Palm Sunday – Prophetic witness with Christ
Palm Sunday begins holy week, the ‘great week’ of our annual commemoration of God’s work for our redemption, the essential liturgical elements of which are attested as early as the fourth century. Jesus goes up to Jerusalem in triumph, accompanied by his disciples, acclaimed by the populace as a prophet and wonder-worker, even as the long-awaited Messiah. Yet, some days later, he will be led out of the city, abandoned by his disciples, to an ignominious execution accompanied by the jeers of the crowd. What had happened?
Familiarity might lead us to overlook a certain ambiguity or tension in the accounts of the Passion. Take the Gospel we read before our solemn and joyful entry into the church, bearing palms. The Evangelist cites this as being the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy of the expected Messiah: “Look, your King comes to you; he is humble, he rides on a donkey, and on a colt…”(Zech 9:9). Matthew in his paraphrase omits the phrase “righteous and victorious is he”, so emphasising, some scholars think, Jesus’ humility. But Jesus rides into Jerusalem, which is an ostentatious action: people would normally approach a place of pilgrimage on foot. Jesus, then, is demonstrating his God-given authority, but that authority is not what people expect. The horse in ancient cultures was primarily a weapon of power, of war – the modern parallel might be a military tank: for example, Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen in the Exodus, or the psalmist’s warning of trusting to human power rather than God “a vain hope for safety is the horse, despite its power, it cannot save”(Ps 33:17). But Jesus does not approach Jerusalem as a conquering ruler, but as a peaceful king, riding an ass, which also reflects the typology of the expected Messiah: like Moses, who places his wife and children upon an ass (Ex 4:19-20) and Solomon, riding his father David’s mule to be anointed king (1 Kings 1:38,44), perhaps recalled by the acclaim of the crowd: “Hosanna to the son of David”.
Immediately after the passage we have listened to, we have Matthew’s account of Jesus cleansing the Temple, driving out the moneychangers, those who have reduced his Father’s house to “a den of bandits” (Mt 21: 12-14). Jesus’ action is best seen as a symbolic action, typical of a prophet; further emphasised by his healing the blind and the lame, who, according to Jewish tradition, should not have been admitted into the Temple precincts. Jesus is challenging the order of worship in his own day, and in so doing winning no friends: Jerusalem’s economy depended largely on pilgrims spending money during major religious festivals. Not surprisingly, this draws criticism: the chief priests and elders ask “By what authority do you do these things?”(Mt 21:23).
Now for us, this side of Easter, our processing with palms is a symbol of our baptismal authority, of our having become members of the body of Christ. Will we exercise that authority, the authority of loving service, even to the cross? Because taking up our cross, taking up the burden of speaking truth to kings, principalities, and powers, is also our way to resurrection.
