There has been an interesting series this Lent on BBC Radio 4. It has been looking at Jesus through the eyes of people from the other great world religions. So we have had Jesus through Muslim eyes - or Isa as they call him. There has been Jesus through Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu eyes. The first one was Jesus through Jewish eyes.

One of the things about listening to Jews talk about Jesus is that we get a better picture of just how Jewish Jesus was. And this was what struck Clive Lawton, the Jewish writer who gave this particular talk. What puzzled him was why the crowds shouted Hosanna - save us - and waved palm leaves in the spring, when this is something that is done 6 months earlier at the festival of Sukkot, tabernacles or booths. This festival takes place in the autumn and commemorates the period in the wilderness after the Exodus. The crowds of Palm Sunday are waving palms in the wrong season. It would seem that Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem was designed to make a stir. He wanted to be noticed and whether he sought it or not, confrontation was likely. We have a Messianic shout and all the trappings of proclaiming the promised one to lead the people into a new promised land, away from the oppression and occupation.

On Thursday evening we had the last of our Lent talks. During this David Grice drew our attention to how much we need to understand the Old Testament in order to get what the New Testament is on about. As we saw in our reading from Isaiah (5:1-7), the vineyard is Jerusalem, they are the special vine which God tends and nurtures. When it fails to bear fruit he threatens to chop it down and burn it - and indeed the Hebrew scriptures interpret events in this light. So for Jesus to talk about a vineyard (Matt 21:33-end) being in the care of a rebellious people, stoning emissaries, he is not being subtle. The stoned emissaries are the prophets, they are the ones who try to train the vine so that it bears fruit that will become wine of the Kingdom.

A prophet, or something greater, can only be rejected if it speaks and makes itself noticed. So for Jesus to make a noise as he comes to the city, as the heir comes to take possession of the vineyard, he is making a statement.

Prophets are very important. Every community, every group needs to have the voice within it that will bend it so that it grows the right way rather than going wild. Few people enjoy the voice of prophecy because it is often disturbing and disrupting to cosy living, to complacent living. It might be that we need to take notice of those who are easily shut out - those who have particular needs, or don’t look like us. It might be the cry of justice, which is easy to listen to when it concerns far away lands, but not when it touches the way we do things.

The prophetic voices will sing Hosannas and wave palm leaves at the wrong time of year. In one sense to celebrate Palm Sunday would require us to wave the palm leaves at Christmas or in the summer, at the wrong time of year. It requires us to have courage to speak out for the things that need facing and risk being thrown out of the vineyard, even stoned. I said at my first PCC meeting that we need people who will be troublesome and ensure that we don’t brush important issues under the carpet, that we don’t drift into cosiness and loose the radical edge that is the mark of the gospel.

Without these voices we can find that we become the tenants about to be evicted. I think it sometimes passes us by just how much of a shock the early church had to face. The chosen people had been replaced by a new promise because they had failed to bear fruit. This is a recurring theme in the Old Testament as the country is overthrown and the people carried off into exile. Out of this comes a new nation, a new start. The promised people are replaced by a new promise or a renewed promise. We are used to being the people of the new covenant, but can we be replaced if we cease to bear fruit, if we reject the very point of it all? The answer is of course that we can! As Jesus points out quite starkly, God can raise up children of Abraham from the stones.

Shouting Hosanna at the wrong time of year reminds us to listen to those who have hard words for us to bear because they may just be saying something that keeps us in the vineyard. Singing Hosanna at the wrong time of year, above everything else, proclaims the promised one in our midst, but as we know not in the form that we might expect or find comfortable. As the crowds shouted, some plotted and schemed his down fall. Whose kingdom do we seek, and what does that require of us?

© Ian Black 2002

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