Crowds
of people descend on Jerusalem. It is
the holy time of Passover, and Jews from all over the known world, are making
pilgrimage to the city. Passover is the
Jewish celebration of that archetypal story we talked about way back in the
fall when I began my ministry in Jackson.
It was this crazy story which told people long held in slavery and
bondage, oppression and domination, that God heard their cries, saw their
suffering, and had come to deliver them.
They were not Pharaoh’s subjects.
Rather, they were the Children of Israel, God’s beloved. This is the story the Jewish people are
celebrating as they make their way to Jerusalem.
Some, come to see the pomp
and circumstance associated with the celebration. Others, come to the city as curious
onlookers. Still others, come as a form
of devotion to their God with a recognition that Jerusalem, the “City of Peace,”
had a long history within Jewish faith and life.
Picture, from the west of Jerusalem,
comes the annual imperial procession, like one that had come from the imperial
rulers of Judea and Samaria before and after Rome and Rome’s Pontius
Pilate. These processions took place
during the major festivals of the Jewish people, as a way of enforcing the
identity of the Jewish people as Rome saw them--as conquered and occupied
people. Such imperial displays would
have been incredibly important during the festival days of the Jewish Passover,
a celebration remembering the Jewish liberation and deliverance from imperial
power. Passover remembers the Jewish
people as liberated and delivered by God.
The imperial procession reminded the Jewish they were enslaved and occupied
by Rome and its Caesar, the current boot on their neck.
The Jewish pilgrims flocking into Jerusalem would
have known this imperial procession well.
Rome wanted to make sure the Jewish people knew this procession well, that
they should expect these processions every Passover.
Imagine the imperial processions arrival in the city—a
visual panoply of imperial power:
calvary on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons,
banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold. Sounds:
the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles,
the beating of drums, the swirling of dust.
The eyes of the silent onlookers:
some curious, some awed, some resentful.
Pilate’s procession displayed not only imperial power but also Roman
imperial theology. According to this
theology, the Emperor was not only the ruler of Rome but the Son of God.[1]
If you can hold both the throng of Jews in Jerusalem
in your imagination and the imperial procession entering in from the west of
Jerusalem, the stage is now set for carefully choreographed, religio-political
street theater about to take place on the other side of Jerusalem intended to
critique not only Roman State power but also
Messianic triumphalism, rooted in violence, found in a strand of Judaism,
within Jesus’s own people.[2]
Another
planned political procession arrives from the east. We know it is planned because, in the gospel
of Mark, Jesus tells the disciples that there is a colt in the town ahead of
them, and that they are to go and retrieve that donkey and colt. Whatever your view of prophecy in Scripture,
whether Jesus is fulfilling prophecy or a gospel writer is characterizing
Jesus’ actions as the fulfillment of Scripture, this processional invokes a
Scripture from Hebrew Scripture or the Old Testament. Either Jesus is attempting to invoke a
Scripture known to the Jewish people or the gospel writer is using the passage
to define the content of Jesus’s mission and ministry. For according to the prophet Zechariah, in
Hebrew Scripture or the Old Testament, a king would be coming to Jerusalem
humble and riding on a colt and the foal of a donkey.[3]
That Scripture reads as follows:
Rejoice, greatly, O daughter,
Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter,
Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, a colt, the
foal of a donkey. That king will cut off
the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow
shall be cut off, and the king shall command peace to the nations.[4]
Notice, first of all, that the title is a political
one—king, one who is at the same level as a Roman Caesar. And this king shall banish war
from the earth. Chariots and war horses
shall be no more. Bows shall be
broken. Peace shall be commanded to all
the nations. This king shall be a king
of peace.
This
procession occurring on the east side of Jerusalem is to directly counter what
is known to be going on to the west of Jerusalem. Pilate’s procession incarnated the power,
glory, and violence of Empire. Jesus’s
procession incarnated the Empire of a nonviolent God. This counter, this conflict and clash between
two Empires, sets the stage for all of the rest of Holy Week. Peace by one Empire was achieved through
military might, retaliatory, escalating violence, and economic domination. All the trappings were present in this
procession to remind the Jewish people how peace would be kept and
pursued—armor, helmets, weapons, war horses.
Peace by the other Empire removed the remnants, the uniforms, the tools,
and the mechanisms of war—chariots and war horses removed, battle bows are
banished.
