Psalm 118 is one of the Psalms for Palm Sunday. It’s a psalm that Jesus would have been familiar with as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Those who were watching really hoped that Jesus was their salvation and liberation.
On the other side of the city, Pontius Pilate was entering Jerusalem, coming in from the coast with 600 foot-soldiers, horses, armour, banners and flags and standards bearing great carved golden eagles, the symbol of Roman authority, and beating drums.
Jerusalem during Passover would have been teeming with Jewish pilgrims and then a hotbed of tension. An estimated extra 20,000 people. Rome wanted Israel to be in no doubt about who was in charge. Can you imagine it? The cheers would have been eerily similar to the ones we think of when we remember Palm Sunday. After all, Caesar was Rome's prince of Peace.Caesar was Rome's son of God, and Pontius Pilate was his representative. And then came Jesus down the Mount of Olives on a donkey, on an agricultural tool, not a war machine. The imagery couldn't have been clearer. I am for peace.
The triumphal entry the other side of the city was a send-up, a parody of Pilate's grand procession, a mockery of it. And it wasn't an accident, either. It was a staged demonstration.
So today we follow in a long line of holy protests; Jesus's disciples claim that real power and authority sat with peace.
"So what?", some might say, "So what, if there were two parades? What does that matter?" Well, I think it matters because there are always two parades, aren't there? Think about the world today.
We have to decide which one we will join. When we choose to forgive or not, we choose a certain path. When we choose what we will do with our money, our energy, our love, we walk a certain way. What does Holy Week mean to you? Which biblical character in the story do you identify with?
Jesus is hailed by the crowds today, and we throng along with them, waving our palms with bright, self-congratulatory allegiance to our matchless king.
And then we have a choice. Many of us will go home and not darken the door of spiritual encounter until Easter Day. But that is a mistake.
Psalm 31, another Psalm we can read today says: “I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind.” In some ways, this may be Jesus’ greatest fear. He has spent three years on Earth teaching, healing, leading people to God, to liberation, to new life. Today, on Palm Sunday, we all shout out his name with Hosannas.
But he knows that the time is fast approaching when we all will desert him, right along with the rest of the disciples. We will want to forget him, by that point. It’s too great of a trauma to see our teacher and friend arrested as a criminal and subjected to torture at the hands of a cruel and distant state.
“I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind,” the psalm says. That is exactly what the chief priests and scribes want.
We read in the Gospel of Mark, “The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him, for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’”
They don’t want people holding on to their allegiance to Jesus. It’s too dangerous. The Romans are already losing patience with the Jews and their ongoing parade of political Messiahs who cause disturbance and unrest. And Rome solves its problems with violence. The chief priests and scribes know that everyone will be better off, safer if Jesus is simply forgotten.
And that’s the question we’re being asked today. Will we forget Jesus? Will we abandon him? Will the empire of noise and news, of wealth and power, claim our uninterrupted attention for the next seven days, and will we have an Easter where we say he has risen but we haven’t really understood what the power of God has beaten…?
How do we mark Holy Week? I’ve thirteen services from the morning of Palm Sunday to the evening of Easter Day. I’m not expecting people to be at them all, but… I hope we do the bit in the middle somehow between palm waving and alleluias… a sermon I read says this:
“I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am as useless as a broken pot. For I have heard the whispering of the crowd; fear is all around; they put their heads together against me; they plot to take my life.” This is where Jesus is at the end of the day on Palm Sunday. The task that lies before him is overwhelming, and he knows that one by one, everyone will abandon him until he is all alone.
But the amazing thing is that we still have a chance. We still have a choice. We can stop everything right now and decide that we will be loyal to Jesus to the best of our ability, every day of this week that changed the world.
It may be through coming to worship. It may be through extra time in prayer and meditation every day of Holy Week. It may be through serving others who are in need, or reading the entirety of one of the gospels, or finishing our Lenten intention with special dedication and love. It doesn’t matter what we do to follow Jesus to the Cross. It just matters that we do something.
“I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind.” Our task this week is to prove that bit of scripture false, to make it wrong.”
Who do we serve? The one for whom we make way. And what do we call out? The crowd today are shouting:
‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
They are hailing a Saviour. Hosanna is not a cheer, it’s a plea for help, for someone to save us.
‘Save us. In God’s name, save us!’
What do we cry ‘hosanna’ over? What is our declaration? The question is, ‘who am I for this week?’ No change, not getting involved, you can’t mention politics in church, avoiding the week ahead and coming back for Easter or really being Jesus’ people dying and rising with him?
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