From the Rector of Sarum St. Martin’s

Palm Sunday 2020

I begin by quoting a most brutal line from Shakespeare, but on this Palm Sunday when we have just entered Jerusalem with Our Lord it is appropriate to have in mind these words of Mark Anthony after his oration on the death of Caesar: ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!’

We must first recap on what Palm Sunday celebrates: The Triumphal Entry of Jesus into the Holy City of Jerusalem.  Jesus could and often did, slip into Jerusalem unremarked, after all He is a Rabbi so for Him to come often to the Temple to take part in Temple ritual was nothing strange.  But on this day there was nothing unremarked about the way in which He entered the Holy City.  Not only was it a quite openly public entrance, it was also in form as the King of David’s house and line would enter Jerusalem; ‘Shout for joy, daughter of Jerusalem! Look, your king is approaching, he is vindicated and victorious,   humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey’, as God had spoken through the prophet Zechariah.  And as if this were not enough the crowds poured out of the City crying Hosanna!, meaning ‘God deliver us’; ‘Hosanna to the son of David!  Blessed is he who is coming in the name of the Lord!’  We might render this acclamation as, ‘The Son of David, who is here entering the Holy City to retake it for God Most High will deliver the people of God, Israel, from all its sinfulness.’  In the spectacle of Palm Sunday Jesus is quite explicitly stating that He and He alone is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.  That He and He alone is the True High Priestly King of Israel come to cleanse Israel of their sins by taking back the Temple for God Most High from a corrupt high priesthood.  We really should be in no doubt; what Jesus is today doing is deliberate. But He was not being driven along by the crowds drunk on success and fame.  No, He was coming in the plan of God Most High to make atonement for Israel in the renewed and pure Temple of His Body.  And be in no doubt either, that He came into Jerusalem in Love for all of her people, those who opposed and hated Him as much as those who claimed to love Him, for the Love of God in Jesus is the perfect manifestation of the Love which is at the heart of the Holy Trinity.  As St. John reminds us, ‘For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son …’  And the reaction of the Chief Priests of the Temple, the Scribes of the Temple and the Pharisees was ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!’

For those who know medieval history, to cry havoc was once a command for invaders to begin looting and killing the defenders' town.  The Chief Priests and their allies saw just who Jesus was, or in their minds, who Jesus claimed to be, and they would stop at nothing to deny Him, even to the extent of bringing down everything around their ears.  They saw that Jesus was a threat to everything that they held sacred, that if He was not stopped the Romans would destroy them all; so indeed, ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!’ and get rid of this Man, whatever the cost.  Caiaphas, the high priest that year, saw this plainly and thus he ‘had counselled the Jews, ‘It is better for one man to die for the people.’  Put the ‘dogs of war onto Him, that we may be spared the havoc’.