Down
through the centuries, that clash of Empires has offered faithful Christians
those same distinct choices—two arrivals, two entrances into Jerusalem, two
processions. Biblical scholars Marcus
Borg and John Dominic Crossan ask the questions: “Which procession are we
in? Which procession do we want to be
in? This is the question of Palm Sunday,
and of the week that is about to unfold.”[5] Are we still sure we want to walk that hard
road Jesus is walking? Are we still sure
we went to be about that kind of faithfulness to the Christian
journey—faithfulness to a king who leads with non-violent confrontation?
Borg
and Crossan go on to write, “[O]ur Christian Lent is about repentance for being
in the wrong [procession] and preparation to abandon it for its alternative.”[6] Lent is about repentance, turning and
returning to a faithful path. Lent is
about preparing to abandon Pilate’s procession for the processional of a
Mediterranean Jewish peasant from a small, backwater town just outside of
Sepphoris. Jesus made space for his ministry
and message through creative, confrontational non-violence. In that way of living—the mutual healing, the
sharing of food, in the ne’er-do-wells and beaten down gathered around those
tables, Jesus helped his followers imagine a God who was not only engaged but
courageous and non-violent.
Jesus had a ministry and
message that was about sharing food and freedom, healing and hospitality—a
belief that God did not look upon people and see them as Roman subjects but as
Children of God. That is how God always
sees us. No matter how we may see
ourselves, God looks and sees us as dear, beloved, and a precious
creation. That title, “Child of God” is
not meant to indicate that we remain children.
“Child of God” is a mythological title meaning we are birthed and
re-birthed, that we turn and return time and time again to a path. That blessed path forever communicates God’s
deep and passionate love for the world.
That is God’s hope for us, that we live out that mythological title
regardless of what the consequences for doing so, no matter what the Empire
would do to us.
Two
processions are about to take place in Jerusalem, from opposite sides of the
city. Which one are we in? Which one do we want to be in? Repent.
Repent. Amen.
[1] John Dominic Crossan and
Marcus J. Borg, The Last Week: A
Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), audiobook. This book is the basis for today’s sermon.
[2] Ched Myers, “Palm Sunday as Subversive Street
Theater: Sixth Sunday in Lent (Mk.
11:1-11),” Radical Discipleship, March
26, 2015. https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2015/03/26/palm-sunday-as-subversive-street-theatre-sixth-sunday-in-lent-mk-111-11/. Myers
goes on to say that this action by Jesus even repudiates the Messianic
triumphalism found within Judaism.
Images from the parade called to mind several biblical precedents: the
colt signifying triumphant Judah (Gen 49:11); the return of the Ark to Israel
(I Sam 6:7ff); the declaration of Jehu as upstart king (2 Kg 9:13); a royal
processional hymn (Ps 118:25f). And the fact that the parade began “near the
Mount of Olives” (11:1) would have brought to mind the final apocalyptic battle
between Israel and her enemies spoken of by Zechariah (see Zech 14:1-5). This theater also alludes to more recent
events. It recalls the victorious military procession of Simon Maccabaeus, the
great guerilla general who liberated Palestine from Hellenistic rule some two
centuries before. According to I Maccabbees 13:51 Simon entered Jerusalem “with
praise and palm branches…and with hymns and songs.” And there was an incident
of Messianic posturing contemporary to Mark as well. Mid-way through the Judean
revolt against Rome (66- 70 C.E.), according to the Jewish historian Josephus,
the guerilla captain Menahem had marched through Jerusalem heavily armed and
“like a king,” in an unsuccessful attempt to become the sole leader of the
rebel provisional government. But Mark
uses all of these popular Messianic images precisely in order to subvert them. This
is the point of the odd story about “commandeering” a colt, which occupies
fully half the parade narrative (11:2-6). Mark is consciously re-organizing the
symbolism of this parade around a different Zecharian image which is expressly anti-military. See also, Bo Sanders, “Palm Sunday Is the
Most Political Sunday,” Home-Brewed Christianity, March 25, 2013. https://homebrewedchristianity.com/2013/03/25/palm-sunday-is-the-most-political-sunday/
[3] Zecharaiah 9:9. Scholars believe that Matthew read the
passage wrong and saw two animals involved in this poetic mythology. It is believed that Zechariah is, instead,
using repetition to talk about one animal, a donkey/colt.
[4] Zechariah 9:9-10a
[5] Cross and Borg, The
Last Week.
[6] Marcus Borg and John
Dominic Crossan, “Jesus Final Week:
Collision Course,” Christian Century, March 20, 2007, p. 29
