Palm Sunday

            In the late summer of 1996, we were on our way to Lords to see Northamptonshire play Lancashire in the final of the Benson and Hedges Cup. In St. John’s Wood Road, we bumped into an acquaintance from these parts. A man of independent means, about 12 years older than me, sporting a very smart and expensive panama with (crucially in this context) an MCC hat band.

            That’s the end of the story. There’s no punch line and the only joke that day was Northamptonshire’s batting.

            My description of this panama wearing MCC member is selective and intended to convey something (but not all) about him. Listeners will supplement the picture and fill in gaps according to their personalities and experience.

            Some people will immediately have formed (with approval) a picture of a cricket-loving, Daily Telegraph reading, gentleman amateur and member of the Establishment.

Others will have gained an impression of a fuddy-duddy old reactionary, who probably disapproved of the sporting boycott of South Africa and is determined to exclude women from his inner sanctums.

            Both judgements, as they relate to the whole man, as he really is, would be wholly wrong.

            Those making them would have been indulging in 1. isogesis ­ - an excellent theological jargon word. It means interpreting by imposing your own ideas on the story or text; as opposed to exegesis, which means interpreting by drawing the meaning from what is there in the story or text.

            And what’s more, his wife told me last week that he has never owned a panama hat in his life.

According to the gospel of John, there was this exchange between Pilate and Jesus: 2. “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate then asked Jesus, “What is truth?” [John 18.38].

Scripture is the foundation of our faith: the basis of what we believe and how we should behave.

As we read the Bible, Pilate’s penetrating question needs to be asked again and again. And answering it demands discernment.

Or, to put it another way, religion for grown ups.

This is the hallmark of Protestant Christianity. For it, many people suffered oppression or even death. We have inherited a Bible in our language. We can read and interpret it for ourselves. Of course, to do so we are helped by the accumulated wisdom of the church, our reason, and our experience. But we are autonomous human beings and our minds and our hearts are ours.

I say ‘hearts’ because this is not a dry, academic exercise. It is a sincere search for ultimate truth with which the deepest parts of our personalities are engaged.

Truth is not just a matter of what can be mechanically recorded or tested in a laboratory. Its expression does not depend on literal, factual accuracy. King Lear is not an historical figure. He does not have dates you can learn at school. And yet Shakespeare’s play explores the most profound truths about what it means, psychologically and politically, to be a human being.

            Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a good example of all this.

            Let’s start with a small detail. Was it one donkey or two? Matthew says two. The other gospels say one. Let’s look at what the prophecy reported in Matthew actually said rather than what the evangelist said it said.

3.         “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! / Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! / Lo, your king comes to you; / triumphant and victorious is he, / humble and riding on a donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” [Zechariah 9.9]

            This is just an example of parallelism: saying the same thing twice slightly differently.

It seems that the evangelist simply misunderstood Zechariah and, in his anxiety to make events fit the prophecy, altered them. Each of the other Gospels has only one beast and not necessarily a donkey.

            All of the Synoptic Gospels [1st 3] imply that the getting of the donkey was the result of some sort of supernatural foresight on Jesus’ part. The real reason could perfectly well be a sensible arrangement made in advance. Or chance. John merely says: 4. Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it. [John 12.14]

            What about a much bigger question, the story’s historicity – did something like this happen at all?

The triumphal entry is one of the surprisingly few things to be found, in some form, in all four gospels. That implies that it was deeply embedded in early tradition.

However, when it comes to the descriptions of the so-called ‘trial’ of Jesus there is no reference to the event. This is odd as, if it happened, the triumphal entry related directly to the issue at the trial: who did Jesus claim to be?

Perhaps that says more about the accuracy of the accounts of the trial than it does about the triumphal entry.

What was all the fuss about?

The evangelists all describe Jesus as presenting himself in a way which could only outrage the Jewish religious establishment and alarm the Romans: entering Jerusalem as a Messianic, Dividic, warrior king who, having conquered, would bring peace.

            The Synoptic Gospels imply the sense that, whatever Jesus was trying to convey about himself, people were simply shouting ‘Hosannas’ at the arrival of the prophet from Galilee. As to who he was: “Son of David” is about as strong as it gets.

            John, however, says that it was all about the raising of Lazarus:

5.  “So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him.” [John 12.17-18]

            Who was doing all the shouting? Matthew and Mark just say they were people or crowds. John says they were pilgrims. Luke’s account is precise and different: 6. “... the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen.” [Luke 19.37]

If Luke is right, that old chestnut of the fickle mob is laid to rest: that the same people who acclaimed him were, a few days later, calling for his death. In fact, when you read the gospels you will find that there is, simply, no biblical support for this contention.

            What about the palms? Only John says that there were any. Matthew has branches cut from the trees. Mark has leafy branches cut from the fields. Luke has only cloaks.

            7. “others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” [Matthew 21.8]; “others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields” [Mark 11.8]

When did this event occur? The crowd’s cries echo psalm 118:

8. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord./We bless you from the house of the Lord./The Lord is God, and he has given us light./Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.” [Psalm 118.26-7]

The waving of palms and using the words of this psalm reflect practices at the Feast of the Tabernacles or the Feast of Dedication (respectively in autumn and winter). Passover is in the spring.

This has led to the idea that Jesus might have arrived in Jerusalem much earlier than the gospels suggest or that another visit by Jesus to Jerusalem is being described.

Even scratching the surface in this way shows the difficulty of trying to take these ancient texts at face value. However, as we explore them, we find that great, simply expressed themes recur and resonate, at the heart of which is this: that we must love God and each other; and that, through love, we may hope to be united with each other and with God - decisively and eternally.

            Beside the truth of these great themes, the factual truth of Biblical detail is unimportant. We can be completely at ease with imagery and factual inconsistency. But we must constantly search for the truth of what the Bible actually says and not impose on it what we think it ought to say.

            I am not going to say what I think about the triumphal entry to Jerusalem. You can read the story for yourselves. Read about it for yourselves. And think about it for yourselves.

But as you do so remember the man in the panama. Or not.