We need to hear the social dynamics of the Gospels. Here they are astonishing. Jesus is surrounded by personal adulation. Normal people milk the crowds, enjoy the popularity, become slightly smug or think of the next step; at all events they are content. Jesus is very different. He was surrounded by adulation, but was thinking ahead to the possible coming tragedy of Jerusalem, the greatest national tragedy of the Jewish people. The issue crops up a number of times during the last week. It is, of course, inescapably political. You could almost say, Jesus was obsessed about it, and so, we, with him, need to stop on the way into Jerusalem and see what is going on.

Social Science and Prophecy
First, we need to have a look at contemporary social science and prophecy and understand what prophecy is. Social scientists believe in prediction. The Holy Grail is the prediction of events which will happen in a year, or six months, or even tomorrow on the Stock Market. Actually, as every Social Scientist knows, predictions do not work out. Life is too complicated and people can, to some extent, choose. To see ahead even to an event like the collapse of Western finance in 2008 was beyond almost all economists. Jesus, of course, is producing a prediction “success”. He was predicting the Roman destruction of Jerusalem some forty years later, although the timing is not given, an amazing bit of prescience. For this reason, some scholars say it must be a later interpolation and not real prediction. But that will not do. The multiple references to this catastrophe embedded in the history of this last week make it impossible to extract, any more than we can remove Dunkirk from the Second World War. More than this, it fits with Jesus approach to public affairs throughout the Gospels. So, there is no doubt to me that it happened as recorded.

But we are ignoring the difference between prediction and prophecy. Prophesy is really much deeper than prediction. It gets rid of the false omniscience and puts human responsibility back in the picture. It says, “This is what will happen if you continue the way you are going without reference to God and God’s wisdom.” It takes in the life direction of the nation. It is warning of the way that is coming if the people do not see the Zechariah 9 meaning of peace.

The False Nationalist Hope.
Jesus comes to the Mount of Olives and sees the city of Jerusalem beneath him. He weeps and says, “If you only knew today what is needed for peace! But now you cannot see it! The time will come when your enemies will surround you with barricades, blockade you, and close in on you from every side. They will completely destroy you and the people within your walls; not a single stone will they leave in its place, because you did not recognize the time when God came to save you!” (Luke 19:41-44) It tells it like it will be four decades hence, because….Of course, the depth of recognition needed is completely beyond them. They cannot see the long-term. They cannot see that the Jewish nationalism, present among the Zealots and re-inforced by the Temple Party will devastate the nation. The people, mostly, do not see. There is no magic Jesus can do here to make things better. There has to be a change of political mind and understanding.

This is an attempt to make these people who are praising him and perhaps seeing him as the national deliverer, see that they are deeply wrong. But it is also a deeper truth about nationalism, constructing enemies and ending wars before they happen. We British might understand the lesson. We British controlled India through the sword and gun. There were massacres, and famines. Churchill and others wanted the jewel in the British Empire, but Gandhi, taught by Tolstoy, taught by Jesus, understood non-violence and refusing to make the colonial power an enemy, and British control ended without a similar conflagration. It is possible Britain and India will never be at war. Power relationships can deconstruct and change Jesus’ way, but still many politicians do not see the Gospel of peace, but up the ante, do enemies, arms, threats, defence and attack. Still we do not see, and we may feel some of the weeping distress of Jesus overlooking Jerusalem.

No Nationalist god.
He was also telling all people, and us, about God. The gods of the time were national, nationalist. Yesterday, I nipped into the Cambridge Classical Archeology Museum and took in the great Zeus bronze javelin thrower statue, as I call it. The Trident is aimed away from the body line and down to pin some creature to the ground. Many gods were gods of war, and national gods, like Athena in the Parthenon, dominated world culture then and still do. Often, they built in political and religious worship to a matrix, but Jesus refuses this. He refuses the Temple as a national icon, refuses to hate enemies, will completely confuse Pilate by not being an enemy, and here predicts a national calamity, never a route to popularity. Here, as consistently throughout Jesus life and teaching God is not on our side, or against us, for God is the Father of all peoples and deconstructs all nationalisms and religious formulations of nationalism, whether they be Nazi, Islamic, pseudo Christian, Zionist, American or whatever. So deep stuff is happening here.

