Palm Sunday
In the Hebrew calendar today is the Sunday immediately before the feast of the Passover - a moveable feast which is extremely late this year -and in the Christian calendar that make is Palm Sunday.
So Christians today are remembering the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, welcomed by cheering crowds who laid palm branches and items of clothing before him in tribute, and shouting "Hosanna!"
And yet six days later, with no apparent reason to justify the change in attitude, those who had welcomed Jesus were silent or joined in as crowds screamed "Crucify Him" and he was put to death.
An American writer once wrote that this was like giving someone a ticker-tape parade and then hanging them: and yet the approval of the mob can be as fickle as the approval of a church hierarchy or an authoritarian government, whether or not the former is prompted by one of the latter.
Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, particularly at the time of Stalin's purges and the "Night of the Long Knives" respectively, had jokes about people arrested on consecutive days for repeating opposite slogans on the wrong side of a policy reversal. One soviet version had three communist party members in a cell, who, after a little hesitation, asked each other what they were there for.
Public opinion in democratic nations can be equally fickle. The biblical saying
"Put not your trust in princes, not in any child of man" (Psalm 146 verse 3)
applies not just to kings and dictators but equally to political actors ion a democracy including the voters.
So those who do something to win approval from their fellows may find that approval fleeting. However, those who do something they believe to be the right course of action will find that the knowledge that they have done what they thought was right is less easy to take away from them.
In the Christian story, Jesus knew even as the crowds cheered him, that he was riding to his death, but he rode on anyway. Ecce homo - behold the man!
So Christians today are remembering the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, welcomed by cheering crowds who laid palm branches and items of clothing before him in tribute, and shouting "Hosanna!"
And yet six days later, with no apparent reason to justify the change in attitude, those who had welcomed Jesus were silent or joined in as crowds screamed "Crucify Him" and he was put to death.
An American writer once wrote that this was like giving someone a ticker-tape parade and then hanging them: and yet the approval of the mob can be as fickle as the approval of a church hierarchy or an authoritarian government, whether or not the former is prompted by one of the latter.
Both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, particularly at the time of Stalin's purges and the "Night of the Long Knives" respectively, had jokes about people arrested on consecutive days for repeating opposite slogans on the wrong side of a policy reversal. One soviet version had three communist party members in a cell, who, after a little hesitation, asked each other what they were there for.
- "Because yesterday I was overheard saying 'Down with Comrade Popov!'" said the first.
- "Because today I was overheard saying 'Long Live Comrade Popov!'" said the second.
- "I am Comrade Popov," replied the third.
Public opinion in democratic nations can be equally fickle. The biblical saying
"Put not your trust in princes, not in any child of man" (Psalm 146 verse 3)
applies not just to kings and dictators but equally to political actors ion a democracy including the voters.
So those who do something to win approval from their fellows may find that approval fleeting. However, those who do something they believe to be the right course of action will find that the knowledge that they have done what they thought was right is less easy to take away from them.
In the Christian story, Jesus knew even as the crowds cheered him, that he was riding to his death, but he rode on anyway. Ecce homo - behold the man!
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