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Palm Sunday: Sunday of Passion
Mark 11:1-11
or John 12:12-16
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
The Liturgy of the Word
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Mark 14:1-15:47
or Mark 15:1-39, (40-47)
"And the spirit carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the earthly city of Jerusalem suffocating on smog, and it was immersed in the most impregnable darkness,
only illuminated along straight lines by orange-coloured lights, forming a grid.
The walls of the earthly City were 66 feet in width and 666 in height, the walls were surrounded by high voltage fences, the twelve steel doors were rarely open for fear of invading migrants Atop of the wall and at regular intervals, there were armoured look-out towers.
Outside the grey concrete walls of the city, a large crowd of raggedly clothed individuals stand near the walls, there is also a tent-city nearby. They all are waiting for the next opening of the doors. An Automatic Immigration Machine checks electronic identity cards matching it with The National DNA Information Bank.
Inside the city there are many churches, temples, synagogues, shopping malls and department stores. Most adults wear very convenient silicon smiling-masks, operated by micro-chips, implanted so perfectly onto each face that is difficult to know who is not wearing one.
The thing “in” seems to be to wear the latest sunglasses that can be converted into computer screens. Many have their ears surgically connected to small speakers. Each person has a Universal-remote control from where they can place calls, request music or TV programs,
surf the Net. However millions are spent in therapy
In a corner, below an overpass, near to the High Door of the East, a group of teenagers rap about police, violence, drugs and money.While garbage burns in an oil drum.
Outside the walls, both in the line and in the tent city something is happening. A fine acid mist is descending over a short stocky man, dark complexion, who is speaking vehemently, moving his arms in every direction, the crowd now sways as a human wave. His eye-brows are thick as the wings of a black bird.
From time to time he bursts into laughter and the crowd joins him in a universal helluva. Then they go to the High Steel Door of the East, the short man places his calloused hand over the Automatic Immigration Machine, closes his eyes, his lips are moving very fast, and alas,
the High Steel Door of the East slowly starts to open.The outside crowd enters the city amidst shouts of joy and much singing. The raggedly group of outsiders is dancing around the dark, short stocky man. Some people who were coming from a nearby Mega-Temple with their smiling-masks, dropped them, tear their speakers from their bleeding ears and smashed their Universal-remote controls. They all join the group of outsiders and the dark stocky man,
now being carried on shoulders.
The teens from the overpass, join the crowd too, now double its original size, while everybody joins them rapping as they move rapidly to the centre of the City, where the Old Red Cathedral was and now there is The Big City Mall. Surrounded by a manicured garden there is a chunk of the old Cathedral wall, in its centre a darkened gothic window hole.
The Army is getting ready, choppers fly over the crowd with powerful seeking lights. Armoured cars are taking position, loud sirens below. The infantry, in their green fatigues,
are blocking manicured Eastern Avenue.
The city, an useful metaphor for the society Jesus was entering into, a
city hostile, frightful, hypocritical, dehumanized. Very often you
feel outsiders in your own city, overpowered, displaced, pushed aside.
Use those feelings place yourself emotionally with Jesus and his
out-side crowd, out-side the walls, tired of waiting to enter, tired of
the wait to recover what you feel is rightly yours.
Jesus arrives at Jerusalem’s gates riding on a donkey. His disciples and simple-followers sing,
shout and dance as the King of Peace is taking the city by storm.
Jesus and his company of second-rate Galileans, the poor, the
passers-by, the onlookers, all of them go to the heart of Judaism, the
Temple, to reclaim the holy space, defiled by centuries of complacency
and conniving politicking.
The Tower Antonia, centre of Roman political and military power is just a stone’s throw away.
Rome has no quarrel with the god of the temple and his priests, as long
as taxes are paid. The priests have no bone to pick with Rome, as long
as the income of the Temple is not perturbed.
The Temple in control of the minds of the people and the Roman legions as a backup,
in case prayers and fasting are not enough to keep a lid on things.
This is the city Jesus is entering, he who was considered an outsider,
a second-class Jew from the racially mixed area of Galilee. He and his
followers, the hicks, the hosers, the rednecks of Jewish life, had
taken Wall Street by storm and put bankers and stock brokers into
flight.
My image of the earthly Jerusalem is impersonal, dehumanized, technologically efficient,
barricaded. Meaningless
Jesus does not attack the Temple per se. He knows it is not going to
last long. He predicts its destruction. He speaks of himself as the
Temple and the Romans and their local buddies as the demolition crew.
He wants to reclaim the heart of Judaism, to save its universal
message.
To purify it. He is very angry The heart of Jewish society needs an electric shock
before going into an irreversible flat-line. He is willing to burn his sails in order to accomplish it.
He is bringing into the city in his person the seed of the Heavenly
Jerusalem, the Jersualem of God. He is bringing into a hostile,
frightful, hypocritical society, the pure lines, the tree lined
avenues, the transparency of the walls, the openness of the gates, the
sheer beauty of the Heavenly Jerusalem. He is bringing the River of
the water of life to Golgotha. He is bringing the healing of the tree
of life to the sick, the poor and the dispossessed. In his person,
God’s project, the Peaceful Jerusalem and the Violent Jerusalem of
reality, collide.
He enters into the death-trap singing and dancing, and dies there. When
he dies, the curtain of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom.
He has entered into the Holy of Holies to find meaning in the
meaningless, to find life amidst death and corruption, to find
salvation in an instrument of spiritual slavery. Easter is the final
word of God in this confrontation. Not even death can lock us into a
cage. Jesus is always the open door, he is the bridge that closes the
chiasm, he is the open ocean and the open blue sky, where our problems
reconfigure and are re-casted into a wider Godscape.
We read in Revelation 21:10-22:5
"And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and
showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
{11} It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel,
like jasper, clear as crystal. {12} It has a great, high wall with
twelve gates,
and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the
names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites;And the wall of the city
has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve
apostles of the Lamb. ........ The wall is built of jasper, while the
city is pure gold, clear as glass. {19} The foundations of the wall of
the city are adorned with every jewel; ..... And the twelve gates are
twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of
the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. {22} I saw no temple in
the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
{23} And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the
glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. {24} The nations
will walk by its light,
and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. {25} Its gates will never be shut by day-
-and there will be no night there. {26} People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations."
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