Not everyone is pleased to see Jesus being feted in this way. His regular opponents throughout the Gospel story, the Pharisees, grumble about how the whole world seems to be going after Jesus. John’s Gospel then includes an odd little incident to show that this statement is quite true. Some Greeks – non Jewish people – are visiting Jerusalem for Passover and have heard about Jesus and want to see him and request an audience through two of his disciples.

For Jesus this is the sign that his message is indeed reaching into the world. It recalls the well-known verse from earlier in this Gospel that the reason Jesus came into the world was because God loved the world so much. For Jesus, the decisive hour is now within view – the climax of his ministry.

From one perspective, the death of Jesus is a story of rejection and betrayal, of brutality and shame as he dies an agonising death on a cross. From John’s perspective, however, being lifted up on the cross is the moment when Jesus is glorified and draws all people to himself. It is the means by which God’s love is fully revealed to the world and also how God’s life is made available to all.

So how do you see the Easter story? Is it a story about the darkness and evil that dwells in the human heart? Or is it a story about the light and love and life that God wants to bring into the world? Or is it a strange combination of both these stories?

I wonder if you have had the privilege of sitting with a dying person or sharing time with family members immediately following the death of a loved one. Usually few words are spoken, but it is often a special and even sacred moment. Death has a way of stripping away our masks and trivial concerns. A precious person’s life journey has ended, and those remaining must begin a new chapter without the ongoing presence of the one who’s died.

When Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, died, Jesus wasn’t there. So his missed out on the rawness of the death and the grief that followed. But when Jesus does turn up, recriminations flow freely from Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus. If you had been here, our brother would not have died … Moved with compassion, Jesus visits the tomb where the body has been laid, prays and then calls to Lazarus to come out. Lazarus emerges, alive again!

Based on this incident, Jesus claims to be the resurrection and the life, the one who promises to give life to us even though we die. It is also the seventh and final ‘sign’ in John’s Gospel that points to Jesus as the one who has come to bring life – eternal life – to the world. This sign stirs the imagination of the people and also hardens the opposition against Jesus. It is the event that precipitates the beginning of the end for Jesus as we move rapidly towards the events of Easter.

This story adds to the mystery surrounding death. Will we live again, even though we die? What will that new life look like? And do we need to fear death? May God give us hope and wisdom as we ponder these questions.

I’m not sure how much you know about sheep and shepherds. If you’re like me, I suspect the answer is not too much. We may think of sheep as cute and cuddly, which is true if we think of newborn lambs. A fully grown sheep, however, weighs in at some 100 kg and is a strong and sometimes stubborn animal. Shepherds leading small flocks of 50 to 80 sheep are a Middle Eastern tradition whereas in Australia flocks tend to be much larger and are rounded up with sheep dogs or quad bikes.

So how do we relate to Jesus calling himself the good shepherd in John chapter 10, with ourselves as the sheep?

Sheep have certain needs – for grass and water – that a shepherd takes care of. So if Jesus is the good shepherd, he provides for our basic needs. This is similar to the line in the Lord’s Prayer asking God to give us our daily bread.

Sheep are vulnerable to certain marauding predators like wolves or foxes. In the Middle East, the shepherd keeps them safe by building a sheepfold (enclosure) and by sleeping across the entrance. As the good shepherd, Jesus promises to stay close to us and never abandon us.

In Jesus’ thinking, the sheep are so valuable that as the good shepherd he is prepared to lay down his life for the sake of the sheep. This points ahead to the cross where Jesus’ death will – in a paradoxical way – bring life to those who trust in him.

The natural world is beautiful. So are many of the people who inhabit our world – their love and creativity and care for others is often amazing.

We soak in the beauty of the world through our senses, especially through our sight. Unfortunately, our physical sight can be impacted by various conditions and also by the ageing process. One of the most common – and curable – of these conditions is cataracts that slowly but surely dim our sight. In affluent countries like Australia we can undergo simple surgery to remove cataracts and have our sight restored.

But there are other forms of blindness that are not so easily cured. There is a saying that there are none so blind as those who will not see. This condition is called prejudice and most of us suffer from it in one form or another. We learn it from our parents or peer group.

In this week’s Scripture reading from John 9 we see a very old prejudice at work. Jesus sees a blind man and his disciples want to know whose sin caused him to be blind, his own or his parents. This prejudice of equating suffering with sin features in several religions and cultures – whether seen as karma or an understanding of God where bad deeds are punished.

Jesus will not buy in to the prejudice and instead heals the man, on the Sabbath day. What ensues is fairly predictable as both Jesus and the man are harangued for breaking the ‘no work on the Sabbath’ laws. While the blind man slowly grows in faith and insight regarding Jesus, his opponents reveal more and more of their prejudice and blindness regarding Jesus.

It’s easy for us to criticise Jesus’ opponents for their prejudice. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we too carry prejudices. It might be our attitude towards indigenous people, or asylum seekers, or gay people, or the unemployed or those who don’t take climate change seriously. Jesus calls himself the light of the world and, if we are willing, will open our eyes so that we can see things from God’s perspective. To benefit from the insight Jesus offers, however, we first have to be willing to admit that we have a problem.