The presence of Christ always creates tension, seeing Jesus as He is reveals our hearts as they truly are and then requires us to respond to both His majesty and our fragility. This tension may have never been higher than the hours after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. John writes that many that witnessed this miracle, believed in Jesus as the Messiah while others went back to Jerusalem and told the high priests and Pharisees what they had seen. That witness led to the religious leaders gathering together and deciding that to preserve their “comfortable captivity”, to keep their way of life, hold together their ambitions and not change their expectations they would have to kill Jesus. This was no longer a discussion about what they should do about Him, they were now convinced, they must destroy Him. John writes that the threats turned into plans and the danger was so serious that Jesus and the disciples had to go and hide near the wilderness in a city called Ephraim. We don’t know how long they hid there but six days before Passover Jesus and the disciples came out of hiding and went back to “the scene of the crime”, to the place where Lazarus had been raised from the dead, the town of Bethany, just a mile and ½ from Jerusalem. While at Bethany all the tension of Jesus’ presence came crashing together. After a meal that honored Jesus for what He had done in Lazarus’ life, Mary, came and took a bottle of expensive perfume, worth a year’s wages and poured it on Jesus, anointing His head, running all the way down to His feet and then she wiped the perfume from His feet with her hair. John wrote, the fragrance of the perfume, the resonance of Mary’s worship filled the entire house, everyone present was affected by Mary’s action. Jesus was moved, many were drawn to faith while others, especially Judas, rejected faith. Mary decided that Jesus was more precious than her greatest possession, Judas decided that his greatest possessions, meaning his hopes, his plans, his pride and his expectations, were greater than Jesus. Mary poured everything out, Judas pulled everything back. According to Mark’s gospel, it was in this moment that Judas decided to betray Jesus, that when he left Mary and Martha’s house that he went and met with the chief priests. What I don’t believe either of them knew was that Mary and Judas were both preparing Jesus for the cross but one was doing so in faith and the other was doing so in rejection; the tension of Christ’s presence always leads to surrender or denial, there is no neutral when it comes to Jesus. Today we will take our time together and discuss Jesus’ ride to Jerusalem and His rise from the Tomb. There is much that happened in the last week of Jesus’ life, but the bookends, the Sunday of the Triumphal Entry and the Sunday of the resurrection hold everything else together. This morning I pray that we will see that when our expectations lead to disappointment it is often only because we have been expecting much less than the resurrection.