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Palm Sunday Call
Donkeys at dawn
Messiahs on a mission
palm branches propelled
crowds crying
people parading
Jerusalem jousting
disciples departing
gateway giving way
hosannas being hurled
a salvo of shouts
and a king on a colt
starts the slippery slope
that ends the enterprise
of hosanna headlines
with a cross and crucifixion
when the words weary
and silence descends
and there is nothing left to say
Welcome to the beginning of the end
or the end of the beginning…
Prayer
Lord Jesus
this is not your fight
this is not the moment for quiet revolution
Love will kill you
if you hang on to it
How often we have felt like that O Jesus
when love is too great a sacrifice
and the world borrows laughter
and uses mockery to weaken
and conflict to destroy
what seems weak
and what seems to oppose what it wants
Lord Jesus
It is a long way to heaven from here
from this choice you make
this decision to go on from here
We want to certainty of power
we need to security of defence
we trust in the banding of nations
the axis of right
the arc of morality on our side
This is our world you protest against O Jesus
this world we ave defined to keep us safe
and you ride through it on a donkey
This is hard Jesus
This is a difficult thing for us
How much more difficult for you
Lord Jesus
in the breathes between each decision you make
may we dare trust you
May we find enough faith
to trust this choice to love
to let nothing stop you loving
to put no conditions on such love
but love right through to the end
Lord Jesus
May we say yes
to such love
and choose the kingdom
in your name
So be it
Amen
Palm Sunday
Luke 19:29-40
Why 'Palm' Sunday?
Hosanna will turn out to be the wrong word… if there are any words left to say… It is the wrong word for what is happening… heavy as it is… with revolt and protest… Yet this is not the messiah that will lead a revolution… It is the wrong word…
This word is loaded with symbolism… with a story from our past… when the revolutionary Julius Maccabeas… rode into Jerusalem… and chose the moment to revolt against the Romans…
It was during the feast of tabernacles… where Hosannas fill the air… and Palm branches have been traditionally waved…
No different from today… except because of that moment… because the Maccabean revolt happened during this palm branch waving festival… and Hosanna being shouted… whenever the cry goes up… it brings back to us all… those darker days… of conspiracy and revolution…
These are not innocent words on the mouths of children… These are words of revolution… and we know it… every time we utter them… They are full of hope and anger… they are spoken with a shadow on them from that revolt the Romans crushed…
Yet still we utter them… still we have a quiet revolution when they are spoken… even today… a threat of justice… a threat of God… a threat of Messiah and his armies…
And here is the one… riding in on that donkey… so similar to Julius Maccabeas… His progeny… the one… Hosanna… Hosanna… He knows the story… he is living it… Hosanna in the highest…
Yet… and yet… might this triumphal entry… be the greatest disappointment there can be… For Jesus… the pretend messiah… fails to deliver… trusts too much in the love of God’s peaceable kingdom…
He will never raise a hand… take up a sword… throw a stone… The hosannas are hollow… the great hope they have been filled with over the 160 years since Julius Maccabeas… will not be found in Jesus… he is not that kind of Messiah…
He hangs on too much to love and not revolution… and love will kill him…
Jesus has made his choice… The revolution remains with Julius… Jesus has made a different choice… and the chaos is beginning…