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Today is Palm Sunday, when we remember Jesus entering Jerusalem triumphantly on the back of a donkey. All four gospels tell the story, as well they should. It is the moment that Christ is recognized as the king that he is. As Mark relates it,



Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Mark 11:8-10)



I love Palm Sunday and the great liturgical tradition associated with it. I love hearing the King’s College Choir sing “All Glory, Laud and Honor.” I love G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous poem about the donkey that Christ rode–“the devil’s walking parody of all four-footed things” that had, nonetheless, his hour of greatness. I love the image of Christ being glorified as an earthly king.



But I also can’t help wondering what happened between Sunday and Friday, when the crowds in Jerusalem were assembled around Jesus and chanting a very different message:



Pilate spoke to them again, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” They shouted back, “Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him!” (Mark 15:12-14)



Perhaps nothing shows the fickleness of crowds more than the five-day transition from “Hosanna” to “crucify him.” What happened?



We don’t know, of course. The text doesn’t give us a clear answer. But we can imagine. It is likely that the people assembled outside of Pilate’s palace on Friday night weren’t exactly the same people who laid the palms before Christ’s feet on Sunday. At least not all of them. But this is also important. Where were Christ’s supporters? Why didn’t they show up?



It is also possible, and indeed quite likely, that some portion of the crowd abandoned Jesus when they saw him in chains before the authority of the Roman Empire. Wasn’t he the Messiah? Throwing off the yoke of Rome was sort of his job description. Perhaps the people who were laying palms down at the beginning of the week expected to see Pontius Pilate in chains and Jesus Christ standing triumphantly in the public square offering to release Barabbas. This would not be the last time that a political hero was abandoned by his followers for failing to deliver.



But this doesn’t satisfy me either–mainly because it doesn’t gel with what we know about the one person that we know switched allegiance, albeit very temporarily: the Apostle Peter, who proudly affirmed at the Last Supper that he would never deny the Christ and then managed to do so three times before the night was over.



Peter did not deny Christ because he lost faith in him. Nor did he expect the Messiah to sweep in and deliver Jerusalem from the Romans. Peter denied Christ because, in the situation that he found himself in, affirming his relationship with Jesus was hard. And I don’t mean just a little bit hard in a “what-will-the-neighbors-think-of-me” way. It was hard in a “it’s-freaking-anarchy-around-here” and a “this-could-get-killed” way.



This gives us a glimpse into the minds of all of Christ’s supporters on the night he was crucified. Voicing support was hard. It was dangerous. It had been easy to lay palms down on Sunday, when everybody else was doing it and it seemed like a parade. Who doesn’t love a parade? But there wsn’t much of a downside then. One could be on “Team Jesus” without suffering any real consequences. This was not the case five days later.



What changed? Here’s a hint: it was not pressure from “the world.” The world, or at least that portion of the world represented by the Roman Empire, thought the same things about Jesus on Friday that they did on Sunday, which was they didn’t think about him at all. And even if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered much. Opposing the Romans wasn’t hard at the time. Everybody opposed the Romans.



What changed between Sunday and Friday was that the religious authorities condemned Jesus in public. They made it clear that, to support this man was to reject their religion and forsake the prophets. They made denouncing Jesus a test of one’s commitment to their faith. And this was not just enough to turn the crowds against Jesus; it was enough to make his most faithful disciple pretend not to know who he was.



This part of the story is crucial because it tells us that there is more to taking upon ourselves the name of Christ than simply declaring loyalty to a religious leader or ecclesiastical structure. Loyalty is not the same thing as faith, nor does it lead to the same kinds of actions. It was faith that caused people to lay palms in front of the triumphant Christ and shout “Hosanna” to his name. It was loyalty that caused them to shout “Crucify him” and “Give to us Barabbas.”



The story of Palm Sunday is, among many other things, a cautionary tale. It reminds us that there is a difference between standing up for things when it is easy and standing up for the same things when it is hard. This is an important lesson, and it is a test that most of us will fail over and over again before we get it right. And when we do get it right, our friends won’t be shouting our praises and cheering our integrity; they will be questioning our motives and accusing us of disloyalty and of being on the wrong side. And this is when doing the right thing matters the most.

