7 - Palm Sunday: Where?

Where would you have been today?

Jesus of Nazareth, the radical Jewish rabbi who had been stirring up controversy everywhere he went with his outrageous antics and fresh new teaching style, was seen surrounded by the usual crowd of thousands of people, but this time he was riding into the city... on a donkey.

For the past three years he had been teaching about love and social justice and performing miracles. He'd even raised people from the dead. Jesus had become a celebrity. Celebrities galloped into town on a stallion or with an entourage. They didn't travel on a scruffy little donkey. It would be the equivalent of a modern day world famous celebrity, riding into London on a cheap, basic model moped. It was a surreal, significant day and it's intriguing to think... where would I have been?

Would I have been on the roadside? Standing with the masses, experiencing the crowd shouting cheers at Jesus as he toddled past balanced precariously on this little beast-of-burden. Would I have noticed the subtle change in the chants of the crowd from the generic 'hooray for Jesus' to the politically charged cries declaring Jesus was the Messiah, the Chosen One, the Hero of Israel! Would I have thrown my coat, my one and only jacket, on the floor to create a red carpet for Jesus to ride on? Would I have grabbed a palm-banner and waved it to honour this donkey-riding King?

Or would I have been at the Palace? or the military base? After hearing Jesus was coming and the claims he was the Messiah - the man the Jews thought would liberate Israel from Roman occupation - would I have run ahead to watch the Jesus v Rome fight? Would I be expecting a bloody revolution? Would I be disappointed when it turns out Jesus didn't head for the Roman HQ, but went straight into the temple?

Would I have been in the temple? Maybe I would have been there the whole time, focused so intently on my religious rituals that I actually missed what God was doing? Would I have been utterly disgusted and furious that Jesus would cause a disturbance as he smashed up the money changing area, declaring my religious practise as missing the point, disrupting my comfortable views on faith and religion and ethics?

Or would I have been with Jesus all along... hanging on his every word... helping him get on the donkey... watching as he paraded through the city but never letting it go to his head... seeing him get so passionate in the temple as he put things to right... would I follow him for the rest of the week...?

It was gonna be one heck of a week...