Lucy, you MUST be more loving. This world really needs love. You have to let yourself love to make this world a better place in which to live.

Lucy whirls around angrily causing Charlie Brown to do a backward flip and screams at him:

Look, blockhead--the WORLD I Love. It's PEOPLE I can't stand.

It's not hard to love the world.

The world is an passive lover.

It poses no real threat to relationship.

There are some dangers.

Read the sky and nature.

Know the natural enemies to humankind.

People, their something else.

With people there is an interactive relationship.

We are inconsistent enough to create for each other a certain ambiguity and apprehension.

We find it less difficult to love the world than people.

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Jesus is the consummate example of a person who unconditionally loves people.

Love is more than a feeling of gratification or well-being.

Love includes a concern for what is happening to the people.

IL> We can safely say that Jesus is a compassionate Savior.

COMPASSION = Empathy, a feeling with and an acting towards.

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it,

As Jesus looks out over the crowd of people he is emotionally overwhelmed by this experience.

There are all kinds of people in the crowd.

Sick, Lonely, Disenfranchised who want to be healed, loved and empowered.

Poor who need the basics like housing and food.

Single Issue Folks like those who concentrate on Abortion or Term Limitations

Fanatics: Zealots who would fight to gain their objective

Religious who seek to eliminate a threat.

Oppressed who seek relief.

Military who seek to rule.

Politicians who seek to maintain power.

Middle class who seek relief from taxes.

Friends and supporters

Enemies.

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People who are looking for someone to meet their needs.

Jesus sought as only one person, even a divine person, to help all of them.

Each of these groups of people knew what it was that they wanted.

What they did not realize was that there was something better.

This something better was hidden from them.

Not because anyone had hidden them.

Jesus had talked and demonstrated with great clarity the true principles of life and the advantages of positive actions

Jesus saw beyond the people's immediate needs and personal issues to a different future than they imagined.

This leads to his tears of compassion and love.

Their true need lead to the rest of his statement to all who would listen.

saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!

But now they are hidden from your eyes.

Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side.

They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another;

because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God." Luke 19:41-44

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He wanted to help but they could not be helped.

IL> Yogi Berra once said, or at least is credited with saying:

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

Because they could not see, they faced future consequences directly related to their present action.

We pause in this Sunday before Easter to observe a parade, a people, and a future.

Jesus would open our eyes.

Open eyes, an understanding minds, are the best weapons against fear and future consequences.

IL> The cross planted by the Ku Klux Clan burned on the front lawn of a black minister.

This cross is designed to generate fear and create intimidation.

The black pastor went to the kitchen and got some marshmallows and going outside gathered a few longs sticks.

With his wife and small children, they toasted marshmallows over the ashes of the cross.

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Entering Jerusalem on a donkey, Jesus faces the cross to be raised by Romans and some of his own people.

He has no marshmallows to toast.

Rather he has a promise of life.

This is the COMPASSIONATE SAVIOR WHO LIVES FOR PEOPLE.

A compassionate Savior who goes with people whoever they are and wherever they go.

IL> During WW II, some Jews, with the help of the conscientious, were passing themselves off as Christians.

The Nazi's grew wise and one day forced a priest to read from a piece of paper.

Will all the Jewish fathers leave the church.

Will all the Jewish mothers leave the church.

There was a rustle as people left to be taken to the camps.

When heads were raised a bare crucifix was to be seen in the cancel.

Christ had gone with his people.

He still goes with his people today and always.

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