Will you pray with me?
Lord, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all
our hearts be
acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.
Amen.
They threw the western gates of Jerusalem wide for the procession
that
entered that Sunday. Hundreds, maybe
even thousands, turned out and lined the streets to watch as he and his
supporters rode into the city. Many in
the crowd, swept up in the excitement and the pageantry, cheered aloud
and
shouted words of support. Many, the
majority, maybe, watched in silent consternation as the procession
passed by,
uncertain what to think of the strange symbols of kingship, of the Son
of God
and Savior of humanity, that passed before them. Some
knew just want to think; their hatred
and resentment were palpable.
It was the Sunday before Passover, the
great annual Jewish
festival, and thousands of pilgrims from outlying areas and beyond were
entering the city to celebrate the Israelites’ ancient escape from
bondage in Egypt. Now, Jerusalem
and its people was under Roman imperial control at this time. And from the perspective of the Romans, a
subject city swelled to double its normal population by crowds of
revelers gathered
to celebrate a religious festival commemorating God’s defeat of, and
the
people’s escape from, a foreign imperial power was a very dangerous
thing.
So each year, as the preparations for Passover were gearing
up, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, came up from his home on the
Mediterranean coast with extra troops to strengthen the garrison
stationed in Jerusalem. It was his
procession the crowds gathered to see that day, and it was magnificent. Sunlight glinted from swords and helmets and
the fastenings of leather armor. Foot
soldiers marched in time with the beating of drums as the cavalry and
high-ranking officials rode on high-stepping war horses, sleek and
powerful and
bedecked and deadly. Overhead, plumes
and banners streamed and snapped in the wind. And
above it all, mounted on a tall pole, flew a great
golden eagle,
the symbol of Caesar, the Emperor himself, whose fathers had been
deified by
the people, the one who bore the official imperial titles “Son God” and
“Lord”
and “Savior of Humanity.” The message of
that demonstration of pomp and magnificence and power as the military
procession entered Jerusalem
that day would not have been lost on anyone: “We are strong and you are
not,”
it said. “So behave.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a
procession made up
of some who refused to behave was
nearing the city from the east. This
demonstration, like that other, was carefully planned.
As Pilate’s entry was timed to the first day
of the week of Passover, Jesus’ entry was timed to Pilate’s. Jesus, or his followers, had arranged ahead
of time for a donkey to be tied up and waiting for him, to be handed
over to
those who knew the password. They got
the donkey, and Jesus climbed up on it and began to ride toward the
city. Some of his followers had prepared
ahead of
time by cutting leafy branches in the fields, and these ones began
strewing the
branches in his path, while others laid out their cloaks.
And those in front and those behind shouted
the slogan they had carefully learned, a quote from a Psalm used during
ancient
Jewish coronations: “God saves!” they shouted. “Blessed
is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. Hosanna
in the highest heaven!”
In later centuries—including our own—Christians would come
to understand this moment as something almost magical, a spontaneous
demonstration born of Jesus’ charisma and the people’s enthusiasm. But I think it was something else. I think it was a carefully planned and
skillfully executed counter-demonstration. Everyone
in Jerusalem
and the immediate surroundings would have known that Pilate and his
imperial
soldiers were entering the city that day. Most
of them would have seen that very thing happen before.
So, when those coming or going about their
business near the eastern gates that day saw this small group—and make
no
mistake, despite the throngs most of us picture, this was almost
certainly a
tiny band, a couple of dozen at most—when they saw this procession
coming and
shouting “God saves” (not “Caesar saves”) and “Blessed is the one who
comes in
the name of the Lord” (and by “Lord” they meant God, not Caesar), and
“Blessed
is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David” (and not “Blessed is the
present
kingdom of Caesar”), those onlookers would have been very keenly aware
that no
matter how much this was a procession for
Jesus, it was at least twice as much a procession against
Rome. It was less
like a coronation and more like street theater, and the message of that
counter-demonstration as Jesus entered Jerusalem
that day would not have been lost on anyone: “You may rule this
empire,” it
said, “But we are citizens of the kingdom of God. And we will not behave.”
And here’s the brilliant, the really
brilliant thing about
this counter-demonstration: it was funny.
It would have made the onlookers laugh. Think about it. Have
you ever
heard the sound that a donkey makes? It’s
ridiculous. All those people knew that
on the other side of the city, Pilate and his procession were entering
with sleek
horses, martial precision, imperial splendor, and deadly power, all
designed to
awe and terrify the inhabitants into submission. And
then here came thirty motley peasants
chucking branches and cloaks on the ground with elaborate gestures of
humility
and deference, hopping and dancing around as they hoarsely chanted what
was
once sung gorgeously at coronations. And
in their midst came Jesus riding a braying ass and grinning from ear to
ear as
he waved at the onlookers.
We usually tell the Palm Sunday story with Jesus humble and
mild on his donkey. I think he was
intentionally ridiculous, trying to point to the ridiculousness of
Caesar and
Pilate’s way. They were making fun of
the Romans with their grand processions and military might, fun of
those ones
who believe that their wealth, or their pedigrees, or their titles, or
their
wars will ever truly avail them.
