Sunday Musings

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday, and the lectionary text is the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. This is the beginning of Holy Week, the last week of Jesus’ life.

Luke 19:28-40

After telling a parable to the crowd at Jericho, Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, "Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They said, "The Lord needs it." Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

"Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!"

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

I’ve been reading John Dominic Crossan’s new book, Render Unto Caesar: The Struggle Over Christ and Culture in the New Testament. This paragraph is the heart of my own reflection today:

“On our Palm Sunday, Jesus mounted (pun intended) a public demonstration against Roman imperial control, starting from ‘Bethphage and Bethan, near the Mount of Olives’ and going toward Jerusalem (Mark 11:1). In an anti-triumphal entry, he rode into Jerusalem from the east on a donkey in a symbolic subversive demonstration against the Roman governor Pilate, arriving from the west on a stallion. Pilate came from his headquarters at coastal Caesarea to overpower the Passover crowds if necessary. Jesus came from Galilee to empower those same crowds — if possible.

According to Mark, Jesus was greeted as the Davidic Messiah, as a New David: ‘Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the field. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting. . . .Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! (Mark 11:8-10).”

Palm Sunday makes clear the contest between Caesar’s empire and the “empire” of God. Pilate rides a powerful horse into the west gate in a military procession to assert imperial power and quell the possibility of protest. Jesus rides a borrowed donkey into the east gate in a popular parade of hope to empower oppressed Israel.

In The Last Week, an earlier book, Crossan, along with his fellow author Marcus Borg, wrote of Palm Sunday:

Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.

The conflict — the one we’ve been tracking through the Lenten texts — was both political and theological. Pilate’s parade of the military might and vast wealth of Rome, an empire ruled by Caesar, he who was Lord and Savior of the world. (In 30 C.E., Tiberius bore this title, having inherited it from his stepfather, Augustus.) Jesus’s “counter-procession” was a protest of planned mockery of Pilate’s — whose direct appropriation of biblical prophecy and symbolism makes the point that only God is “Caesar” and the real king extends a reign of peace.

The contrast between Caesar’s kingdom and the Kingdom of God wasn’t intended as an intellectual exercise. On Palm Sunday, the Lenten season of tensions lead us to these questions:

WHICH JOURNEY ARE WE ON?
WHICH PROCESSION ARE WE IN?

* * * * *

Lent this year has unfolded as a war began, a violent conflict that has resulted in destruction, despair, and death. The war in Ukraine is a war of imperial ambition, the hope for a new Russian Empire, as Vladimir Putin has repeatedly and specifically said. On cable news 24/7, we see the brutal evidence of empire built on its own power and glory. From Pilate to Putin, this is the parade of empire — not much changes in human history.

And yet we long for the other. A different procession. A parade of peace. A way that doesn’t take life, but a way that gives it. We live in a world of two processions. We inhabit a long history of Caesars —establishing empires of their own power while claiming God’s blessing — to be challenged by those oppressed and their alternative proclamations of peace and justice. The way of worldly power. And that different way.

“Two processions entered Jerusalem on that day.” Long ago, yes. But, as Crossan and Borg claim, “The same question, the same alternative, faces those who would be faithful to Jesus today. Which procession are we in? Which procession do we want to be in?” Not just on Palm Sunday. Not only in Holy Week. But everywhere the procession shows up. No matter the week, the year, or the city.

The questions hang in the air, as the Hosannas recede:

WHICH JOURNEY AM I ON?
WHICH PROCESSION AM I IN?

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INSPIRATION

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
with his Good News and…
Hope erupts! Joy springs forth!
The very stones cry out,
“Hosanna in the highest,
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
The crowds jostle and push,
they can’t get close enough!
People running alongside flinging down their coats before him!
Jesus, the parade marshal, waving, smiling.
The paparazzi elbow for room,
looking for that perfect picture for the headline,
“The Man Who Would Be King”.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
and gets the red carpet treatment.
Children waving real palm branches from the florist,
silk palm branches from Wal-mart,
palms made from green construction paper.
Hosannas ringing in churches, chapels, cathedrals,
in monasteries, basilicas and tent-meetings.
King Jesus, honored in a thousand hymns
in Canada, Cameroon, Calcutta and Canberra.
We LOVE this great big powerful capital K King Jesus
coming in glory and splendor and majesty
and awe and power and might.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Kingly, he takes a towel and washes feet.
With majesty, he serves bread and wine.
With honour, he prays all night.
With power, he puts on chains.
Jesus, King of all creation, appears in state
in the eyes of the prisoner, the AIDS orphan, the crack addict,
asking for one cup of cold water,
one coat shared with someone who has none,
one heart, yours,
and a second mile.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Can you see him?
— Carol Penner, from her poem “Coming to a City Near You”

We need to undomesticate Palm Sunday in our churches. Jesus was staging a kind of counter-demonstration. While Pilate rode into the city on a military stallion, Jesus entered on a borrowed donkey, symbolized sovereignty—but also Zechariah’s promise that Yahweh would one day banish the war horse forever! The procurator claimed the Pax Romana, the Nazarene a “Pax Christi.” Pretty subversive stuff—and our churches have the habit of recreating that “demonstration” in our Palm Sunday liturgies. But to really represent this gospel story in our world, we need to re-contextualize its symbols into our political moment, and re-place our witness back into public space.
— Ched Myers

Protest is telling the truth in public. Sometimes protest is telling the truth to a public that isn’t quite ready to hear it. Protest is, in its own way, a storytelling. We use our bodies, our words, our art, and our sounds both to tell the truth about the pain that we endure and to demand the justice that we know is possible.
― DeRay Mckesson

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A COTTAGE HOLY WEEK SPECIAL for paid subscribers!

On Monday, April 11 (Monday in Holy Week) at 5PM eastern, join me for a LIVE ZOOM with John Dominic Crossan in conversation about his new book, Render Unto Caesar: The Struggle Over Christ and Culture in the New Testament.

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