All Lives matter.
Jesus does not let the issue drop, and as Luke reports, on the way to the cross, when women are weeping at this beaten, bleeding, to be crucified man with thorns pushed into his head, he turns to them, and says, “Women of Jerusalem! Don’t cry for me, but for yourselves and your children. For the days are coming when people will say, ‘How lucky are the women who never had children, who never bore babies, who never nursed them! That will be the time when people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ And to the hills. Hide us!’ for if such things as these happen when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:28-31) To have such a focus on the way to Golgotha is amazing. It confronts the women with what will happen. Is looks at the process by which evil is generated, even suggesting that worse things than this will happen, and it warns. Perhaps a million died in Jerusalem as they flocked to the capital in AD 70 for the miraculous deliverance which did not happen, though big figures are not too accurate at this time. It was slaughter and destruction. The Temple Treasury was looted of vast amounts of gold. Bodies piled up and the Romans sacked the city, fires and blood. But hundreds, perhaps thousands, Christians and others, put Jesus’ warnings together and did not die or succumb to this false psychosis. Even here, Jesus was saving lives.

So, Jesus’ way of peace – loving enemies, the warning that those who take the sword perish by the sword, the sorting quarrels, the absence of control and coercion, the spreading of peace house to house, not accumulating wealth, threatening – was not understood and is still not understood. Jesus’ grief at the slaughter of war sits alongside our arming to destroy the world many times over and spawning wars and refugees across the globe. When will we ever learn? When will we learn?

The churchy view of this event often does not quite get there. There are palm crosses mixing messages, because the palms were adulation and the cross was suffering, and there is the King but not a King sermon. But let us insist, because Jesus did, on the King, the real ruler king who is President, Prime Minister, who runs the show like Herod the Great or Caesar, because at that time there were no ceremonial monarchs. Jesus was doing politics, deliberately and fully. No-one could doubt the choreography, deliberately chosen. From Matthew, Mark and Luke we know the exact process. The donkey and colt would be unseen to Jesus and the crowd as they walked towards the village. But Jesus knew they were there and the two disciples were to go on ahead, untie the animals from a doorway and claim them. As Mark explains, Jesus had pre-planned the response. “If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back shortly.’” (Mk. 11:2-3) Jesus rode on the colt, on whom no-one had sat, after cloaks had been spread on it, with the mother donkey travelling behind making sure the colt was not scared. The whole process was imperious, though slightly strange.

The crowd already gathered from Jericho and growing as the famous Rabbi came to the City were thronging round Jesus. It was added to by those who had heard of the raising of Lazarus not long before. This was a big public spectacle, and Jesus made it into the entry event, practised by Roman victors in every city they conquered. The great Victory Arch, the Arch of Titus, built in Rome to celebrate the sacking of Jerusalem in AD70 was not yet. The victory march was just people and adulation. Here it was cloaks, carrying the idea that this Man and his animal should not walk on the ground like ordinary people, and palm fronds, the great sweeping, beautiful confetti of the day. Matthew describes it as “a very large crowd”; let’s guess it was somewhere between 200-1,000; some went ahead of him and some followed in the normal processional style. (Matt: 21:8-9). They were shouting and praising the Man on the ass as their political leader. Jesus did the victory parade, no ifs and buts, this was a victory march. ”Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord” suggested he was King, he was God’s King, and he would deliver the people from the Romans. We know the exact tenor of the situation from Luke. Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples/ followers.” They did not like the obvious Messianic entry into Jerusalem, the take-over of the City run by them and the Temple Party. The Sanhedrin had already met, and the Chief Priest was saying that this man needed to die. They did not like the confrontation challenging their position. Jesus response to them completely countered what they were saying. “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19: 39-40) In other words, “This is the way it is and should be.” He is the King coming into Jerusalem, there is no other possibility.

This seems arrogant, but it is not, because of what follows as the crowd comes to the Mount of Olives with its view across to the Temple and the City of Jerusalem.. No self-glorifying King in the middle of a seeming triumph with the crowds cheering starts crying and identifying the defeat and suffering of his capital city. It is just the case that Jesus is light years ahead of us. Yes, King, Tsar, President, Prime Minister, undeniably political. Yes, this is unquestionably true. But, it takes on the whole of politics. In this case it is the sacking of Jerusalem in AD70 when perhaps a million were killed and the blood ran so thick in the streets it put fires out. This is realism, not some nice metaphorical statement of humility. Indeed, the way this story will be located in churches this Easter distracts from what the event actually said. The Government is on his shoulders.

