Palm Sunday, 10 April 2022
Austwick, Keasden
You know that story of old King Canute who set his throne on the sea shore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. It ends with the tide rising as usual, dashing over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. [1] Two things surprise us about this story: firstly the king’s excessive sense of self-importance, his conceit in assuming that his power extended not only over his people but over the waves themselves; and secondly, it’s surprising that his subjects did not challenge him in any way, that no-one warned him off his potential drowning, as though every single subject in the land somehow failed to see what was surely coming to him.
In Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale an emperor spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters, and two swindlers offer to supply him with magnificent clothes they say are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. As they set to work, the emperor and his officials visit to check their progress, and see that their looms are empty but - to avoid being thought a fool - each pretends otherwise. Finally, when the emperor's suit is “finished”, they mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The emperor, his courtiers and all the townsfolk go along with the pretence, none wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that “He hasn't got anything on.” “Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?” said the child’s apologetic father. But one person whispered to another, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on.” Then the people realised they’d all been fooled, and the whole town cried out at last, "But he hasn't got anything on!" Although startled, the emperor continued his procession, walking more proudly than ever. [2]
So today on Palm Sunday of all days I invite you to join me in saying, Hosanna! to all who puncture the pomp of kings and rulers, to reveal the hidden truth of their sorry passing powers; Hosanna! to those who illuminate the pitiful deference of their subjects so as to open the people’s eyes to other outlooks.
Today I say Hosanna! to the graffiti artist Banksy who takes his airbrush to the Separation Wall which permits the president and people of Israel to assume superiority and control over their Palestinian neighbours - and Banksy paints holes on the Palestinian side of the wall with scenes of beautiful hillsides and olive groves in the gap he creates on his concrete canvas; he paints people walking up staircases over the top of the wall, and ladders, and in one place a life-size image of an Israeli soldier with the palms of his hands spread against the wall being frisked by a tiny Palestinian girl in a pink dress. [3]
Today I say Hosanna! to Sroja Popovic and his fellow-members of the student movement that brought down the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. Early in their campaigning they realised that Milošević only continued in power because he made people afraid, and that the only thing that could trump fear was laughter. And that ‘humour doesn’t just make you chuckle - it makes you think.’ So their protests included arranging a mass birthday party for the president where the people were invited to leave him birthday cards with messages which turned out to be largely uncomplimentary, and gifts - like a jail uniform and a one way ticket to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. [4]
Today I say Hosanna! to others inspired by Popovic to burst the bubble of pompous presidents; like the Russian protestors avoiding being shot at by instead arranging a line of Lego people, Kinder Surprise toys, model soldiers, soft toys and toy cars on a Siberian city street, holding little banners complaining about government corruption - forcing the authorities to have to ridiculously follow up by outlawing toys from protesting. Or the residents of a Polish town who took their TVs for a walk in wheelbarrows to show that they weren’t at home watching state propaganda on them. Or Syrian trouble-makers who hid tiny speakers playing anti-Assad songs in bins and manure piles, so that his hated police enforcers would have to dig around in them to turn them off. [5]
Today I say Hosanna! to those climate activists who dress as dinosaurs holding banners saying “You’re all about to go extinct… like me”, bursting the bubble of presidents, CEOs and the people’s complacency over the acute climate emergency. [6]
And I say Hosanna! to Marina Ovsyannikova, that Russian TV journalist who last month walked onto the set of a live news broadcast holding a sign saying, “Don’t believe the propaganda. They’re lying to you here.” After resigning her post Ovsyannikova later admitted the high risks her protest brought her family, but, “But we need to put an end to this fratricidal war so this madness does not turn into nuclear war,” she said. “I hope when my son is older he will understand why I did this.” [7]
And, this may surprise you, but: today I say Hosanna! to King Canute, whose story is so often misrepresented, in exactly the way I misrepresented it at the start of this talk. For Canute’s real purpose in setting his throne by the sea shore and commanding the incoming tide to stop, was in his words, to show all the people “how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” From the day of this episode Canute hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again “to the honour,” he said, “of God the almighty King”. [8]
This is a heavenly king who set in motion the crazy, wonderful practice of revealing the deficiencies of worldly rulers and the gullibility of their subjects by choosing to ride a donkey into Jerusalem on the same day that the Roman emperor entered the city in the high pomp of a military procession. [9]
The crowds who welcomed Jesus said Hosanna! as he passed their way - for they were in on the great joke he was performing, to reveal the inadequacy of the presumption that worldly power is the greatest power. Preachers like me have often fallen for the trick of believing that the crowd who joined in Jesus’ pantomime donkey act that day were the same people who later that week shouted “Crucify him!” to let the high priests and King Herod get him out of their way. What if they weren’t the same people - what if these palm-wavers never wavered in their appreciation of Jesus’ week-long act of revelation which ended on the cross where it once and for all became clear that worldly power rests on rivalry and bloodshed, which wobbles and falls when it is shown up for the deficient and imbalanced thing it is. It was not the new king of Israel who was resurrected on Easter morning. It was the eternally loving, self-giving, Prince of Peace.
Palm Sunday: it’s a timely reminder that peace never comes through presidents wielding weapons of war, not even popular ones like Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Peace comes self-sacrificially, with unconditional love for enemies and with overflowing grace. Peace comes cheekily defying the violence of the world’s powers. Not travelling to Jerusalem on a T-64 tank, no: peace comes riding a donkey. [10]
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: King Canute and the tide.
[2] Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor's New Clothes (Jean Hersholt, translator).
[3] BanksyExplained.com, The Segregation Wall, Palestine, 2005; Etsy.com, Banksy canvas Israel Frisk Street Art Grafitti.
[4] Srdja Popovic, Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-violent Techniques to Galvanise Communities, Overthrow Dictators, Or Simply Change the World, p.100; Jeremy Williams, Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic. The Earthbound Report, 28 October 2019.
[5] Jeremy Williams, Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic. The Earthbound Report, 28 October 2019.
[6] Nicole Cobler, “Y’all bout to go extinct like me.” More signs from Austin’s #ClimateStrike, where dozens of students have walked out of school to protest. Twitter, 20 September 2019.
[7] Agence France-Presse in Paris, Russian journalist who staged anti-war TV protest quits job, but rejects French asylum offer. Guardian, 18 March 2022.
[8] Wikipedia: King Canute and the tide. Quoting from Henry of Huntingdon (Author), Diana Greenway (Translator), The History of the English People 1000-1154.
[9] See my previous Psalm Sunday talk for more on this: The donkey-king is coming! Jesus' crowd is a Flash Mob (2019). Drawing on Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, p.2-5.
[10] In the midst of the Russian invasion Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being widely exalted in the Western media as the ‘hero of our times’. The T-64 is the primary tank used by the Ukrainian military.
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