Readings: Luke 19:28-40; Philippians 2:5-11

Can you remember the stir caused within churches when Webber and Rice’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar hit the stage? Was it blasphemous? What about that ending? And some of those words! 'Hey sanna, ho sanna, sanna, sanna … Hey, hey JC, JC won’t you smile at me. Jesus Christ, if you’re divine, turn my water into wine. Prove to me that you’re no fool. Walk across my swimming pool. These words captured the glimmer of that first Palm Sunday parade; that nationalistic religious fervoured carnival of Hey sanna, ho sanna, sanna, sanna, hey sanna, ho sanna; Jesus Christ if you’re divine, turn my water into wine.

What a day. You couldn’t believe it. It was like a carnival. It was like a circus. It was like a parade. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were jammed into the holiest of holy cities. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims were jammed into those narrow little streets. It was like a carnival. Shoulder to shoulder. Arm to arm. Body to body. You couldn’t walk. You couldn’t squeeze through this mob of people crammed into those little narrow streets of Jerusalem.

It was Passover time and the city was jammed. It was like a mob at Mardi Gras. Just jammed. And you were there. The hawkers were hawking their wares, 'Lambs for sale. Lambs for sale.' My Kitchen Rules. Come and have your Passover dinner with us.' What a mad house. Dirty streets and dusty mules. Camels baying off in the distance. Pilgrims chanting their prayers. Roman chariots and Roman charioteers riding back and forth. What a mess. But it was a great week for business.
The reputation of Jesus had already spread. You see, the day before, Jesus Christ had produced the mightiest miracle he had ever done. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. He had actually raised Lazarus from the dead yesterday, and then coming into town, Jesus healed two more men, blind men, and they were now able to see. The masses of people had heard about these miracles, and everyone wanted to see if he could pull off another trick like that. The crowd wanted to see more miracles. They wanted to see another deaf person hear. They wanted to see a blind man be given sight. They wanted to see the skin of a leper made pure. They wanted to see the healer in action, this mighty miracle worker. And if they saw a miracle, let me tell you, if they saw a man actually raised from the dead, they would believe. If they actually saw a blind man be given sight, they would then be true believers. If the Houdini of the Holy Land could pull another trick out of his bag, they would believe.

'Hey, hey, JC, JC won’t you smile at me. Jesus Christ if you’re divine, turn my water into wine. Prove to me that you’re not fool, walk across my swimming pool.' There are people who are like that, you know. They will only believe if they see a sign.

That is the way it was on that first Palm Sunday parade. There was that group of people there to see the Houdini of the Holy Land in action. It was the Big Top, the Big Tent, a carnival, the centre ring in action. That was one group who was present on that first Palm Sunday. These people said, 'Lord, if you give me a miracle, then I will believe.' . . . Have you ever been like that?

Then there was a second group of people that day. This second group didn’t want a religious carnival; they weren’t looking for the Houdini of the Holy Land; they weren’t looking for one more magic trick. These people were much more serious. They were looking for a political revolution.

It was like a mass political rally, with all its intense fanaticism. That is the way it was on that first Palm Sunday. There was a mass political revolution, and to understand Palm Sunday, one needs to understand this rising, nationalistic fervour.

The revolution had started years before. We will briefly examine four dates in this rising political nationalism. It was 63 BC, and Pompeii was the Roman general who conquered Israel, and now the Israelites found themselves again in slavery after three hundred years of freedom. The Israelites were trying to get rid of the Romans. The Jews hated the Romans for many reasons. The Romans made the Jews eat pork, which a Jew would never do. The Romans were forcing them to worship Caesar, which a Jew would never do. The Romans forbade circumcising their children, which the Jews would never do. The Romans were seducing them out of their Judaism. The Jews hated the Romans and there was a revolution going on.

Sometime about the year 64 BC, the great builder, King Herod, who had rebuilt their Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, 150 feet long and 150 feet high, a magnificent temple, turned from being Herod the Builder to Herod the Killer and he ordered all boys two and under to be killed. The killer king didn’t want any baby messiah being born who would grow up to be a political king.

About twelve years later, Zaduk the Pharisee led a revolution in and around Jerusalem and two thousand of his followers were killed. The Romans strung them up; they hung them up on crosses. Can you imagine the Mitchell Freeway from the Perth CBD to Clarkson, over thirty kilometres of roadway, and on both sides there were men hanging dead on crosses. Would that send a message to the Jewish population about what the Romans do with political revolutionaries?

