“Human fickleness”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Saturday, June 25, 2022
Matthew 21:1-11 (Forward, p. 58) CEV p. 1009
Today’s account of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday reminds me a lot of the fickleness that seems to be part of human nature. Here, I cannot but think back at how Britain’s electorate rejected Winston Churchill in the postwar elections, in spite of all that he had done for them during World War II, or at how fans went utterly berserk in rejecting Wayne Gretzky after he had the audacity to allow himself to be traded from Edmonton to LA.
The crowds likewise proved themselves rather fickle when it came to Jesus as well. They were so enthusiastic, so raucous in their praise and adulation that one day, Sunday, and yet only a few days later, Friday, they were demanding His death. In fairness to them, however, let me suggest two things. Firstly, I wonder whether the crowd that ‘showed up’ at Pilate’s palace of His trial was not a different crowd—and a hand-picked one at that? And secondly, I wonder whether that crowd had not been infiltrated by agent provocateurs, people expressly placed there in order to stir up the crowd and manipulate their response. (After having experienced several mob scenes firsthand I can testify to just how easy this is.). So, my idea is that it was a different crowd than those who welcomed Jesus so heartily on Palm Sunday--and a particularly susceptible one at that.
In trying to explain that seemingly fickle Palm Sunday crowd, let me offer several suggestions, most of which have to do with the busyness of Passover in the midst of such an overcrowded city. Jerusalem must have been bursting at the seams, and food and accommodations must have been at a premium. Imagine rustling up the necessary foods for the Passover celebration and making all the other arrangements while in a strange and unfamiliar city. Even finding a space, a location, for this family meal must have been hard. And, with such a crowd, lining up at the Temple to have your Passover lamb slaughtered must have taken forever.
It would have been easy to get pre-occupied, wrapped up, in all these details. And then, there was all the family and friends, some of which you hadn’t probably seen for months or years, to catch up with. No, my guess is that come Good Friday, the minds and attentions of many of the Palm Sunday pilgrims were elsewhere than with Jesus, pre-occupied with the
Feast and its preparations, and probably, to be honest, more than a wee bit tired from all of it. So, it wasn’t as if they were deserting Jesus intentionally as it was that He was forgotten among everything else taking place just then.
I think that something quite similar can happen to each of us. It isn’t that we desert Jesus, but that we get caught up with other things. Without our focus being intentionally on Him, it is easy to forget. That is why a daily Quiet Time with prayer, meditation and Bible study is so important, and why assembling together for public worship is so essential. Both of these practices, these disciplines, force us to focus on Jesus, and divert our attention, at least momentarily, from all those other things that might make us forget Him. And, so I do not overly blame the Jerusalem crowds. In fact, I see them as very much like myself. The great thing is that Jesus loved them and cared for them and died for them, in spite of this human fickleness, and likewise does so for us as well. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Forward notes: “The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them” (verses 6-7).
“One of my favorite pieces of art is a twelfth-century Spanish fresco depicting Jesus and his disciples entering Jerusalem. On display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the fresco depicts the human figures as life-sized, but the realism of the image ends there. The artist makes no effort to incorporate depth of field into the image, so the people are flat, like paper dolls. The most intriguing detail is how Jesus is depicted, riding side-saddle on a donkey, with his legs draped over a much smaller colt. In other words, he’s riding two animals at once, exactly as the text says.
“Most artists ignore this detail, depicting Jesus riding, dignified, on a single animal. Many scholars believe Matthew includes it out of a misunderstanding of the prophecy Jesus fulfilled as he entered Jerusalem’s gates. But I find the awkward strangeness of this image a sort of key that unlocks my imagination, helping me to abide with Jesus as I read about the momentous events that follow.”
MOVING FORWARD: “What are your favorite artistic depictions of Jesus? Share them with us at #ForwardDaybyDay.”