Palm Sunday
A reflection for Palm Sunday, today. (Pause for a breath or two.)
The entry into Jerusalem can have a rote quality -- Jesus is doing this to 'fulfill' the words of the prophet: where's that donkey?! But, why fulfill...?
Or, it can have a mysterious, puzzle-like quality -- take that donkey you will find there (they do!) and simply say, 'the Lord has need of it.' Oh, OK...
I read some good scholarship on this text a few years ago that unlocked something for me in the hosannas and the palms -- indeed, it unlocked something for me in the whole Paschal journey of Holy Week and the Great Three Days. Some scholars assert that at various times in the first century CE Roman occupation of Jerusalem, a legion or two of Roman soldiers would be sent up to the city around the time of the Passover. Why?
Think of the story of the Passover, if you know it -- the children of Israel are rescued from slavery in Egypt, Pharoah and his armies are overthrown and drowned in the Red Sea, and the journey toward the Promised Land commences (with a long few decades in the desert first). It is a story of liberation, and the oppressor is conquered. God delivers the people from the oppressor's controlling hand; the entire system of their slavery is crushed, and they escape.
Sounds like a recipe for revolution -- or, at least, great civil unrest! -- when that story is told, annually, at the Great Passover Feast. Certainly, food for a resistance that was always brewing, and which bore fruit just a couple decades after Jesus in a serious Jewish revolt against Roman occupation.
Thousands of people made an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem to observe the Passover there, to offer sacrifice at the Temple (biggest shopping day of the year!), and to break bread and tell this story. Were I a Roman governor, I would certainly send in a show of force, marching in some extra troops to make a point about the nature of my own power, and to 'keep the peace' in the city that would be the center of the Passover celebration: Jerusalem, the home of the Great Temple, symbol of the people and the very heart of what their religious narrative had become.
Jesus and his disciples are coming to Jerusalem to observe the Passover, most certainly. And, they would know of this show-of-force coming to enter the city by the gate that led to the road to the west, back down the mountain to the coastal Greco-Roman cities. Our scholars suggest that Jesus and his disciples make their own show, entering the city by a different gate in their own makeshift procession... displaying power of a very different sort. Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord. Glory to God (Hosanna!)!
Imagine two very different processions entering Jerusalem for that Passover: one a military parade like the one our President seemed to envy French and Russian leaders having, a show of force by the Roman occupation (don't try anything, resistance!); the other one is something very different.
Is Jesus mocking the Roman occupation? Is he pointing to another very different way of thinking of or wielding power? I think of how the Apostle Paul often writes, "...and I will show you a still more excellent way." Yes, O daughter of Zion, your king is coming to you... but humble, and mounted not on a warhorse with legions behind him, but on a mere donkey and its foal.
It is a reflection on power. I suspect it is both a critique of the sort of power that had entered into the city in force, as well as a demonstration and an invitation to follow a different sort of power -- that of love, truth-telling in resistance, self-offering, and ultimate healing. You might call it a piece of performance art, or political theater with a cosmic point to make.
Let us follow this procession and learn where it will take us. We will eat together; we will follow in the way of the Cross; we will gather at the empty tomb. In all this, contemplate what power God is demonstrating to us, and to all the world, and what invitation are we being given -- even today.