There's much to learn anew or reaffirm in Mark Shea's Palm Sunday post over at The National Catholic Register:
We sometimes hear it said that Jesus was just a teacher full of punchy aphorisms and turns of phrase:
a mystic who wandered around saying nice things about the niceness of being Nice. But his stupid disciples, being 2000 years, stupider than Extremely Clever Us, managed to completely misunderstand him and construct an elaborate religion around him that he absolutely never intended. It's a narrative in which our culture places an extraordinary amount of faith--far more faith, in fact, than the Christian story requires, since the Christian story does not require us to believe in absolutely ridiculous claims about human psychology that nobody would ever advance for one second were it not for the special need to debunk Christianity. To be sure, the faith advances extraordinary claims--the two principal ones being "God became man" and "Jesus rose from the dead in glory." These claims have been disputed as matters of fact down through the ages, of course, but they are not ridiculous claims on the face of them. Anybody can see that, if there is a God, hemight if he chose, become human and he might, if he chose, rise from the dead. Whether he did or not is a matter of evidence and faith. But there is nothing prima facie laughable about the claim, unless you happen to have an irrational prejudice against miracles.
But it is laughable--Monty Python laughable--that a man could deliberately gather a group of disciples around him and spend years assuring them that he is not the Messiah, all while they nodded and repeated back to him, "Exactly. You are the Messiah." It's silly to say that Jesus labored for three years to say, "Don't worship me. Worship God" and saw nothing amiss as his disciples murmured as one, "Yesssss, Maaaaster. We worship God and you." If Jesus was really the brilliant teacher polite unbelievers say he was, you have to wonder why he said, "This is my body" and not the much clearer and more obvious "This symbolizes my body". And if he didn't want to be called "son of David" (that is, "Messiah") then you have to wonder why he kept saying, "You rang?" when people shouted "Son of David, have mercy on me!" instead of chewing them out for being silly.
Here's the deal: the disciples thought Jesus was the Messiah because he claimed--in a dozen ways--to be the Messiah. No. Really. He did. And Palm Sunday is the most public and obvious claim of all. The only reason we don't see that clearly is because we aren't steeped in Jewish history.
a mystic who wandered around saying nice things about the niceness of being Nice. But his stupid disciples, being 2000 years, stupider than Extremely Clever Us, managed to completely misunderstand him and construct an elaborate religion around him that he absolutely never intended. It's a narrative in which our culture places an extraordinary amount of faith--far more faith, in fact, than the Christian story requires, since the Christian story does not require us to believe in absolutely ridiculous claims about human psychology that nobody would ever advance for one second were it not for the special need to debunk Christianity. To be sure, the faith advances extraordinary claims--the two principal ones being "God became man" and "Jesus rose from the dead in glory." These claims have been disputed as matters of fact down through the ages, of course, but they are not ridiculous claims on the face of them. Anybody can see that, if there is a God, hemight if he chose, become human and he might, if he chose, rise from the dead. Whether he did or not is a matter of evidence and faith. But there is nothing prima facie laughable about the claim, unless you happen to have an irrational prejudice against miracles.Read the rest, invigorate the faith.
Skip it, and don't.
A joyous Palm Sunday to each of you.
