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The Discards


This is the text of the monologue I wrote and recorded for yesterday's South and Central Belfast Circuit online Palm Sunday Service .  It is inspired in part by a poem I read recently by Mark Bennett, in his collection "Risen! From the Upper Room to an Empty tomb" which a former congregation member recently kindly sent me. I could easily have read his poem for my Lent poems slot, and may well do so again if I repeat that discipline again... Anyway, here's the written text of the monologue.

We’re not really welcome in the city… the ill-born, crippled, unclean for one reason or another… We forage for a living… on the rubbish heap down in the valley of Hinnom... that accursed place where the Canaanites once sacrificed their children in the fire… Pharisees and the Sadducees would happily throw us onto a bonfire… it's one of the few things they agree about… But leaving us to live on the city dump is the next best thing… human filth beneath their notice… Competing with the dogs for scraps.

A few of us are allowed in first thing in the morning when the gates are opened… they are glad of us coming in then to glean and clean the streets before the day’s work begins, so long as we use the southern gates… as far from the holy precincts of the  Temple as it is possible to keep us… We’re graciously allowed to sweep the squares and streets and carry off whatever has been discarded from the day before… rejected, overripe and rotting fruit and vegetables, the unwanted trimmings of finer cuts of meat… sinewy, rancid… riddled with maggots… We are already unclean, so we don’t have to worry whether such fare is fit to eat according to the kosher codes… Though you quickly learn which will speed you on our way to the final judgement…

Quickly in and just as quickly out again, hurried on our way by a whip or a kick from a member of the city watch… The merchants’ guard dogs… making sure that the high and mighty never have to look upon us… 

It’s amazing what you can find mind you… The clothes that people throw away without a thought that have many more months left in them… The coins that are too small for them to worry about when they drop from their purses… There is little that is really rubbish…

But when it comes to the festivals, all the usual rules no longer apply… The Holy City is suddenly full to bursting point, with people pouring back here from all over the world… Places I’ve never heard of… Speaking languages that sound like gibberish… and even when they speak the sacred tongue it is with tortured accents… Singing their psalms and waving their palm leaves and branches in celebration as they progress up from the coast and the Jordan valley and beyond… The city is too small to hold them all so some stay in the outlying villages, some camp on the surrounding hills… though they all keep their distance from our accursed valley. They progress into the city in the mornings to stand make their way into the temple… each one going as far as their status will allow… God-fearers, women, adult Jewish men, and priests… they all get further than us. They flow in in the morning and back out at night…

Time it right and we can mingle with the tight-pressed crowds flowing through the gates without the city watch seeing us, or our distinctive smell alerting others to our presence… the incense and sweat of the crowd covers over a multitude of sins… And once in the crowd there is no telling what you will find… not just a discarded coin or two… perhaps an entire purse that somehow finds its way into your hand…

And that is what I had in mind today as the first pilgrims started to arrive for Passover, pouring down the Mount of Olives towards the Beautiful Gate, north east of here, taking them straight into the Temple…  Myself and others like me worked our way around the walls and sidled our way into the crowds as we usually did… But then something strange happened…

I could feel a surge in the crow behind me, as they parted either side of the road… The old familiar pilgrim hymns were being sung… “Hosanna… We are saved… Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord…” But then I saw that everyone was turning and making way for someone specific… riding on a donkey colt… And as well as waving the palm leaves they had carried with them up from Jericho… Some of them were laying them down on the ground before this guy on a donkey… And not only palm leaves but the clothes off their backs as well… they had gone mad…

I don’t know who he was… Don’t want to know… Best not to know… If there’s one think I do know is that its best not to get noticed!

But this guy had got himself noticed, and as soon as the crowds parted to let him through into the Temple Quarter, they came back together and surged in after him… Trampling all the palm leaves and clothes strewn on the ground into the dirt…

I didn’t follow… I had to make the most of this opportunity… I grabbed the best of the clothes and blankets… And there was some really good stuff there… They’ll see me through the next year and more… And even the palm leaves and branches, well they’ll make good shelters and firewood for a good while to come… Others had the same idea and by the time that the pilgrims were surging back out of the temple this evening heading for their overnight accommodation we had stripped the road bare… You would never know what had happened before…

Tomorrow? Well… we’ll see… I suspect it will just be back to normal again… Just another week in Jerusalem… yeah, its Passover week… but festivals and festival goers come and go in this place all the time… Nothing really changes in the end… particularly for us… those thrown aside more casually than a coat or palm leaf… We're the discards…

Selah


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