As [Jesus] was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully … saying,
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
[Luke’s Gospel 19.37-40]

“Let me tell you about a king,” says Jesus, inviting all who listened to hear a story all of us know. The wrong kind of monarch, who lived and ruled by a hunger for control of people’s lives through slavery, hatred, fear and a monstrous brutality.

Those desperate among us want to find an echo of God in Jesus’ parable, rather than discovering something else. We confuse this with the other parables of talents and gifts; however, this is a story of a dealer and despot and a few who are temporarily lifted, while others are forever crushed by his arbitrary gestures.

Why does Jesus tell this story, and why does Luke remind us?

One sentence later, Jesus has arranged transport and is riding into Jerusalem, facing not just the adulation of his disciples and the crowd around him, but the resentment of the Pharisees.

These will be the final days of his life.

Crowd-crowned and mounted on a donkey, this monarch for whom the stones themselves would sing has no intention of sacrificing anyone but himself.

The initial hallmarks of his reign? Weeping over his city’s failure to seek and understand what makes for peace, and restoring the essential place of worship to teaching and prayer.

Could there be a starker contrast between the grotesque Ozymandian character whose tale Jesus told, and himself, who, like the widow he praises, offers all he has?

When a child asks, perhaps, for the story of a monarch, shall we talk of swords and crowns and rings? Shall we speak of the weak ridiculed, and the poor discounted, of smaller nations trampled and their leaders despised and mocked, with slavish adulation offered to those whose trademark is corruption?

The language of queens and kings may have less currency in these days (and that is good) but the language of God’s kingdom – God’s reign, God’s economy – stands as prophetic corrective to all those who rule by diktat and despair.

This Jesus who arrives in Jerusalem, travels deliberately to his suffering and death, while his path has offered healing and forgiveness, mercy and hope. These last few days will remind us of transformed lives and communities, and the possibility of life renewed for all of us.

As the shadow continues to fall, and Friday is but days away, two thousand years is but a moment as we measure Jesus’ monarchy against all those who rule, or seek to do so, in the world around us.

We will walk Jesus’ path with him, from the temple to the cross. We will see the astonishing truth of Jesus’ monarchy and find ourselves embraced within it. On Sunday morning the very stone which sealed his tomb will sing aloud of the One whose life is entirely given for others.

Blessings for this week’s journey.