The liturgy of Palm Sunday invites us to contrast celebrity and adulation, which are worldly values, with the suffering and humiliation which Jesus embraced. The first is symbolised by the palm, the second by the cross. Jesus entered Jerusalem as Israel’s King. It was the only occasion on which he allowed himself to do this, and then it was only as a prelude to his death. People get caught up in the cult of famous people; the obsession with Princess Diana is a prime example. The crowd on Palm Sunday, who loudly cheered Jesus, projected on to him all their desires for a return to the glorious days of King David and an end to the Roman occupation.
Against this background Matthew skilfully depicts the scheming of the Jewish leaders. Perhaps they were more realistic than the crowd in that they recognised the difference between their self-serving and hypocrisy and the compassion and goodness of Jesus. As the Word of God incarnate, he was demonstrating in his person all that they had been taught through the centuries but did not practice. He was an enormous threat to the status quo.
It is ironic that many of the people who came to some kind of recognition of Jesus were foreigners. Pilate’s wife, who appears only in the gospel of Matthew, took the trouble to send a message to her husband on his behalf. The person who helped Jesus carry the cross was from Cyrene, in Libya, and Mark’s gospel indicates that his sons were early Christians. The Roman centurion who presided over the crucifixion proclaimed Jesus as a son of God.
Matthew’s Passion concludes with the most dramatic events of all the gospels, with darkness, earthquakes, tombs opening and the veil of the temple being torn in two. The world of the Old Covenant and Temple were at an end. There was now a new and everlasting Covenant, with Jesus as the Temple.