Mark 11.1-10 RSV
When they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, 'Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, "Why are you doing this?" say, "The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately."' And they went away, and found a colt tied at the door out in the open street; and they untied it. And those who stood there said to them, 'What are you doing, untying the colt?' And they told them what Jesus had said; and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus, and threw their garments on it; and he sat upon it. And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut in the fields. And those who went before and those who followed cried out, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!'Sermon
Even after the Reformation in the Church of England, the drama of this event never lost its attraction as part of Holy Week and Easter. The poet and architectural historian Laurence Whistler noted that, in the mid-19th century, people still went “palming”, leaving the cities for the countryside to collect sprigs of willow, the English equivalent of palm branches.
In 1725, a book entitled Antiquities of the Common People by Henry Bourne, a Curate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, noted that “your Palm-Sunday Procession was horrible Idolatry . . . you turn the Holy Mystery of Christ’s riding to Jerusalem, to a May-game and Pageant Play.”
The Palm procession is undoubtedly a blend of sacred and secular pageant. In the secular context, the triumphal procession of conquering potentates is also a template for the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. He, however, is redefining kingship: not bringing captives as trophy, but offering freedom and life in a Kingdom, as he will explain to Pontius Pilate on Good Friday, which is “not from this world”, though it is real none the less.
The Gospel reading from Mark appointed for the Liturgy of the Palms this year presents us with a typically succinct statement of the event, and contains one glint of rich detail not mentioned by other accounts. By the time Jesus has entered Jerusalem, it is late. The excitement seems to have evaporated, and Jesus seems to be alone. We are not told where the Twelve are at this stage.
Jesus goes to the Temple. We get the impression of things being closed down for the day, and that strange atmosphere of calm having returned with the departure of the crowds, as is common in places of intense daytime busyness. With the turbulent cries of fickle popularity still ringing in his ears, Jesus “looked around at everything” in the Temple, and then retired to Bethany with the Twelve.
The crowd might not have expected that the first act of the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the blessed one, would be the cleansing of the Temple, the next morning, in Mark’s account. But the harbinger of this new form of kingship went straight to the Temple as the place that represented the heart and soul of the people who acclaimed him.
He had “looked around at everything”: this was judgement. It was also cleansing in preparation for the sacrifice that will seal the terms of the covenant of love by which the new Kingdom is governed.
London, like any capital city, is familiar with processions. The Lord Mayor’s Show is perhaps the most regular of them. For a day, the City is lit up with pageantry and a good time is had by all. But there is also a sombre note to this celebration. It occurs on a Saturday in the season of remembrance, between the Church’s own day for commemoration, All Souls’ Day, and an international day, the 11th day of the 11th month, at the 11th hour.
Mark’s words in this year’s Palm Sunday Gospel make me wonder what judgement would be made of us if Jesus “looked around at everything” on a day when festivity had ended and we were in repose and available for inspection.
Some scapegoats could quickly be found as candidates for judgement, and I guess that quite a few might work in the City of London. But others should not let themselves of the hook so easily. What about our heart and soul as a nation — what would be seen in us that might be in need of cleansing? Two things occur to me forcefully.
The first is our level of waste. When the Lord Mayor’s Show is over, out come the cleaners. They are perhaps more symbolic of our life than we might wish. We discard huge amounts of waste, and our Western, industrialised, IT-driven society has exported this habit around the world, to the detriment of the earth and its people, especially the poor, who in many places live off what we have learnt to discard.
The second is the way we talk to each other and about each other. The media creation of a celebrity culture has set a questionable standard for invasion and superficiality, while self-absorption with our own needs renders us increasingly incapable of common courtesy.
Physical attacks on railway staff are perhaps an extreme example; the way people talk to the cashiers in the shops here in the City is another. The way children might talk to parents or teachers, recently described in the understandably anonymous Living with Teenagers (Headline, 2008), is yet another.
Palm Sunday is a day of curious pageantry and celebration, with its own undercurrent of sombre judgement. If we have sung Hosanna for the one who comes in the name of the Lord, we might also, quietly and calmly, wish to “look around at everything” in our lives, personal and societal, and ask how it looks from the perspective of the Kingdom — not of Pontius Pilate, but of Jesus of Nazareth.
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