I've been quiet on the blog front and so as I journey through Holy Week I thought that I'd offer seven reflections and seven pieces of music to accompany the week.
The triumphal entry is anything but triumphal. I was reading a commentator who suggested that it was in fact a parody of previous Triumphal Entries - Triumphal entries into the city of Jerusalem that have been all hubris and then, whilst initially successful, were brutally crushed by the Roman military. The people of Jerusalem would have seen this before - they'd have expected a messiah to enter on a horse and claim that the city was theirs - and so when jesus enters on a colt what do they think? I think that they just laugh! Laugh at this man mocking the previous triumphal entries, mocking those that have gone before him.
But actually It's not really much of an entry anyway, it's a reckie, a brief nose at the city and then back to Bethany for the night (according to Mark's Gospel). It's all a bit of an anti-climax. Yet we celebrate it as we like the excitement, we like the celebrity of it all - Jesus Christ SuperStar on a Donkey. Well I don't think that Jesus liked it - I think that he saw a crowd as fickle as ever, wanting a messiah, but willing to drop him at any moment. Jesus was unimpressed and so he left and went to stay with his friends...friends who stood by him in the good times and the hard rather than the fickle crowd of celebrity.
And so a piece of music. I'm picking a song by Pulp and is called 'Dogs are Everywhere'. It was an early Album and also an acoustic on the B side of Common People. I'm picking it as I think that its about the stench of celebrity, someone wanting to be along and yet where ever he goes there are dogs, dogs that try to drain the life blood out of him...
Thanks for this. Very good. I like the line in the song 'Sometimes I have to wonder about the dog in me'.
Posted by: karen | April 17, 2011 at 11:29 PM