Tomorrow we will begin Holy Week and, following cycle B of the readings, this Palm Sunday we will read the Passion according to Saint Mark.
It is a story that begins with the intriguing scene of Jesus in Bethany, in the house of a certain Simon, nicknamed the leper. A woman arrives at the house and anoints Jesus’ head with expensive nard perfume, provoking the indignation of those who see it, who are scandalized and do not understand the meaning of her gesture.
The woman has anointed Jesus as the Messiah. And she has anointed him knowing perfectly well who he is, because she has gone to look for him at Simon’s house. She has no doubts about what kind of Messiah is the prophet of Nazareth: a Messiah who stays with a man known as the leper: that is, the impure, the marginalized, the forgotten, the rejected. The representative of all those excluded then, today and always.
This scene, and the dispute between the woman and those who do not understand her gesture (Jesus’ own disciples: who, if not them, would be in Bethany with him?) prepares us for the celebration of Palm Sunday. When tomorrow we will celebrate Jesus entering into Jerusalem, and we will receive him with our palms, we should ask ourselves which Jesus we are receiving. When we welcome him, and tell him that we want to receive him in our city, in our homes, in our world, in our lives… to which Jesus do we say all this?
Because we could be welcoming the same Jesus that the crowds cheered, who projected onto him their desire for power and prominence. Then we would be participating in the great misunderstanding of Palm Sunday: the crowds applauded a triumphant Messiah, destined to conquer power through the use of force, which had nothing to do with what Jesus represented. Or we could be receiving the Jesus who stayed in the house of Simon the leper, the Messiah who stood beside the marginalized, proclaiming that they were God’s favorites and who —because of that— ended up on the cross. The Messiah of the poor, anointed as such by that woman in Bethany.
If on Palm Sunday we do not welcome this humble Jesus, distancing ourselves from the frenzy of the crowds (which raraely understand God's love), we will not understand anything of that comes next: neither the washing of the feet on Thursday, nor the loving surrender on the cross on Friday, nor what the New Life of Sunday really means.
