Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
‘Palm’ Sunday, 13th of April, 2025
Today we celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem for the Passover. Like pilgrims throughout time, Jesus’ disciples rejoice as they enter the holy city, praising God for God’s mighty deeds. But Jesus is not simply another pilgrim. Luke’s telling of the story makes it clear that Jesus is entering Jerusalem as its king. He sits on a colt that has never been ridden, one that is suitable for sacred purposes. Jesus’ disciples set him on it, an act of homage, and the spreading of cloaks on the road before the colt is another act of homage to a ruler. The psalm that the crowd sings as they come into sight of Jerusalem has one small but significant change from the version in the psalter. Rather than singing ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,’ the people sing, ‘Blessed is the king …’.
When Mark tells this story, he says of the people around Jesus, they ‘spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields’. (Mark 11:8) Matthew’s version is that the people ‘cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road’. (Matthew 21:8) John’s telling is the most detailed, ‘the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!”’ (John 12:12-13) and it is from the Gospel according to John that today takes its name. Luke’s telling of the story differs from all the other gospels by omitting those branches. ‘Carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm’ was what the Jews did to celebrate their revolt against the Greeks in the second century BC. (2 Maccabees 10:7) Luke is making it clear that while Jesus is a king, his kingdom is not the Jewish nation.
This may be clear to Luke, but it probably was not clear to Jesus’ disciples. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, they are looking forward to a wonderful future in which he will declare himself ruler of the city and the whole nation. The Pharisees may be looking forward to the same future, but with dread. Jerusalem is occupied by a foreign power and, while some Jews are waiting for the king who will overthrow the Romans, others have come to terms with the Occupation and do not want the status quo disturbed. ‘Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”’ Soon the Roman Governor, Pilate, will enter Jerusalem for the Passover with his soldiers and chariots and gleaming armour to make sure that there is no anti-Roman uprising while the Jewish people are remembering their liberation from slavery in Egypt. To have Jesus enter the city as its king at around the same time is dangerous.
The Pharisees who are warning Jesus may be concerned not just for themselves but for him. In Luke’s telling of the gospel, Jesus is seen to be on good relations with them; he visits the house of a Pharisee for a meal (Luke 7:36) and here the Pharisees address him respectfully as ‘Teacher.’ Uneasy at the commotion, they warn Jesus that it would be better if he entered the city more quietly. But Jesus ignores the Pharisees’ warning, well-meant as it might be. ‘He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”’ The messiah is entering his city. This event is so amazing, so monumental, that the city itself must acknowledge it in some way. If humans were quiet, the city’s very stones would shout out in acknowledgement. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
The stones might know what is happening, but Jerusalem’s human leaders do not. There is no further mention of the Pharisees in the gospel, after this last warning they disappear. Their role as Jesus’ antagonists is taken by ‘the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people’. It is because he knows what they are going to do that Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. If only these leaders of the nation had recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But they have not recognised that God has visited them, and so, Jesus warns the city, ‘your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another’ – exactly what will happen in 70 AD when the Jews revolt against Rome, their rebellion is brutally suppressed, and the Temple is destroyed.
Brendan Byrne, who taught me New Testament and so is a biblical commentator I trust, says that Luke is not portraying the destruction of Jerusalem as divine punishment, but simply as the result of the choices its people make. They could have chosen to follow the Prince of Peace; instead they will choose violence, first by demanding that Pilate release the murderer Barabbas rather than Jesus (Luke 23:18-23) and then through rebellion. Their violence will be met with greater violence, and Jerusalem will be destroyed.
Even today the violence of the crucifixion lurks behind the celebration. Jesus enters the Temple and cleanses it, driving out all those who have brought money-making into a house of prayer. Last week I said that in the Gospel according to John it was Jesus’ raising of Lazarus that had the chief priests and the Pharisees conspiring to kill Jesus out of fear that if everyone believes in him, ‘the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation’. (John 11:47-48) In the synoptic gospels it is Jesus’ purging of the Temple that prompts the conspiracy, but the motivation is the same. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people are afraid that any challenge to the status quo will only lead to more oppression. Their counterparts today include the members of the Palestinian Authority living in the West Bank who block solidarity marches in support of Gaza. Like the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people before them, the Palestinian Authority is afraid that any challenge to Israeli Occupation, the status quo, will make things worse. There is nothing new under the sun, and all the people of whom we read in the Passion Narrative have their modern-day equivalents.
As ‘the leaders of the people’ those who oppose Jesus are also benefiting from a status quo that has given them their leadership positions. They do not want to see it overturned so, seeing that the people are spellbound by what they are hearing from Jesus, they plot to have the Romans murder him.
Peter Capaldi and Ingrid Oliver in The Zygon Inversion (2015).
The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people choose violence and, if there is one thing that the world around us is currently making appallingly clear, it is that violence can only beget greater violence until people are willing to cry out ‘Enough!’ and end the vicious cycle. One of my favourite Doctor Who quotes has the Doctor ranting at a human and a Zygon leader (Zygons are shape-shifting aliens – just go with it) ready to go to war:
When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who’s going to die. You don’t know whose children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they’re always going to have to do from the very beginning – sit down and talk![1]
But it is not enough for the weaker power to cry enough. Again, we have seen that in Israel and Palestine, when the Palestinian Liberation Organisation signed up to the Oslo Accords, and the Israeli government used them to enforce more control over Palestinians, continued to turn a blind eye to the growth of illegal settlements, and kept Gaza under siege. The Doctor talks of a scenario in which both sides have equal power and are suffering equally, but in most cases warring parties do not ‘sit down and talk’ until the stronger power is willing to give up its advantage.
In the crucifixion it is the stronger power, God, who cries ‘Enough!’ and responds to human violence not with punishment, but with forgiveness. In Jesus, God is willing to sit down and talk with humanity; in the Incarnation God voluntarily gives up God’s power and authority to live as a member of the less-powerful side. These are ‘the things that make for peace’ that Jerusalem fails to see. Jesus enters Jerusalem as a king, but not a king who rules by military might and power. Jesus comes into his kingship through humility and sacrifice. Jesus submits to the most degrading death, reserved for those who rebel against Rome, to show us that God is always on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor; with the victims of violence, and not the perpetrators. Then, in the resurrection, God shows us that oppression and violence will never have the last word.
We are about to enter Holy Week, when we will remember everything that Jesus suffered, and acknowledge the connection between the crucifixion and all the violence that humanity continues to commit. But at the end of this week, there will be joy. Amen.
[1] ‘The Zygon Inversion,’ Doctor Who, season nine, episode eight, first screened on November 7, 2015.
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