Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields (Mark 11:8)

When I was learning to play the guitar, some of the first ones I learned to play were American folk songs, and I don’t mean the ones about teenagers getting their emotions out; I mean the ones by people like a guy called Pete Seeger: gritty songs of everyday working people. One I remember had a very simple two-line chorus that went

“Which side are you on? Which side are you on?”

Here we are, almost at the end of Lent. Palm Sunday. I was in Malaga for Palm Sunday some years ago. It was an amazing experience - the whole town joining in the celebrations with floats and costumes and trumpets; people lining the streets to watch the procession that marks the beginning of Easter. And it’s tempting to see the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem like that - the triumphal arrival of the Son of God at the City of David. It’s tempting to imagine throngs of people doing the “Hosanna” thing. It’s tempting to imagine thousands of people throwing palm leaves and their cloaks before Jesus, the whole city grinding to a halt to welcome the Messiah. 

It’s only really Matthew’s version of these events that might suggest that. Mark, never knowingly overstated, simply goes with “Many people” spreading their cloaks and throwing down leafy branches. Not everyone. Probably not most. Just “many”.

We get ahead of ourselves if we imagine the whole city of Jerusalem turning out to greet Jesus as he arrives in Jerusalem. Sure, he’s built up a reputation that may have preceded him. Sure there are reports circulating of him doing amazing things - feeding five thousand they say, healing cripples they say - but for many he will have just have been an obscure teacher from the boondocks with a rag-bag following of fishermen and (scandalously) women. There will have been those who saw only a carpenter’s son with the smell of fish about him. What would he matter?There will have been those, secure in enough in their fine houses who may have been curious about the stories that their slaves and their servants were telling of a teacher telling parables about people selling all they had to buy a field where they found a pearl, but they went on about the experiences of ordinary people - fishermen, farmers, shepherds - shepherds for heaven’s sake! - what had any of that to do with them?

So where do we stand? With the people who threw their cloaks on the ground or with those who treated his arrival with contempt or disdain? Which side are we on? Which side are we on.

With the palm-throwing team, right? But we’re not out of Lent yet. The days to come would challenge those who threw palms at Jesus’s feet because they would lead to the Cross and to Calvary. For some of them Jesus’s apparent failure to be the Messiah they wanted him to be - the Messiah who would lead them in war against the Romans and reassert the military power of the kingdom of Israel - would lead them to join in the cry of “Crucify him!”. Others, when the going got tough, would slink away and hide pretending they didn’t know him as even Peter did. Hiding in fear of the powerful who could inflict such suffering with little more than a snap of the fingers.

So, if we stood with those who threw their cloaks to the ground and strewed palm leaves at the feet of Jesus, do we stand with those among them who later howled “Crucify him”? Do we stand with those who hid away in fear? Which side are we on? Which side are we on?

We stand with Jesus, right? We stand with the Christ. We stand with the Christ who went to the Cross for us. We stand with the Christ through whom we have the prospect of eternal life. We stand with the Christ who is the Son of God, in whom God entered this world to live with us, as one of us, beside us to let us understand just how much he loves us. We stand with the Christ in whom the God who made all that is and who sees all that ever was and all that ever will be accepted our fragility and our weakness to show us what we can do however fragile and weak we may think we are.

We stand with Jesus, right? We stand with Jesus as he stands before the Sanhedrin, before the body that will condemn him for speaking blasphemy about the Temple - the Temple that Herod rebuilt with the wealth that he had at his command - wealth accrued from the taxes he laid on folk who sometimes found themselves so poor they had to sell themselves into slavery. We stand with Jesus as he challenges a faith that had accommodated itself to the wealthy and powerful; as he challenges a comfortable faith that is all about carrying out the right rituals but cares nothing for the poor and the hungry and is scared that, if they raise their heads above the parapet then all they have may be taken away.

How often has the Church accommodated itself to the wealthy and the powerful? How often has the Church been more concerned with our rituals and arguments over doctrine than with the poverty and hunger that surrounds us? Which side are we on? Which side are we on

We stand with Jesus, right? We stand with Jesus as he stands before Pilate - the most powerful man in his part of the world; the man with the power of life and death and a man who, by all accounts, has little compunction about sentencing people to torture and death. A man who represents a society that enslaved people to work in mines and fields to generate wealth for the already wealthy  and didn’t much care whether they lived or died.  We stand with Jesus as he speaks of another kingdom - a kingdom in which the likes of Pilate have no sway.

How often has the Church been lured by the temptations of secular power? And when we’ve held it, how often have we used it to enforce conformity - sometimes with crusades or pyres? Which side are we on? Which side are we on?

We are among the many who spread their cloaks and threw down palm branches, right? That’s just the beginning of the road though. The challenge of this Sunday is, as Jesus passes us, to fall in behind him, to walk where he walks - among the poor and the homeless. To stand where he stands - among the victims of the powerful; the refugees and the enslaved. To offer challenge to the lies that the world often tells to protect wealth and power - that it’s a dog eat dog world and that charity begins at home.

That’s easy when you’re top dog and you don’t need charity. Jesus doesn’t offer us ‘easy’. He offers us challenge - the challenge to take up the Cross and follow him. Follow him in standing up for what is right and decent in a world that grows ever more cynical and hateful. Follow him in standing up for the poor and hungry in a world that would easily condemn them as lazy and feckless. Follow him in standing with refugees fleeing torture and fear in a world that would sink them in the Channel. Follow him in speaking for another kingdom - a kingdom where everyone matters. A kingdom where justice matters; where peace matters; where truth matters and where the poorest most easily forgotten child matters as much as the wealthiest most powerful celebrity

That is the kingdom of Heaven. Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

Prayer