What kind of Government? Zechariah 9 is brought into the frame by the donkey. Jesus deliberately cloaks himself in Zechariah 9 as he rides into Zion. It describes the King coming into Jerusalem in the following words: “Rejoice, rejoice, people of Zion! Shout for joy, you people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you! He comes triumphant and victorious, but humble and riding on a donkey – on a colt, the foal of a donkey. The Lord says, ‘I will remove the war chariots from Israel and take the horses from Jerusalem; the bows used in battle will be destroyed. Your king will make peace among the nations; he will rule from sea to sea, from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.’” All commentators agree this is the case. The contrast is between the conquering imperial invader coming in on a warhorse, and Jesus coming in on a young donkey with his feet scarcely off the ground. It is a parody of conventional kingship which changes the conception completely, though the crowds cannot understand this, hope he is their deliverer and go ballistic with joy. Jesus insists they should not be silenced; it is a valid act of worship and praise.

Their political ruler has come to them, but the nature of rule is changed in the greatest ideological revolution in politics. Make weapons or destroy weapons? Make war or make peace? Self-glorifying leaders or humble leaders? National conflict or international peace? Political service or political control? Ruling by fear or ruling by assent. Ruling humbly or self-glorifying rule. Ruling by truth or ruling by power? As this political confrontation emerges in the journey to the cross, the danger is that it will be made apolitical, put in churches, seen as “an ideal”, seen as “religion”, sentimentalised, surrounded by imagery, reduced to a personal, spiritual, distant thing, rather than the truth which will take out military dictators, fake news, empires, the suppression of the people and the rule of the rich. We might not see immediately our ability, if we have it, to vote meaningfully, and Jesus’ insistence on people choosing or not choosing to follow him, but it is there. As he goes into Jerusalem on a foal, he is making an inescapable political statement about the nature of rule. Of course, Easter is not all political or mainly political, but it is strongly and unavoidably political, and this truth cannot be hidden in our age.

King of the Jews
That Easter was political can’t really be in doubt. Titles define politics – President, Shah, Prime Minister, Chancellor, Minister, Czar, Ayatollah. The terms in Jesus, time were different, but served the same purpose. King was obvious. At his birth the Three Wise Men came seeking the King of the Jews; at his death it was pinned on the cross. It was deeply contentious to Herod Antipas, Pilate, the Zealots and the Jerusalem people. As we shall see, the term was applied to Jesus and accepted by him.

The Son of David.
The Jewish royal family was the Davidic line. David had brought Israel together. He was Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts rolled into one. The title Son of David conferred kingly legitimacy. Matthew begins with a genealogy which describes Jesus as son of David and son of Abraham. It traces the line though recognizible Jewish history down until it rests on Jesus. Bethlehem is understood as the City of David and everything points to the royal line coming down to this man. Of course vast numbers would be in the Davidic line over a thousand years of breeding, but Matthew and common knowledge at the time made it significant. It may not be significant to us, and it does not seem to have been to Jesus either, because he sends up the idea shortly before Easter, but being Son of David does put you in the Prince of Wales position, the heir apparent, and it is part of the narrative of the times.

Son of Man.
The title, the Son of Man, is different. It appears in the book of Daniel in a vision. Daniel had been prophesying around the Babylonian, Median, Persian and Greek empires; so this was not local, but geopolitical, world significant prophecy in intent. Daniel launches into a vision rooted into the Ancient of Days, the God of all Time. “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and those of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.” (Dan. 7:13-14) Another less awesome use of the term is in Ezekiel. It is used repeatedly as God addresses the prophet who will then speak truth to the people. The Son of Man will prophesy in the name of God. So this title was not without clout from the Jewish scriptures, and when Jesus entitles himself with it, he is not being a shrinking violet. Often the term is used by Jesus to indicate a time of judgement or reckoning. We will see more of its use in the final week.

The Messiah/the Christ.
Messiah is a Jewish term woven into Jewish national life and hopes. Christ is the same word transliterated to Greek, when its meaning also changes because the Jewish focus goes. The Jews had been slaves in Egypt and subjugated and divided for much of their history up to the time of Christ. In fact something like 90% of the two thousand years of history between Abraham and Christ found the kingdom divided and controlled. That was another reason why David, the Kingdom Unifier, was so important; he was like William the Conqueror, 1066 and all that. The Messiah was the one who under God would bring the nation together again. The idea had grown especially after the exile to Babylon and under the Maccabees who fought off the powers threatening Jewish independence. But with omnipotent Roman control, the Jews were waiting. The Messiah was the one who would bring the nation together under God’s laws and free them from oppressors. It involved enormous expectations of a single heroic political leader. John Chapter One conveys the mood. John the Baptist is asked but denies that he is Messiah. But he will point to the one who is. Jesus new disciples buzz with the possibility that Jesus is Messiah, the Christ. Jesus accepts that is the case and closes down the subject until further developments take place.

