Walking on wounded feet
The crowd cheered him,
‘blessings on him,’ they roared, waving flags of palm,
‘For he comes to us in God’s name.’
And a few days later they cheered again,
this time for his death,
and blessings on a public robber, Barrabas.
A fickle people.
We wonder why? What changed them?
Like Peter later, they would say,
‘I don’t know the man,?
for the man they saw later in the week
was, in their eyes, a different man.
The king had become a spectacle,
bloodied, mocked, rejected,
Who wants a leader like that?
Jesus didn’t want acclamation,
he had been trying to say all along
That he was a different type of king.
And so he chose a donkey, as his chariot.
They say their own hopes
for a leader who would overthrow their oppressors,
and didn’t see the real Jesus.
The leadership of Jesus has lasted longer
than any of the public leadership of the time,
because he was a king of love and compassion,
and walked the way of the cross –
carried by his wounded feet and the help of a friend,
and guided by the hand of God, his Father.