Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday, the day more than two thousand years ago when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The event was carefully stage managed. Jesus and His disciples knew that the crowds who were pouring into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover would recall the Biblical prophecy that the Messiah would ride into that city on a donkey before proclaiming his power.
What the crowds wanted was a Messiah who would be a combination of Braveheart and Santa Claus, had they ever heard those names. Someone who would lead them to a military victory over the occupying Romans, and rout those hated rulers forever. Someone who would restore the Kingdom of Israel to full autonomy, bringing about material peace and prosperity for all.
But that's not what - or Who - they got.
Instead, there came this poor, homeless prophet and a bunch of very dubious-looking disciples. They were dusty, dirty and in need of refreshment themselves. They preached the good news of the coming Kingdom, but it was not to be a Kingdom of this world, as Jesus made absolutely clear. No, it was a Kingdom of Righteousness, Truth and Mercy, the veritable Kingdom of God, but it was not going to change things on the ground.
The crowds who cheered and shouted for Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem were exactly like those today who follow the so-called "Health and Wealth" gospel, or who cling to false New Age practices. They want redemption by means of a set prayer, or through hanging crystals in their windows, or saying affirmations.. They want easy rewards; they don't understand the reality of the spiritual path, that it leads invariably by way of the Cross to the Crown.
You can see them on television, on the numerous evangelical channels where preachers tell their audiences that if they only believe in Jesus, He will heal every physical and mental problem and send them loads of dosh. They hover round the New Age shops buying magic candles or the latest self-help book that promises them that wishful thinking can actually work.
Since the audiences for this kind of twaddle are usually poor, uneducated and downtrodden people, they're only too eager to swallow this farago of lies, and in the belief that these preachers can help them reach their material goals they often send in their own hard-won money to nudge God into action.
But even well-educated Christians can believe this false gospel.
After all, it's very comforting - to believe that all you have to do is repeat a few prayers and say the right affirmations, and everything you want will be given to you.
But it's not true! Jesus never, ever promised health or wealth to His followers. Instead, He told them they would have "tribulation" in the world, but they were to be of "good cheer", because He had overcome the world.
Catholics, most Anglicans and the Orthodox Churches follow the original gospel of Jesus, not the fake New Age-y version. We know that the truths Jesus came to reveal included that of the necessity of suffering, of carrying our own cross and bearing others' burdens as well.
A new book, When You Suffer by Jeff Cavins, explains very well the meaning of suffering and why it is so important. It's not advanced theology, it's simply a well-written, easy to understand explanation of the role of suffering in the life of the Christian, and why it is not to be rejected but embraced.
Suffering, Cavins says, when it's borne cheerfully and with grace, endows us with a sort of "heavenly cash" that we may use for the benefit of others. He describes a time when, in tremendous pain from a neck injury, he knelt by the bedside of his young daughter and prayed for her. This experience, he says, taught him more than anything he'd ever read about the power of suffering, and why God allows it - even decrees it.
In this, of course, Cavins is expounding something very like the Work. Indeed, if we substitute for the word "cash" the term "higher hydrogens", it is exactly the Work teaching. And that should not surprise us; Gurdjieff always said that the Fourth Way was the teaching of esoteric Christianity, and there is much of it to be found in exoteric Christianity too.
We in the Work know that "our Being attracts our life", and that suffering will inevitably be part of our progress, if only the suffering that results from seeing the truth about ourselves. But extra suffering, physical and mental, may also be what we need in order to create our own "heavenly cash", by which we can evolve and contribute our share to the workings of Conscious Humanity
The Palm Sunday crowds wanted their Santa Claus Messiah, but we actually need the Messiah who came to suffer and die for us. Only by undergoing the terrible, horrifically painful and humiliating death of crucifixion, and then entering into the caverns of the underworld before returning to the world in the joyful burst of light that was the Resurrection, could everything in heaven and earth be given the chance of redemption.
Only in that particular, shocking way could Jesus create enough spiritual energy - Cavins's "heavenly cash" and our "higher hydrogens" - to purify the Earth and maintain the redemptive possibility for aeons to come.
Mrs Pogson emphasized that the purified blood of Christ, spilled on the ground at the Crucifixion, was so illuminated, so permeated with higher energies, that it had enough power to transform the world from then until now, and as far as we can imagine into the future.
And Jesus knew that we, too, needed to share in this suffering, to join our own trials and pains to those which He underwent on the Cross, in order for us to grow in spirit.
No amount of money could provide this growth. No wealth could buy our way out of it. Suffering is the price we pay for our own progress, and the debt we repay to Conscious Humanity when we willingly accept our share.
Our own evolution is inextricably bound up with that of humanity and life as a whole. That is the Good News of the real gospel, and it knocks the false "health and wealth" claims into a cocked hat.
When we remember the acclamations of the Palm Sunday crowds, let us also remember where Jesus's journey led him - to Calvary and to the empty tomb.
That is the real, the only truth.
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