Steadfast Through the Noise
When I was young, there was a phase where all the cool kids my age were playing with Perler beads. Hundreds of thousands of little plastic beads were being arranged and melted together on little peg boards, homes filled with colourful creations. Not many years later, it was plastic lanyards, called ‘scoobies’ in the UK, being woven together, hours spent concentrating on getting the threads in the right order. And for a while, Beanie Babies were all the rage, dozens of them lined up on the shelf in my bedroom. Then at some point, the world moved on. The next thing was the big thing. Trend after trend, the beads and lanyards and beanies forgotten.
In a strange way, we see the human instinct to get swept up in trends on display today. Palm Sunday is full of noise. Cloaks on the road, branches in the air, and people shouting “Hosanna”! And then, like an exercise in emotional whiplash, we get celebration and cruelty side by side. Public enthusiasm, and public rejection. A crowd welcoming Jesus, and then a crowd calling for death. Palm Sunday knows how quickly human beings can be swept along by the latest thing. And not much changes. Today, people make their living out of creating material which ‘trends’, and the fickleness of human nature is ever more clearly on display.
But I think there’s a certain hunger behind our persistent search for the next thing. When Jesus enters Jerusalem and the people start throwing down their cloaks and cutting branches, we shouldn’t assume they were stereotypically shallow. Instead they are hopeful. They are desperate. They are occupied people longing for rescue. Then here comes this prophet from Nazareth, riding in on a donkey with all the energy of promise and disruption. So of course people gather. Of course they enter into the excitement and hope of the moment. Of course they want to be near whatever God might be doing.
But then things don’t unfold the way they expect. Instead of seizing power, Jesus teaches. Instead of rallying an army, he shares meals. Instead of overthrowing Rome, he washes feet. Instead of defending himself, he is arrested. The crowd that had shouted “Hosanna” begins to fall silent, so that by the time we reach the Passion reading, the tone has completely shifted. Now there are different voices, or perhaps the same voices, crying out, “Crucify him.” It is uncomfortable to hear, and it is uncomfortable because Palm Sunday forces us to see something about ourselves, about our fickle human nature.
We all know what it is to be excited about a possibility and then discouraged when things don’t unfold the way we hoped. We know what it is to want a God who is strong and decisive and victorious, and then find ourselves faced instead with a God who suffers, who waits, who refuses violence. This is not the kind of king the crowd were hoping for, but it is the kind of king Jesus is.
This is the kind of kingdom we are members of, a kingdom of discipleship and steadfast hope. In a culture of branding, outrage, team loyalty, and endless reaction, discipleship can begin to look rather unfashionable. It is usually slower than a trend, quieter than a slogan, and more costly than a performance of virtue. But it is more real. It is the long work of being formed by Jesus rather than by the loudest people around us. And our great gift is that the love of Christ is not fragile. It doesn’t evaporate when our loyalty fails. It remains astonishingly close, even in those moments when we get swept up in something else.
So as people of faith we are reminded every year what it is that we believe in. We believe in a God who is faithful beyond our imagining, a love that is steadfast through every twist and turn. We tell the story again and again of God as a human among us. We take part in the story as an act of discipleship, living out the grand arc of Holy Week, encapsulating a full narrative movement from noise to silence to joy, from waving palms to standing at the cross, then looking beyond into the unknown newness of resurrection.
So today we are on the road into Jerusalem shouting with excitement. We wave our palms and sing our hosannas. We know what comes next, and Jesus did too. And yet Jesus keeps coming. He still rides down the road and enters the city. He offers himself to the world God loves.
This is the king we welcome today, not the one the crowd expected, but the one we most deeply need: the one who fills our hunger. The steady, unchanging love of God, and a hope that remains steadfast. Hosannah!
Matthew 21:1-11; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-54
