Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem and is greeted like a conquering hero. Crowds line the streets, the city is buzzing with expectation. Years of circling the country, building his reputation healing the sick, bringing in those on the margins, and finally, he’s arrived.

Friday. Jesus, stripped of his clothes and his dignity is nailed to a cross and killed, like a common criminal, an enemy of the state. The same crowds who cheered him into the city, demand his execution. His friends and followers, faithful for years, flee, utterly dejected, dismayed - all hope vanquished.

What’s happened in this gap? Over the six days that week, Jesus told some stories. Six stories in six days, to be precise. Stories which upset his friends, his followers and those in power. Stories which got him killed.

When we hear these stories now, we often treat them as quaint parables with a neat message for us today, but when Jesus told these stories they were dripping with context, speaking directly into the lives of his listeners. So when he tells the first parable (Matthew 21:28-32), the story of two sons sent to work in their father’s vineyard, he is calling out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and it isn’t shrouded and hidden by centuries of interpretation, its application is obvious: what matters isn’t saying the right things, but doing the right things. It wasn’t the first time Jesus called out the those in authority, and it wouldn’t be the last time he did it that week. When we look through the other parables he told, Jesus didn’t pull any punches: the parable of the tenants predicts his death at the hands of workers who have taken over the vineyard; the wedding banquet shows how people have disregarded God's invitation to them; the 10 virgins warns against borrowed faith; the talents castigates people for a lack of creativity; and the sheep and goats warns of a coming judgement.

Here’s the thing: the moment Jesus reached the zenith of his popularity, his teaching got more brutal, and more unpopular. From a PR standpoint, he had an absolute disaster. ‘Play it safe, Jesus,’ the disciples must have been thinking, ‘This is not the time for your edgier material!’ Yet, as ever, Jesus knew that this wasn’t the time to play it safe. Jesus wasn’t interested in his standing in society, but his place in the kingdom.

The Church, and Christians, in this country have less influence than ever, we might think. And yet we’ve still got a lot to lose. We’ve got institutions and reputations to protect. And so we kid ourselves. We tell ourselves that playing it safe, that pulling punches, isn’t because we’re scared what people think, isn’t because we’re invested in what the world thinks of us, but instead that it’s an evangelistic strategy, because if we lose our standing in the world, how will people listen to what we’ve got to say?

The last few days of Jesus’ life, and the stories he told, suggest that Jesus was unconvinced by that argument. These stories show us a disruptive Christ, who put his message above his popularity, and knew that would shine through whatever criticism and persecution came his way. Jesus knew that there was hypocrisy, greed and fear at the heart of society - then, and now. There is injustice built into the system and the ones at the bottom suffer. If our remaining institutional credibility is more important than speaking up to challenge those in power, then we’ve completely misread the way Jesus lived his life.

So that’s why we’re taking this season of Open Me to focus on the way Jesus disrupted life - from the big structures and systems he encountered in the politics, religion and culture of his time, down to the level of individual lives and the choices people make. We’re asking what it means to follow someone with such a disruptive strategy. Will it mean having our own lives disrupted? Most probably. But might it also mean that we’re called to do some holy disrupting of our own?