Passion Sunday - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2020

According to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, mounted on the back of a donkey, was the first and only occasion that Jesus visited the city during his public ministry.

The enthusiastic crowds, probably Galilean pilgrims camped everywhere around the city for the imminent feast of Passover, acclaimed Jesus, shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord!” To the alarmed and puzzled citizens of the city who had never met Jesus, and who wondered who on earth he could be, they proudly identified Jesus as “the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee”.

Matthew presented that entry as a deliberately planned dramatic prophetic action on Jesus’ part — a striking and challenging contrast to general Jewish messianic expectations. That he entered mounted on a donkey was not simply an expression of humility and lowliness. It was an almost farcical send-up of regal pomp and power. Matthew carefully reminded his scripturally literate readers of a prophecy of Zechariah: “Your king comes to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant, humble and riding on a donkey… He will banish chariots from Ephraim and horses from Jerusalem; the bow of war will be banished. He will proclaim peace for the nations.” Chariots and horses were the equivalent of today’s armoured tanks.

At the time, no one seemed to have understood the point of Jesus’ prophetic action. The crowd wanted a King, a Son of David, a political messiah who would liberate them from the oppressive Roman occupation of their country, and reestablish a glorious and lasting monarchy. Their expectations blinded them to Jesus’ subtlety.

Today’s annual reoccurrence of Palm Sunday comes as the world faces the unfamiliar and threatening spread of the corona virus. The enforced imposition of spatial distancing and self-isolation and the prohibition of social gatherings give us occasion and time to ponder what we might expect or hope of God at this time.

Our liturgies speak constantly of God as almighty and omnipotent. How do we understand power? How do we understand God’s power? And how does it fit with human freedom? Today’s Feast would seem to reveal a God who may not meet our spontaneous expectations: a king mounted on a donkey — and expecting to be taken seriously!

Human power so often takes the shape of dominating, coercive, restrictive and destructive imposition. Jesus reveals instead a God interested in life to the full, a God of creative power — and the only truly creative power that enables life and growth and at the same time respects human dignity and freedom is the power of love.

What kind of conversion might it take for us to recognise traces of the presence of that life-giving, loving God in our present bewildering situation? and to inspire us creatively and caringly to be the hands and feet, the minds and hearts, of that life-giving, loving God in our present unfamiliar and restricted circumstances?