Palm Sunday and the man

I’ve been able to get to a couple of Lent meetings this year.  They’ve been run using the first of the C of E’s ‘pilgrim’ course (‘What do Christians believe’), which is very good. (www.pilgrimcourse.org) 

During session 3, which looks in more detail at who Christians believe Jesus is, it occurred to me the although Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, the focus of Christians today tends to be on the divinity of Christ, and his humanity is often side-lined.  For me although both aspects of his nature are equally important I have more recently been finding his humanness an area of real revelation.

As an example we have in (Mark 11:11-26 and Matt. 21:10-22) the incident of Jesus cursing the fig tree.  Jesus is hungry and seeing a fig tree he looks for fruit and seeing none he curses the tree saying “May you never bear fruit again!”  Later the disciples pass the same way and notice that the fig tree has withered (Mark 11:20, 21).  Many read some divine purpose and forethought in Jesus action – an intentional demonstration of his power.  For me it is a straightforward record of a hungry man cursing when he doesn’t find hoped for food, demonstrating a very human frustration.  That the tree then withers also demonstrates his divinity.

This event comes after triumphal entry into Jerusalem when he receives the adulation of the crowd while riding on a donkey.  Again this is usually seen as an unexpected, unplanned, and therefore divinely arranged event by many following the story today.  But Jesus was a deeply well-read scholar of the scriptures.  He knew that Zechariah 9:9 prophesied “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey…”  And, knowing his destiny from this scripture he, as a man, will surely have arranged beforehand for the provision of the donkey, the owner anticipating that men would subsequently come to borrow the donkey saying, when challenged, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.” (Mark 11:3).

Something that seems to be missed in a fundamental way is that Jesus was a man of deep faith.  He believed in the destiny that God had set before him, he set out in faith to comply with the prophesies about the Messiah, and was obedient to this role right up to his death. “…being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8).