We are exploring the titles of Jesus of Nazareth during Holy Week this week. The theme for Palm Sunday is Son of David. This is the term that the crowd of northerners around Jesus cried out as he approached the capital city on Palm Sunday. One might have a sneaky sympathy with the Perushim (the Pharisees), the teacher from Galilee looked nothing like David’s Son. There is little wonder therefore that Matthew in particular needed to stress that Jesus did look like a royal. I recall though from a long time ago that Jewish tradition contemporaneous to Jesus did hold that the Son of David was not a royal warrior, but one who healed and touched people. This would make sense of Lucan tradition of Bartimaeus crying out, ‘Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me’. In those same midsts of time, there are fragments or scraps from the Dead Sea that appear to point to a suffering messiah.

To those watching the claims of the crowd, Jesus may have looked foolish. There is then a delight that Palm Sunday fell on April Fool’s Day. Fools speak truth to power. Jesus did that, but something more dynamic and confusing. He spoke grace to power. Grace, generosity and vulnerability: all things that we at times struggle to understand.

It is far easier to think of Jesus as the warrior king still who will smite our enemies or as a failure than as someone who played with grace, and through that changed people’s lives; in ones and twos rather than of nations. Ones or twos are best. They are the size of a mustard seed to quote the poet-prophet king who became the fool on the hill.