Christ Entering Jerusalem, Gustave Doré, c.1882, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown MA, USA.

Those preceding him as well as those following kept crying out: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come! Hosanna in the highest!”    Mark 11:9-10.

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We heard last week that “some Greeks” were seeking Jesus out, presumably to question him and seek, perhaps, words of wisdom and solace. Maybe, because we were not told anything else about them. But what was certain was that Jesus had become very well known. The powers that Jesus had displayed, especially and above all bringing his friend Lazarus back from the dead, when linked together in the popular mind at that time and place meant one thing: The Messiah! But the Messiah in that contemporary popular mind meant one thing: he would be the one who would rid the Holy Land of the pagan and hated, unclean, occupying Romans, and restore the Kingdom of David. Hence the delirious welcome Jesus received on entering Jerusalem just before Passover (which commemorated the Hebrews being released from slavery under the Egyptians to the freedom of their Promised Land). Look at the picture above and look here to see the artistic difference between delirium and reality. The people of Jerusalem were expecting the conquest of the Romans under the leadership of Jesus, their idea of the Messiah. He would lead them in crushing the despised enemy and establishing a divine peace over the land. But the peace Jesus was giving was very different. It was personal, eternal and utterly real.

Hence, in the space of less than one week, the delirious moment of total trust in Jesus, who would lead them to undoubted victory against the Romans, turned into a feeling of total betrayal of all their hope. There was no call to arms, no rousing speeches, no armed charges to undoubted victory. Nothing, as we see in the reading of the Passion today. And Passover would have been the perfect time, a new Passover, out of Roman slavery and into total freedom, for the first time in possibly five centuries. It was no wonder that by Friday they were baying for his blood – and they got it. “If you’re the Son of God, come down from that cross!” But what they were asking for was Jesus to betray himself. To act to save himself. To use his power for his own purpose. To proclaim himself supreme conqueror, instead of, in his own words, a servant. The Son of Almighty God came to serve us, we who are utterly unworthy and undeserving of such a servant. Yet that was what he said (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, John 13:1-17). That did not fit in any way into the popular stereotype of the Messiah as envisioned by God’s people 2000 years ago. With his vocation completed in utter disgrace and humiliation, the mirror opposite of victory and triumph, Jesus stammered out the words to his Father in heaven “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46) completing his work on earth, and then there was the silence of the tomb.

The Crucifixion, The Isenheim Altarpiece, Grünewald 1516, Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France. 

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