And then, on this Passover day, when Jesus came riding into town, there had already been thirty-two political riots . . . in five years. Yes, as a young man, Jesus with his fellow countrymen had experienced thirty-two riots, six major riots per year for five years. Can you imagine thirty-two riots in Perth or Canberra, in a mere five years? And according to the Bible story for today, they were on the edge of another riot. That is, the town was ready to blow. 'Hey sanna, ho sanna, sanna sanna hey sanna, ho sanna, Jesus Christ, if you’re divine, throw out those bloody Roman swine.'
And so there were two groups on that first Palm Sunday. There were the religious fanatics who said, 'Jesus, give me a miracle and then I will believe.' And then there were the political fanatics who said, 'Restore our freedom and get rid of the Romans.' Both groups chanted, 'Hosanna to the Son of David. Hosanna to the Son of David. The king of Israel has come.'

And that is the way it was. It was a carnival. It was a circus. It was revolution on the move. What was Jesus doing? What was Jesus doing with this mass of humanity around him? What was Jesus doing in the midst of this kaleidoscope of madness? Was he standing up on the back seat of his chariot and waving to the crowd like some politician? Was he riding on that chariot with arms upward and outward and his fingers spiking a 'V' sign for victory? Was he waving at all those people in their second storey windows as they were throwing confetti on him? Was he pumping them up with political oratory to get the political revolution moving? No. Here in this cacophony of craziness, Jesus didn’t say a word. He rode in silence. Silence.

Jesus rode on a jackass into town. The crowds wanted him to ride on a tall white horse, dignified in the sunlight or on a chariot of war, glistening in its golden trim. But Jesus rode on an animal of peace, not of war.

The crowds wanted him to give inflamed and impassioned oratory to inspire them into revolution; they wanted the shouts of soldiers but they heard only the songs of children. And Jesus? Jesus didn’t say a word. Not a word as he rode into that city.

The crowd was chanting at the top of their lungs, 'Hosanna to the Son of David, Hosanna to the King.' And slowly, and gradually, the Hosannas became quieter and quieter and quieter. Then nothing. By afternoon, another chant had begun, almost in a whisper, 'crucify him.' Softly, softly, louder, louder and finally bursting with power, 'Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify him. Crucify that man. He’s a bloody imposter. A fake. He’s no king, that’s for sure.' Caesar’s our King. This Jesus - he’s a subversive.

They had wanted a warrior on a warhorse and instead they got a carpenter on a jackass, and so they killed him and put a poster above his head, 'King of the Jews.' Big joke. That’s the way it was on that first Palm Sunday, on that first Passion Sunday.

Twenty years after Jesus died, charges of subversion dogged his first followers. In Philippi, a mob dragged Paul and Silas before the city magistrates, then had them stripped, beaten, severely flogged, and imprisoned: 'These men are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practise' (Acts 16:20–21). In Thessalonica, 'some bad characters from the marketplace' dragged Jason and some fellow believers before the city officials, shouting 'These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here. . . They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus' (Acts 17:7). Paul was persecuted by the political powers, not coddled and patronized by them. In Antioch he was run out of town.

In Iconium, Luke writes, 'the people of the city were divided' about Paul's Gospel. Jews and Gentiles joined forces to stone Paul and his companions (Acts 14:4–5).

What were Jesus and his first followers subverting? We know that the earliest believers were called 'atheists' because they refused to participate in Rome's cult of imperial worship, and a 'third race' that distinguished itself from the 'first race' (Greeks and Romans) and the 'second race' (Jews). The question deserves a lifetime of reflection, but the simple summary of Borg and Crossan also makes a good beginning. Jesus's alternative reign and rule, they argue, subverted major aspects of the way most societies in history have been organized. Whether ancient or modern, most societies have normalized a status quo of political oppression that marginalizes ordinary people, economic exploitation whereby the rich take advantage of the poor, and religious legitimation that insists that 'God wants things this way.'

It's easy to think of other components of the cultural status quo that Jesus might also subvert, like ethnic stereotypes, media propaganda, gender roles, consumerism, and our degradation of planet earth.

On Palm Sunday Jesus invites us to join his subversive counter-procession into all the world. But he calls us not to just any subversion, but rather, Christian subversion and it takes as its model Jesus himself, 'who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.' Dying to self and the many demons of egoism, and living to serve others, will prove itself as sufficiently and radically subversive. And so Paul instructs us in his epistle for this week: 'Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus'.