Palm Sunday 2005.Isaiah 50.4-9a, Ps31.9-18, Phillipians 2.5-11, Matthew 26.14-27.66.It was interesting to have had two sets of royals in the country recently. Well, one and half sets really, since Camilla didn’t come out. What was interesting about it was to see the difference in the popularity of them.
Now, overwhelmingly, the popular royals were the Danes, Crown Prince Frederik and his gorgeous Tasmanian wife Princess Mary. Prince Charles and his absent fiancé Camilla just aren’t in the race. I mean, if we were able to vote for a king, Charles would not get the gong. I think it would be Fred and Mary for sure. But the thing is, who we want and who we get are two different things. Our desire and the reality don’t match up. Although having said all of that, I have to confess I’m a republican, so don’t really care for having a royal family anyway. But I digress. The fact is, if we have to have royals, I would prefer Fred and Mary, and a lot of others would too.
I mean, they fit the idea we have better, don’t they. We identify with them, these two attractive, regal, stately people, who are able to talk to us normal folk, yet be different, aloof, move in high places. Charles has, it seems, been a bit of a mess up for a lot of his life, had a rather distasteful marriage, affairs during it, a messy divorce, a late ex-wife who I’m sure would be made a saint if we could do so, and who most people see as having been treated rather abominably. Then there’s Camilla, the other woman in the Royal marriage, who just isn’t very popular at all. Former aristocratic party girl, she is seen mainly as a home wrecker, and none of us can understand what Charley actually sees in her. But in the end, when the Queen finally retires or whatever it is that Queens do, Prince Charles will become king. The person we want and the person we will get are two different things that will never be reconciled.
Many of the people of Jerusalem were expecting a certain type of Messiah.
The messiah they were expecting was supposed to be a warrior king, a person who would release them from the yoke of the Roman empire, who would drive out the aliens in their land (that’s foreigners, not E.T), restore the observance of the law, give them back their land, and they would live in happily ever after. God would be their God, and they would be God’s people. Not a bad thing to wish for. But the reality was that they got this more simple and humble prophet talking peace and compassion. Quite a contrast really.
There is a book by a New Zealand Christian author, Joy Cowley. It’s a collection of modern Psalms, called Aotearoa Psalms. Some of the people who came to the Lenten Study this year have heard me talk about this already. Here is my favourite. Its called Palm Sunday.
No donkey this time,
But a borrowed Honda 550.
Jesus riding into town
In a black leather jacket,
Jeans frayed at the knees,
And L O V E tattooed on the knuckles
Of his right hand.
Those who saw him
Said His smile was like the sun,
Warming shadowed corners
And causing the way to blossom unexpectedly.
Those who saw him
Told of all the light left over
To be taken home
And set in eyes and hearts
And at windows for strangers.
It was a miracle, they said.
The rest of us missed it,
We were in another part of the city,
Waiting for the messiah.
Who was the messiah those people were waiting for? Not this hippy dude on a bike, with his jail-house tattoos and old jeans. It wasn’t the suffering servant of the Isaiah reading, the one who is struck and spat on and has his beard pulled. Was it this humble, obedient one, who was God, yet God emptied out of his own accord, the one that Paul writes about to the Philippians? It would seem not. So when the expectation didn’t match the reality, they were very quick to reject, rather than revise their expectations and explore the possibilities, especially the possibility that perhaps God works in a vastly different way to the expected. So a relatively short time after welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, they call for his death.
Who is the messiah we are waiting for?
What is the picture we carry, the image of Jesus we would keep in our wallets and purses if it were possible?
Palm Sunday is a good time to think again about who we think Jesus is. It’s a good time to review our personal image, our wish list for our messiah. It’s a good time to widen the horizons, look out for the unusual, look beyond ourselves. Because if we don’t, then we might just miss him when he does ride into town.
Keep your eyes peeled. Keep an open mind. Listen to your hearts, and you will see the real messiah. One day.
Amen.
