Exposing & opening ourselves so the Bridegroom can heal us

The Bridegroom is coming to buy His bride and to pay the price for her in order to acquire her to Himself according to Ephesians 5 where it says husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church and gave His life for her.  The price was His blood with His life.  So we follow the footsteps of our Savior because we have salvation in His passion and suffering.  Our Lord came to the temple to pray after spending the night in Bethany.  Jesus did not eat anything the night before and in the morning, He was hungry and He passed by a fig tree, expecting to see fruits because the leaves were big but He could not find any fruit in the fig tree.  And He did something He never did before.  Never in His ministry, in His teaching did He curse anyone or anything. He cursed the tree and said no one will eat any fruit again and coming back after visiting the temple, the disciples saw the tree dried up that same day.  They told Christ about it and His response was if you have faith you can move mountains.

The second biggest event of the day was He cleansed the temple.  All the Jews brought the sacrifices to the temple and the priest examined them and if the priest found any fault in the sacrifice, he actually rejected it.  The Jews who were coming from all over the world, bought their sacrifices from the temple and it was a chaotic scene.  Jesus was mad about this situation.  Here, He does something that He has not done before.  He threw away everything and drove all these people that were selling and buying out of the temple completely and said this is a house of prayer and you made it a house of merchandize.

Connecting these events together, this particular day is a day of uncovering.  In order for the Bridegroom who is coming to marry His bride, there needs to be openness. Because, openness creates closeness.  We are talking about the openness between the bride (which is us the Church) and the Bridegroom who is Christ.  If there is no openness, there is no unity.  The Lord is saying take off the mask, take out everything that covers up the real situation and let’s deal openly and honestly and put away hypocrisy.  When Adam and Eve sinned, the first thing that came to their mind is let’s cover up instead of going to God and say help us for we did the wrong thing and ate what you told us not to eat.  They did not do that, when they felt they are naked, they took fig leaves (the same tree Christ cursed Fig tree) and covered it up and they thought everything is okay.  But God asked Adam, where are you?  God is the one who asked, Did you eat from the tree?  Adam gave the very famous answer, it is not me, it is the wife you gave me.  And also blamed God for giving him this evil woman.  Yesterday, in the day of creation, Adam said this is the bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh and now he is saying something else.

Today is the day of uncovering.  The purple robe they put on Christ, the Bridegroom is like His tuxedo for the wedding.  But somehow it is not complete, He is half naked.  And on the cross, He is almost naked.  WHY? Christ knows our problem.  Adam and his children need to look good, especially in front of people.  Christ says I am going to do the exact opposite.  He says, I am going to look horrible in front of the whole world.  Even till now Jesus is exposed.  Everyday millions see Him on the cross as He is naked on the cross.  WHY? Christ is coming to be naked for us.  He comes in a very humble way so that we can learn from Him to be humble and lowly and open our hearts to Him.  He is coming not for war or to judge us but He is coming to marry us.  He is coming to be close to us.  He is going to propose the marriage.  He is saying to us here I am.  I am naked.  I am weak.  I am poor.  I am exposed and examined.  The Lord was under severe examination by the Scribes and Pharisees during this Holy Week.  Our Bridegroom is exposed and examined.

Christ is saying, why don’t you do the same?  I am not coming to judge you.  But I am coming to heal you.  Imagine going to a Doctor and expecting him/her to know what our problems or our condition is without telling them.  This is very important, the Lord will never ever heal something that is not exposed or that is not offered to Him.  We cannot say the Lord knows everything.  Yes, He does know everything but He can never impose Himself on us unless we ask Him.  We need to say Lord, this hurts please heal that.   We will never be able to unite with the Master and get the healer to heal every wound unless it is exposed.  We need to uncover the hidden parts of the heart.  There is not disease too hard or too tough for the Lord to heal.   The early Christians brought everything to the Apostles by selling their belonging and there was a lot of repentance.  Except Ananias and his wife, Sapphira lied and kept some of the money.  They were struck dead.  This is yet another severe example next to the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple.  The Apostles never said this to anyone in the book of Acts, you drop dead now.  This is one disease that cannot be healed which is COVERING UP.  And this is the one thing that will separate us from our Bridegroom, because we are not transparent.  It is the one thing that in the end of times, that Jesus will say I do not know you.  We are covering up and we look different and He says I do not know you.

We all have this fear of exposure.  We have a fear of rejection and being cast out because of our sins and weakness.  A lot of us are brought up in an environment where we can’t even express our feelings or our emotions.  We can’t apologize.  It is very hard to expose.  When we expose what is inside, we are made fun of or belittled so there is a huge problem with opening up.  When we continue to live this covering up, it is very easy to live on the outside and just put a mask all day and all night.  And this creates a huge separation between us and the Bridegroom.  The love relationship will be lost, the prayer will be lukewarm and we don’t understand what God is doing in our lives anymore.  The Pharisees lived perfect lives on the outside but covered up the inside too well and lived a double life.  The fathers of the Church did not believe in self-examination.  They believed in opening up our hearts and sins in the presence of the heavenly Father, who is embracing us and encouraging us to tell Him everything.  He says to us don’t filter anything and get everything out.  Don’t act like everything is okay.

God puts a lot of people and situations in our lives to give us a chance to open and expose ourselves.  Every situation in our lives is meant to be used to open ourselves so that the Bridegroom can come and heal us. The Bridegroom will never marry the bride unless she matches Him.  If the bride is not open, they cannot get married.  If she is not exposed like Him, if she is not humble like Him, she cannot get married to Him.  If they are not on the same page, then can’t get married.  Christ calls each of us today to expose ourselves that He may heal us and unite with us.