29th March: Palm/Passion Sunday

For all the developments of social media and the benefits, which are many, there are times when only a face-to-face encounter will do. Speed, time, convenience are all very well and good, but there are times when to sit down with someone, to read their body language, to appreciate the nuanced tone of voice, to see what’s going on in their eyes, to look at their face, is what really matters. There is no substitute.

On a day that tries to cram in a little too much liturgically – Passion and Palm Sunday (how can we shoehorn into one service the rigours of the Passion and the mixed messages of the Palm Sunday procession?) – what do we imagine the face of Jesus to have been like on this day? At Bethphage and Bethany, then cresting the Mount of Olives and down into Jerusalem. What might we have read on the face of the Saviour? As He walked, as He mounted the donkey, as He passed through the crowds, as He entered Jerusalem, as He went into the Temple “and looked around at everything”. Did He smile when they brought him the donkey? Did He acknowledge the palm branch wavers? Did He frown at the stalls of the money-changers? Sand-blasted by the dusty desert wind, squinting against the bright sun of the day, lost amongst the waving palm fronds, half-covered in shadow by the falling night in the precincts of the Temple. What do we imagine the face of Jesus to have been like on that day?

Isaiah, in one of the ‘servant songs’ writes: “…I have set my face like a flint…”

Whilst we need images of God in Christ as comforter, shepherd, blesser of children, healer of the sick, we do Jesus no favours by blocking out images of the tougher man. We will not be saved by a milk-sop Saviour. The tough love that Jesus displays throughout His ministry is something that is necessary, when He sets His face towards Jerusalem, when He descends the Mount of Olives and processes through the palm branches and through the gates into the city. There is resilience in redemption that is both sinewy and unrelenting. This flint-faced Lord demonstrates a resoluteness that is unsettling. But it is a resoluteness that is necessary.

“The Suffering Servant passage has been a favourite of Christians for centuries because the parallels to the ministry, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus are hard to miss. Jesus did not seek out suffering and death. He was subjected to suffering and death because of the actions He took and the words He spoke, standing for love, forgiveness and righteousness. He set His face to Jerusalem like flint and suffered for it.” ¹

Caught up somewhere between Passion and Palms, this Sunday needs to reflect both aspects of the reality of the day for Jesus. The flint-like resolution cannot be camouflaged by palm-branch-waving children. There are no children in Mark’s version of the Palm Sunday story. Christ did no joyful thing by riding into Jerusalem. Beneath the veneer of Hosannas lies the unshakeable love of God and the determination that would lead that love to Calvary and beyond.

There is something slightly comic about Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem. Is He lampooning the political powers of the day with His carefully planned, “carnivalesque ‘military procession’”? ² We note that the event was carefully planned. Jesus had arranged for the colt and even provided secret signals for the disciples to use with the people watching the beast. Nothing is left to chance. He is as carefully organising this piece of ‘street theatre’ as the mass protests and rallies are organised in our time that mark contemporary political and social issues. What we need to note is that Jesus has deliberately arranged a demonstration to encourage people to ask questions about Who He is and what He is about. ³ What kind of Messiah was He? What was going to be the freedom He would offer? The Mount of Olives had a number of associations with the traditional location from which people expected the final battle for Jerusalem’s liberation to begin. But Jesus does not send out a call for weaponry; He sends out for a donkey, and enters the city unarmed. There is, no doubt, conflict ahead, but not in the way many would have expected.

Mark and Jesus have been ratcheting up the tension so that we see the point of the coming conflict and understand what the real battle is to be about. It is not to do with the liberation of the earthly city Jerusalem. It is about the liberation of the people of the world from the power of sin and despair and death. It is not going to be fought and won between sword-wielding troops and cavalry charges; it is to be fought and won by a crucified Saviour on a wooden cross, and by the puzzle and promise of an empty tomb.

After the drama and the palm branch waving, and the donkey ridden down from the Mount of Olives and in through the gates, what happens when Jesus arrives? Mark simply states, “…He entered Jerusalem, and went into the Temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, He went out to Bethany with the twelve”. We are left wondering: ‘what next’?

There is something steely about the beginning of Holy Week. Jesus may not have known exactly what was lying ahead of Him, but we do. We need to steel ourselves to look again carefully at the days as they unfold, with their stories of subversion, tenderness, challenge, insight, betrayal and sacrifice. We ought not to skip from Palm Sunday to Easter Day and gloss over the passion of what lies between those days.

And we need to return to some of the old prophecies, relating to the Suffering Servant, and see within them clues about the person and the purpose of Jesus. The One given the gift of teaching, Who can “sustain with a word him that is weary”. The One Whose ear remained open throughout to the voice of God. The One Who gave His back to the smiters, and Who did not hide from shame and being spat upon. The One who set His face like flint, and entered the city, and endured the cross, and died, and rose again. The One we, on this day, as every day, see face to face.