Make way, make way

Today’s offering from Sing Praise is another one that’s familiar to me, Graham Kendrick’s “Make way, Make way”.  It comes from a suite of worship songs called “Make Way for the Cross”, described as “a celebration and a proclamation of the heart of the Gospel, designed to be used as an outdoor or indoor event”.  Several of the other songs from that suite have also remained popular, such as “Come and see the King of Love” and “Let the flame burn brighter”. Taken as a whole, they cover the story of Holy Week, but this one can stand alone as a processional song for Palm Sunday, a joyful celebration of Jesus coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, before the leaders turned the crowd against him.

In the first verse we are encouraged to “fling wide the gates and welcome him”, not into Jerusalem, but in to our lives. It’s widely understood in evangelism that no amount of preaching and teaching will bring someone to Jesus until they make that decision to open their heart to him.

The second verse is what is sometimes called the ‘Nazareth manifesto’ in which Jesus explained at the start of his public ministry the signs that he would do to show who he was – heal broken hearts, set prisoners free, make the deaf hear, the lame walk and the blind see.  These signs he did in fact perform, both physically and also spiritually as he set people free not only from actual diseases and disabilities but also from various forms of religious oppression, discrimination and persecution, as explained in the third verse – “those who mourn with heavy hearts, who weep and sigh, with laughter, joy and royal crown he’ll beautify”.

The last verse is again a call to a personal response: “We call you now to worship him as Lord of all, to have no other gods but him – their thrones must fall”. Again, this should be understood in the context for which the song was written, an outdoor procession or service as an act of public witness intended to make onlookers think again of the relevance of the life and death of Jesus to their own life.