The countdown to the cross has begun. Today, Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly, with the crowds crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” Forming part of our Eucharistic Prayer every Sunday, it might perhaps be hard for us to hear those words as the crowds, the Romans, and the religious leaders would have heard them on the Sunday morning that has come to be known as Palm Sunday.
Here comes revolution! The old order—the order dominated on the one hand by the Romans, their Idumean puppets, the Herods, and the temple elite known as the Sadducees—was on its way out! The new order, led by King David’s own heir, was entering into the city; it was about break in upon the whole world. The Day of the Lord, the day in which God would vindicate his people had come at last!
Interestingly, however, Jesus does not head for the Roman garrison to start a war. Instead, he goes straight to the Temple. There, he over turns the money changers tables and the stalls of those who sold animals for sacrifice and still come the cries: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Not surprisingly, the religious leaders are threatened. They want Jesus to tighten the leash on his followers, to bring them into line. “Do you hear what people are saying? Jesus, hush this up. This is dangerous language! Do you know where this will end?” Jesus refuses, however.
If there’s no way they’re going to bring Jesus onside so they change tactics. They will undermine Jesus in the eyes of the people. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” The question, of course, is a trap. Jesus, they know, is on their turf. The religious leaders have the authority. If Jesus answers, I am here in the name of my heavenly Father and he gave me the authority to do as I have done, they would have only to point to the fact that they were the guardians of the Temple. They oversaw the liturgical life of the people. They ensured the right relationship between the people and God was maintained through the right observance of the sacrifices, observances in which Jesus’ own family were maintained.
Jesus, however, is too savvy. He appeals to another outsider. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it from human authority?” He totally wrong-foots them. They’re stunned. They can’t answer. Although they think John was a nut, they know their answer will get them in trouble with the crowds. So, they behave like politicians. They withdraw to get their story straight. “We don’t know,” is the best they can manage. Jesus ends the confrontation: “If you won’t answer about John, there’s no point in talking with you further about my authority.”.
When Jesus enters into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the issue is authority. And that’s a tough one for us moderns. Our understandings of authority are very different than those in the first century. We tend to think authority is given by the consent of the governed. It’s called democracy. I happen to think it’s a good thing. But today, it does get in the way of our wrestling with the Gospel.
The Sadducees in a much more sophisticated way, ask the great playground question, “Says who?” Dr Phil—I know, here I go quoting Dr Phil again—says 90 percent of questions are statements in disguise. The statement disguised in the Sadducees question here is, “We have the authority and we say you cannot do these things.”
Jesus, in his counter question tears the Sadducees’s gaze away from their own sense of self-importance to look at John. John had none of trappings of the Temple. He wasn’t at the center of life. He remained on the fringes. In the wilderness. At the Jordan. He didn’t authorise a way of life, he called it into question with his radical call to repentance. But everybody could see that John was a prophet. Everybody could see that his authority came from God. Even the Sadducees could see it. And they refused to believe.
This morning, another Palm Sunday, and the question is now put to us: Who says John can call us to repentance? Who says Jesus can stand in front of us and say, Come and follow me? Come and die?
A religious pedigree, however important and good that might be, can actually be used to evade, to avoid, to escape having to answer this question directly. It can even be used to justify ignoring the plain call of Jesus and John to a life of repentance, humility, and radical discipleship. Jesus himself teaches us—teaches me—that religion is often a cover, a ruse, a way of avoiding God, or running from God. A way to get away from his plain question: “By what authority do I—Jesus—teach this way and do these things?”
The next lesson then follows on from the first. If a religious pedigree can be a barrier to recognizing Jesus and the God who authorizes the way he teaches and acts, lack of religion is not necessarily a barrier. The tax collectors and the prostitutes are getting into the kingdom ahead of you! That’s what Jesus says to his critics. There simply were no lower rungs on the social ladder. These folks were not simply on the margins, they were miles away from being right with God. At least that’s what the Sadducees thought. But Jesus says no. These folks, who might feel the most rejection from good religious people, are not excluded by God just because they are excluded by good religious people. They are perfectly capable of hearing the question and responding to it too.
So let’s allow Jesus to put the question to all of us—the Sadducees, the Sinners and the Somewhere-in-between that have found ourselves here this Palm Sunday morning.
St. John Paul II was fond of saying that Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life. By that he meant that Jesus Christ, as he is given to us in the pages of Holy Scripture, is the pattern for human behaving and believing. He shows is, in his life and death, the example of what it means to be human and he invites us to pattern our lives after his. This is no doubt true. But today, Jesus comes to us, through the same Holy Scriptures, not as the answer, but as the question. We may well say as a compliment to Saint John Paul, Jesus Christ is the question that undermines the answer that is every human life.
Today, he comes to us and asks us, “By what authority do I do these things? By what authority do I say these things? Who do you say that I am?” No more evasions. No more avoidances. It’s Palm Sunday and it’s time for all of us—religious or not or in between—to deal with Jesus.