Jesus and his followers, to proclaim the
good news that the kingdom
of God is near,
refused for the love of God
to live in terror of the empire of Caesar. Instead,
they staged their counter-procession, their street
theater, and
they make the people, the angry, scared, and subject people, laugh. Laugh, though their lives were hard and
overtaxed. Laugh, in the face of
persecution and corruption and domination. Laugh,
in lives full of threat, and death, and fear. They
brought them to life.
But despite the laughter, this was deadly serious business
they were about, and they knew it, so they planned carefully. After the procession, Jesus went up into the
courtyard of the Temple
to look around and prepare for the memorable scene he had planned for
the next
day. The story of that demonstration
is often told as if Jesus just walked into the
Temple, was suddenly overcome with fury at what he discovered there,
and lashed
out violently—like the story of his procession, we’ve begun to tell it
as if it
were completely spontaneous. But today’s
story from Matthew makes it clear that this was another planned action:
after
the procession, he went to the Temple
to scout out the best location for what he would do.
Once he was satisfied, he left for the
evening.
What he did that next morning with the
money changers and
the dove-sellers was not about disapproving of money-changers or
selling
animals for sacrifice or commerce in the Temple;
all those things were clearly instructed or permitted by God. He did what he did to indict the Temple leadership and Jerusalem elites for colluding with
their
Roman oppressors. The Romans had made
the Temple,
the
holiest place in his world, the center for imperial tax collection and
the
storehouse for records of tax debt. They
had mounted a golden eagle, symbol of Roman domination, over the gate
to the Temple,
where graven
images were forbidden. They had made the
priests and other elites their agents for collecting exorbitant and
bankrupting
taxes from the poor. In Jesus’ eyes, the Temple
authorities had by cooperating with the Romans become oppressors in
their own
rights. In so doing, they had denied
God’s justice and become thieves, making the Holy Temple
their den. This Jesus—like many Jewish
prophets before him—denounced loudly and physically.
And the story says that the people were spellbound. And the leaders decided to kill him.
Jesus’ so-called Triumphal Entry and his action in the Temple are two
parts of a
carefully conceived whole. Together,
these two actions, deeply religious and profoundly political, set in
motion the
machinery that, over the course of the coming week, would lead to
Jesus’ deeply
religious and profoundly political death at the hands of the Romans and
those
among the Jewish elite that collaborated with them.
What would happen in the next week—stories
that you and I will tell to each other all throughout this week—will be
about
his passion. It will be about his
passion in the technical Christian sense, that is, his suffering and
death. But it will also be about his
passion in the colloquial sense, that is, what he cares about deeply,
loves
enough to die for: building the just, the lasting, the peaceful kingdom of God in human hearts and in human
nations
here, and now.
When Nancy and I lead inquirers’ classes,
which all these
new members have recently attended, we always tell participants that
being a
Christian means being a citizen of at least two realms: the United States of America, and the kingdom of God. Like
Jesus, like his disciples, like the leadership of the Temple, we live
with one
foot in each realm. Like them, when the
two conflict we must decide where our primary allegiance lies, what we
love
enough to risk dying for, which realm our passion is for. When one claims that the only way to peace is
through war, and one claims that the only way to peace is through
justice, we
must choose. When one claims that profit
is more important than health, and one claims that all people are made
in God’s
image, we must choose. When one claims
that
buying the right stuff and pledging the right allegiance will save, and
one
claims that only God saves, we must choose. And
as with Jesus on the first Palm Sunday, for Christians
the choice is
always religious and it is always political, for as with Jesus, we
cannot
separate the one from the other.
We tell ourselves the story of Holy Week over and over again
each year because we know that, like Jesus, when we choose the kingdom
of God
over the powers of this world—and they are powerful indeed—we who have
sought
to live with passion like his might be called upon to live
through a passion like his as well. We
rehearse these stories over and over so
that when the time comes for us to choose, we can plan our
counter-demonstration, our faithful witness to the world, as carefully
as Jesus
and his followers planned theirs. We
tell each other the stories of Holy Week so that when the time comes,
we’ll
know what to do.
And of course, of course we don’t end our
story with Good
Friday. Our story ends—and
begins—with Easter, with God’s ringing
affirmation of the choices Jesus made, with new life, with
resurrection, with
the overcoming of every force of fear and unjust death, with the
triumph of the
kingdom of God over the realms of this world, with laughter. If we tell
ourselves the story of Holy Week so that when the time comes we’ll know
what to
do, we tell the story of Easter so that when the time comes, we’ll know
what God will do.
Two deeply religious and explicitly
political processions
made their way into Jerusalem
on the first Palm Sunday. One was
Caesar’s; one was God’s. One was martial
and glittering and frightening; one was ragged and passionate and funny. One would triumph on Good Friday; one would
triumph on Easter. The question this
Holy Week, as always, is: “With which will you
march?” Amen.
