CROWDSOURCING

What to make of Palm Sunday? I’ve always found it difficult to deal with. On the one hand it’s a relief from bloody Lent: all those happy crowds and we can wave palms get a palm cross in church and exhibit it at home and at least have one good moment. On the other hand, where’s it going?

Thinking of it now, I’m struck by the fact that, first of all as I’ve said before, there were all these people stunned by Jesus whom we never think about. Not the Disciples, not the ones who gave up everything to follow him about; just ordinary folk whose cousin got healed by this amazing Galilean (read: Yorkshireman or Vermonter) and who’d heard him preach and just got carried away and were hoping he was the Real Thing.

There was Talk going around. Is he going to come to Jerusalem for Passover? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s not crazy. He could get dead doing that. You know how the Man has it in for him. He’s gonna stay a loooooong way away. Caesarea Philippi, say, or Tiberias.

No. No! My cousin’s boyfriend told me he’s coming to Jerusalem! For Passover! Really? Really! He’s nuts. But what guts. You have to admire it. It takes a lot of mojo to do that, this year. OK, let’s go see him. Yes: I heard he’s going to come in like ---- who is it, remind me? the character from Isaiah? the Messiah as poor suffering bugger? riding on a donkey? Where? Well, at the North Gate, tomorrow afternoon. Yes, my son-in-law tweeted me. Ok, let’s all go there and cheer him on. He really has a nerve.

And so the crowd goes. And so he rides in. And so they rip off palm branches (where I live there are palms, but not enough to rip branches off – not like Florida, say), and throw them on the ground like a red carpet. And Jesus, for a moment, is the Star. Coming down the steps at Cannes, having his star on the sidewalk in LA, paparazzi clicking and whirring away, this is the Messiah the way we’d like him: overwhelming, exciting, an Event. PROPHET HAILED ON ENTRY TO CITY. TRAFFIC HALTED ON ALL MAJOR ARTERIES. POLICE DISPUTE FIGURE OF 50,000. “NO VIOLENCE,” SAYS COMMISSIONER, SURPRISED.

Of course, it all goes South. Media hero today, hounded tomorrow. Those palms have a bitter taste. Yeah, I went, and it was great, but I heard that it’s not going anywhere, the Temple police are looking for him, he’s accused of blasphemy and that is not a joke, they’re going to get him. OK guys, joke over, I’m going home, my wife doesn’t want me involved with scary stuff, and I can’t blame her.

And where are all these crowds, five days later?

And where would I have been?



Image: Giotto, "Entry into Jerusalem", fresco, Arena Chapel, Padua, ca. 1305