Palm Sunday: Protest

I want to use this “receiving” Holy Week to listen for words I react to, both in worship and in reading. The word that hit me in church this morning was “protest.” 

We joined in a procession round the village where we are, we sang Sing Hosanna, and we went into church, it was peaceful, apart from a woman looking behind her curtains it provoked little reaction. 

We were reminded in church that the procession into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday was very different. The Jesus minority was walking into a political hotbed and to challenge it was potentially life threatening. The might of Rome was in control. 

Perhaps some of those walking behind Jesus saw it as a party that Sunday morning. Until it got frightening.

Perhaps some of them started with good intentions but then got scared. 

The Anglican tradition reads the Passion narrative in Palm Sunday worship. As I listened this morning, the people didn’t protest long.

When Barabbas is chosen for release, they shout for Jesus to be crucified. 

When they are asked if they know him, one denies it, the others flee.

A few watch from a distance but at the crucifixion and agony of Jesus there are no protests. It all goes quiet. The injustice of the power crazy has won.

The protest is that of the dying Jesus as this week goes on. It is a revolution that the power of love defeats the love of power. The protest that says sorry world, your way cannot win. And today, anyone who says they are Christian have to live like we believe that —- and live working towards it. 

The trouble is we don’t protest for long. When it gets nasty, we say nothing even though we know what is happening around us is wrong. We don’t want to be unpopular by saying something controversial so we hide and pretend we weren’t involved and we are sorry that innocent people suffer or get wiped away through the actions of the powerful — but it costs too much to make a stand, sorry Lord.

The human bit of Holy Week is about people not protesting, forgetting what Jesus was all about, running away. We were told this morning we still have to sing our song - the loud hosanna - to a world where that song is not welcome but needed. Am I brave enough to sing it?

 The good news of this week is that despite ourselves - there is no health in us says the ancient prayer - the cross says no matter your lack of protest post the fluffy bunny stuff - I love you anyhow, no matter what you do to me. I love this picture - I took out of the window last night. The world tonight is dark. But there’s just enough light to hold on. Perhaps today we thank God for the people who just keep protesting! 

Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order, or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult, and resistance impracticable. Where men are not acquainted with each other’s principles, nor experienced in each other’s talents, nor at all practised in their mutual habitudes and dispositions by joint efforts in business; no personal confidence, no friendship, no common interest, subsisting among them; it is evidently impossible that they can act a public part with uniformity, perseverance, or efficacy. In a connection, the most inconsiderable man, by adding to the weight of the whole, has his value, and his use; out of it, the greatest talents are wholly unserviceable to the public. No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours, are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

–Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents 82-83 (1770) in: Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 1, p. 146 (Liberty Fund ed. 1999).