If I asked you to imagine the Christmas story…

I suspect that most of you would picture a traditional nativity scene:

a rustic barn with rough wooden crib…

Mary, Joseph, and a newborn baby…

surrounded by shepherds and sheep…

perhaps even some cows…

and three wise men.

After all, that’s how it’s been imagined in countless works of art down the ages…

and in numerous Christmas carols.

But the census, the “inn”, and the stable––

with Joseph and the heavily pregnant Mary travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem––

only occur in Luke’s story.

Whereas Matthew’s story presents Mary and Joseph as residents of Bethlehem…

not visitors…

and implies that it all took place rather mundanely, rather matter-of-factly.

Furthermore, the shepherds only appear in Luke’s version. 

They come.

They see.

They return.

All, supposedly, in the space of, say, less than an hour.

End of story.

Whereas the star…

and those mysterious Wise Men from the East… 

only appear in Matthew’s story.

And they turn up anywhere up to two years after the birth of Jesus.

The Christmas story…

as it’s been so often portrayed down the centuries…

and as so many of us probably imagine it still…

is a conflation of stories––

a conflation that glosses over irreconcilable contradictions.

In so conflating them… 

we miss the different theological points that each writer was trying to make.

 

That doesn’t just happen at Christmas time.

It also happens at Easter.

We conflate the different and often contradictory accounts of Jesus’s death.

Thus, for example, we talk about the ‘seven last words from the cross’;

and we try to imagine that the bandits crucified with him taunted him…

but somehow one, later, repented.

And, in so doing, we fail to listen to each unique story…

missing the specific nuances of each…

and each author’s particular theological interpretation of this momentous event.

For so much of Christian history we have consistently conflated conflicting stories…

rather than hearing them… 

and imaging them… 

as the different authors intended.

 

The same is true of Palm Sunday.

Note, it’s universally known as “Palm” Sunday… 

but it’s only in John’s account that Palm branches are mentioned.

In Matthew’s and Mark’s versions it’s clear that the crowd cut down olive branches…

but they’re laid on the road not waved about.

And, in Luke’s version––

which we heard read this morning––

there are no branches at all.

In Mark’s and Matthew’s stories it all takes place within a bigger processional event…

and it’s the larger crowd that acclaims and welcomes Jesus as “King”.

Not so in Luke’s story.

The sense you get from this author is of a fairly small and insignificant event.

The disciples fetch the young donkey…

put their cloaks on it…

Jesus gets on and rides it towards Jerusalem…

and it’s the disciples who strew their garments on the road…

and who acclaim him as “King”––

not a large crowd of bystanders.

The only bystanders, in fact, are a few Pharisees mingled in with Jesus’ followers…

who…

clearly…

are offended…

and demand that he rebuke his followers.

 

So, I hear you ask, what difference does that make?

 

In Mark’s and Matthew’s stories––

where the wider crowd acclaims Jesus but a week later will clamour for his execution––

the fickleness of the crowd…

which reflects our own fickleness in response to God…

is clearly articulated––

a point much beloved of preachers down the ages.

But not so in Luke’s story.

As this author imagines the scene…

it’s a small, insignificant event that largely escapes the public eye.

Virtually no one outside of Jesus’ followers is aware of it.

As an enacted parable…

as a piece of street theatre…

as a public protest…

it’s all a bit of a failure––

apart from eliciting the ire of some members of the religious establishment.

The poignancy…

and the irony…

is only heightened if all of this took place just prior to the celebration of the Passover––

as all of the Gospels affirm––

because, at the same time that this was happening…

the Roman governor and his troops…

may well have been processing into the city via another gate as a show of force…

as they did prior to any festival when nationalistic tensions might be running high.

This act of protest by Jesus and his followers––

which, if we’re perfectly honest…

was an overtly political act…

proclaiming that the way of God is one of peace and justice…

not the exercise of might and power––

was largely lost on the broader community…

who didn’t see it and…

most likely…

would not have understood it or him even if they had.

Then again, it’s not clear that even the disciples understood.

They praise God for “all the deeds of power that they had seen”…

and they proclaim Jesus as “King” seemingly because of that.

But that simply implies that…

for them… 

Jesus was the king that Israel had been expecting…

who would liberate the nation and throw out the Romans.

They didn’t really understand the point of his parodied political protest…

because they were still stuck in traditional…

outmoded…

simplistic ways of thinking;

unable to see beyond what they had been conditioned to expect;

unable to see that Jesus was doing something radically new and different…

which didn’t fit with their old ways of thinking.

On the other hand, the Pharisees were angry at the shouts of acclamation…

and, no doubt, angry with Jesus and his actions too… 

because they perceived this as a threat to the stability of the nation.

I mean, this wasn’t the first peasant uprising…

and the Romans had dealt with each one ruthlessly.

So they would have been fearful of reprisals.

But they also would have perceived it as a personal threat.

After all, the Pharisees were part of the ruling class of Israel.

Sure, they didn’t like the Romans.

But, ultimately, the Pharisees benefited personally from Roman rule.

It brought security…

and it brought them economic prosperity.

The actions of Jesus and his followers threatened all of that.

Neither the disciples, nor the Pharisees, really understood what Jesus was trying to say…

and, by implication, who he was.

 

And perhaps, therein, lies the point of this story in Luke’s Gospel.

 

If Jesus were to come to us today…

how would we respond if he staged a public political parody…

or led a protest rally through our streets?

Would we recognise him?

Would we welcome him?

Would we ignore him or dismiss him as some idealistic, bleeding-heart lefty;

or as a dangerous Middle-Eastern radical, hell-bent on destroying our way of life;

or as an uneducated and un-hinged fanatic?

Would we be open to hear what he had to say if he criticised our politics…

our religion…

or our way of life?

Or would we simply reject him because he didn’t fit with what we have been conditioned to expect;

because he didn’t fit the Jesus that we have constructed in our own image;

or the one that we have constructed to reinforce our beliefs and ideologies?

 

That’s the challenge of Luke’s “Palm Sunday” story:

will we recognise…

and will we follow…

the Jesus who does come to us…

when it’s not the Jesus that we expect?