The idea is problematic, a conquering hero model, and throughout the Gospels Jesus modifies it to his own purposes – no conquest, no hostility towards the imperial power and no bloodshed. We will see this drama unfold in the last week. But Messiah is as political as Garibaldi, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Churchill, Stalin and King Alfred. When “Christians” came later to call Jesus the Christ, it was in acknowledgement that he was Messiah of the whole world, not just Israel. Now the word is used like a surname, instead of Jesus Smith or something else, but we will restore it to its proper significance. As Jesus stood before Caiaphas in the secret trial at night, Caiaphas asked, “In the name of the living God I now put you on oath..” (At this point Jesus probably thought, ‘Oh, there’s a contradiction there I’ve been pointing out for ages.) “tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.?” The priestly party did not want a Messiah messing up their system. Jesus answered and the death sentence was announced. Messiah was political alright.

Son of God.
Jesus primary task in the Gospels is to teach people about God. Part of this was to deconstruct the religious attitudes of his day. God was not reached through ritual, through observing the law, through codes of righteousness or through special places like temples. Rather God is with us, as Creator and potentially as Father, hidden by sin but shown by Jesus. He is the Son of God, God with us. The title Son of God is therefore much more than political. It is: if you want some idea of God, look at and listen to the Son of God. Let him teach you. But it is also political, and at a deep level. In the last week Jesus tells a parable. It contains the line, “The tenants said to themselves, ‘This is the owner’s son. Come on, let’s kill him and we will get the property.!’” ( Matt. 21:38) God is the owner. Jesus is the Son of God. Kill Jesus and get the property. Rulers rule as if they own the nation. They grasp, and they kill to grasp. But what they do to the Son is a central witness to their corruption and the falseness of their claims, because every ruler is accountable to God and the Son of God. So the Son of God challenges everything in the political systems. 1. Rulers do not own. Politicians are tenants, looking after things for a bit, and they must first know their place before God and the Son of God.

The Lord Jesus Christ.
Lords are a bit anachronistic. They sit in the House of Lords. They wear garters. They are aristocracy. The word is a bit confusing and it is easy to get the word wrong in the Bible. In the Jewish Scriptures “Yahweh” is the Name given to God, though they require us to note that no name is adequate for the Creator of the whole universe. That is transliterated as “Lord” in many English Bibles. But the Gospel word Lord is different – Adonai, Master, Boss. The disciples use it as a normal address to Jesus, like “Teacher/Rabbi” It could be a bit like “Sir” or “Ma’am” used to be at school, and so it is not conferring the status of God upon Jesus, but is merely a respect word. But even here there is a twist, because Jesus says, “ Many will come to me saying Lord, Lord, but do not do what I say… the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.” So, if you say, “Lord” you must mean it. 2. Words and actions must match, otherwise what is constructed will not stand up. Jesus is here nailing the hypocrisy where words are not met by policy; the title must do what it says on the box. When Jesus claims titles like Son of Man or King of the Jews, he knows they have to be true. As we see shortly, wearing these titles will kill him. So though we and he wear them lightly, these will be cashed and they are, inescapably political.
These titles nail a reality, but of all people, Jesus did not rely on them. Indeed, the opposite. He lambasted the lording people, those who constructed superiority and their own power bases, and insisted on not so doing. No palaces, houses, servants, soldiers, taxes, fighting, opulent clothing, except when the Roman soldiers dressed him in royal purple to mock him before killing him. Jesus did not pull the political status that others sought. He quietly informed his disciples that he was the Messiah, the Christ, but then damped the information so that it did not muddy the scene. Rather than seeking popularity, he talked and walked away from mass support. When he attracted crowds because of his miracles, John notes Jesus “did not trust himself to them, because he knew them all. There was no need for anyone to tell him about them, because he himself knew what was in their hearts.” (John 2:24) We note that even there, in a clumsy way, John fingers several principles – 3. Do not trust adulation; it is often built on shallow reactions. 4. Never give up your judgment to crowds, especially when they are acting under group pressures. 5. Being believed in is a false position because it involves a simplistic, often group response, and nobody who is a sinner and fallible should be believed in unconditionally and often people give support from superficial motives. 6. Political office confers no status or superiority. So, we need to go on a journey with this man and see where it leads.