Reflection by Frances Flatman on next weekend's first two Readings and the Gospel of the Palm Procession:-
One of the great dangers which befalls the downtrodden is their tendency to long for revenge; to meter out to oppressors precisely what happened to themselves. This surely is the problem with modern Israel and its approach to the Palestinians. Israel, partly because of its unfortunate geographical position, has had a history of being conquered by Assyrians, Babylonians and then Egyptians and Romans. Its thinking and expectation of God from early on became orientated towards military victory and the triumph over its oppressors. Their God would lead them to glory and smash their enemies to bits. By the First century CE Jewish expectation of the coming of the messiah, which was by then very common, took from much earlier Biblical material and built a picture of the eschaton, the triumph of God on earth, in highly militaristic terms. By this time, messiahs came and went with surprising frequency, most attaching to themselves the idea of armies, big mounted cavalry and the utter overthrow of their enemies who would be left writhing in the dust. Rome had occupied Palestine since the invasion of Pompey in the 70’s BCE and Passover, the great festival of Jewish escape from slavery in Egypt and the making of the nation, was a time of enormous tension as occupiers feared insurrection and the Jews eagerly looked for change and an end to the loathed occupation which ruled their lives.
The problem with this approach, despite its enduring popularity is that it merely perpetuates endless cycles of revenge, anger and violence and nothing ever really changes for the better, be it by the intervention of God or gods or that of men. By the time Paul wrote echoing a well known hymn/creed about Jesus, (Philippians 2:6-11) some time in the 50’s CE, he and the Christian community had accepted that God’s way of working in the incarnation of Jesus the Son was quite different. God works not by power, which he has eternally and by nature and to the uttermost degree, but rather through the utter abasement of God the Son. Where in the Jerusalem Bible we have ‘Jesus did not cling to his equality with God…’ The Greek uses a very rare word, ‘harpagmon’, normally associated with robbery or a mugging, the brutal snatching with violence of what is not your own, despite the fact that in Jesus’ case as Son all power was actually his. What Philippians shows us is the complete reversal of power and human ways of acting and being in God. It is not for any achieved glory that Jesus is acclaimed by the Father and given dominion over the entire creation, he has this eternally as God; but precisely because he willingly set his godhead aside and endure the very worst humankind could throw at him. That’s what God is really like and consequently our model of holiness.
There were hints of this all the way through the Hebrew Bible, and clearly known to Jesus as he came to understand what his being messiah was really about. Second Isaiah (50:4-7) Prophet of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE reflects this understanding of enormous closeness to God as he ponders the meaning of this terrible exile and the slavery it imposed on the captured. He recognises that the Jewish slaves are those completely devoid of justice or fair treatment and like slaves the world over, must simply submit. Treated like any beast of burden, slaves have only their innate dignity to rely on, and their faith in the redemption of God, revenge is quite beyond them.
Our Gospel (Matthew 21:1-11) brings together so many of these hints from the Old Testament which spell out this titanic clash between Jesus, the one totally of God and the people who will ultimately meet him so full of hope, and reject him. Fundamental to all this is the fact that Jesus is a Galilean Jew, really suspect from the point of view of Jerusalem and the Temple. In Matthew he has not been to Jerusalem previously for its festivals ,and his ministry has been hostile to the city and its elites as he favours Galilee and the pagan territories around it; but clearly his fame as a miracle worker has spread. Our first hint of why he is greeted with acclaim lies in the fact that he is near Bethphage and the Mount of Olives, the Jewish traditional site of the eschaton, the final inbreaking of God. From this village he borrows a donkey, and, quoting Zechariah 9:9 prepares to ride into Jerusalem. But, where Zechariah announced a victorious warrior, triumphing over the nation’s enemies, we have only ‘Look, your king comes to you; he is humble, he rides on a donkey.’ No war horse, no armies and no revenge on enemies, Jesus is what he was from the start to the finish of this gospel, a man of the common people of Galilee, short on status and lacking the expected power.
Yet he is acclaimed by the disciples, witnesses to his miracles, and then the crowds milling around the eastern gate, who spread their cloaks and greenery as a carpet for his entry into the city as they shout part of the great Hallel Psalm 119, with Hosanna, (Save us!) Son of David! He is given the acclaim Matthew’s genealogy gave him, a son of the Davidic line, and enters amidst great rejoicing, the one to redeem Israel. But as we know, this is not to be the redemption of Jerusalem, for in the Passion he will scorn the women of Jerusalem and has already spoken of the fall of both Temple and City! Jesus’ ministry is one to go out to the world, and ultimately to cut many of its ties with the Judaism of his day: its reliance on the Jewish law which was so excluding, and its focus on the Temple and its costly animal sacrifices, Jesus utterly rejected. (Ps 40:6; Isa 1:11-17). We can only imagine the hubris and excitement this caused as Jesus’ entry defies all expectations of the advent of the messiah, and yet because of what all know of him still raises so many expectations. Clearly many gathering for the Passover caught on to the excitement and joined the crowd accompanying Jesus.
We are told that the ‘Whole city was in turmoil’, or in Greek ‘was shaken’, the same word used of the earthquake at the death of the Lord; so a huge upset. More than meets the eye is going on here, for on enquiring the people are told ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee’. Within this apparently factual remark is a great challenge to the Jerusalem authorities, who know of his power, yet as the Gospel has told us, continually disparage Jesus, claiming he works through Satan. If you read on in this account you will find Jesus’ first act is his attack on the Temple, because the authorities had profaned the Court of the Gentiles by using it as a market for the sacrificial victims, and in him we meet the greatest sacrifice of all. Jesus is the end of the sacrificial system! Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is the confrontation, the great showdown which as we know will culminate in his death on the cross and his resurrection. This Galilean man, so underrated, so threatening to Jerusalem, has entered his enemies domain and threatens the entire system which hundreds of years of Judaism had acted to build up and control. What he will do with it we who have followed this gospel will take to our understanding of the Passion as did Jesus’ followers and those who eventually became the Christian Church throughout the world.
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