Palm Sunday
Readings: LK 19:28-40; IS 50:4-7; PHIL 2:6-11; LK 22:14—23:56
And so we start the “high holy days” of the Christian calendar culminating in what is called the Triduum which starts on Holy Thursday and ends on Easter Sunday. This week is the microcosm of the faith and encapsulates the wide range of human emotion.
One of my favorite lines of scripture comes today from the book of Isaiah and I think of it often in my profession as a counselor (but I think it applies to all of us): “The Lord GOD has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning God opens my ear that I may hear.” Perhaps this week in particular we might offer words that rouse anyone who is weary. And so many in our world are weary.
There is really TOO MUCH in these readings to attend to it all. We will cover some of it later in the week (because the gospel covers some of the Passover meal that Jesus celebrates), so for today I’m just going to focus on the Palm Sunday aspect of things.
As I have mentioned throughout, there’s a lot of context that Jesus’ contemporaries would have recognized in these stories that we miss with our modern sensibilities. First off, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was not accidental that it happened when it did. In many ways, his entrance on a donkey was a form of “street theater” meant to send a message. Much like a rally that is held outside of another important event, Jesus staged his entrance at basically the same time as the Roman army was marching into Jerusalem on the other side of the city. They were there for law and order during the Passover. Jesus, however, had different purposes.
Jesus’ entrance was meant to send a counter message. His army was a peasant army – carrying only palm branches – yet he was deemed quite dangerous by the authorities because of the subversive nature of his message. He rode in on a donkey – hardly the symbol of military might. Yet his demonstration was intended to remind everyone that there is another way of being in the world – one of radical love and nonviolence.
Scripture scholar Ched Myers says that every year we “recreate” Jesus’ demonstration on Palm Sunday and yet seem to fundamentally miss its point. He wonders what it would mean to undomesticate the story, re-contextualize its meaning and do this is in a contested space (meaning a place where injustice is).
I wonder today:
If Jesus wanted to make a similar statement, where do you think he might go – locally and nationally?
Who would likely be in his company?
What holiday might he choose to demonstrate on?
What forms of violence would he be challenging?
If our “worship” and faith do not lead us into the public space somehow in order to subvert the systems of power that operate in our world, it is likely that we are not following the Jesus of the gospels very closely.
I would also highly recommend the book By John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem. Their research and reflections will change the way you think about Jesus as well as what he was up to during this last week of his life.