Palm Sunday

We go along with the crowd far too easily.

This week we will see a classic example: the same people who were waving palms and crying Hosanna! on Sunday were screaming Crucify him! on Thursday night.

The Bible tells a very human story about Palm Sunday. Jesus told his friends he was not going to Jerusalem for Passover - but either changed his mind and went (or maybe had always intended to go but told them that so they wouldn't fuss about his safety).

He was very well received when he arrived - perhaps seen as the person who was to lead the revolt - or maybe as the new religious leader to stand against the Temple priests. But then he did something that very predictably upset both the Romans and his fellow-Jews in power. He symbolically and very publicly challenged the whole temple sacrifice practice (and the priestly power and income system) by attacking the merchants selling sacrifices and changing Roman money for Jewish money.

Basically he made his death inevitable: neither the priests nor the Roman peace-keepers were going to forgive that.

We are all pulled in the same two directions as the Holy Week crowds.

Most of us accept God in our lives (to a greater or lesser extent). We want to believe that there is something special about us, something that lasts longer than our human lives, something we see hints of in moments of beauty and perfection, or in moments of tenderness for the people we love. We want to believe we have a purpose bigger than our individual careers and families. Something that matters. We want to believe that human beings are not just highly evolved animals.

On the other hand we are constantly bombarded with a message that we have a limited opportunity to buy now! have the best! build the bigger! look the best! The implication is that we have just one chance to reach happiness, so we better gather all the things that the happy people we are shown in the media have: new house, flash car, pretty family, trendy clothes - and always - plenty of money.

We all live with the fear of being ordinary, the fear of random attack or accident, the fear of not surviving. Fear is genetically programmed into us and is almost impossible to ignore.

Jesus faced the people of Jerusalem twice in the week of his death: once when they were aware of the special, the extra-ordinary. And once when they were wrapped in the ordinary.
Once when they glimpsed the vision for humanity; once when they were trapped in their evolutionary mode of self-protection and safety.
Once on a spiritual level; once on an animal survival level.

Because we each function on both levels.

We actually are highly evolved animals with 40 million years of successful survival instincts bound into our genes.

But on Easter Sunday Jesus showed us that at our heart we are also actually spiritual beings - and that although our physical bodies may be really important to us right now, we are also spiritual beings and that our death is not our end. Our death is a rebirth into something more glorious than our current caterpillar!