On Palm Sunday 5 year old Johnny stayed home from church with a babysitter because he had a sore throat. When the family returned home, they were carrying several palm fronds. Johnny asked what they were for. ‘People held them over Jesus’ head as he walked by,’ his father said. Johnny got all huffy and crossed his arms, ‘Oh great,’ he complained, ‘the one Sunday I don’t go to church and Jesus shows up.’
Growing up Catholic, I never paid much attention to Palm Sunday. I mean it was a cool day when you got palms to play with during church, and, of course, my brother and I would have palm sword fights with them. But Easter was the big show and Palm Sunday was kind of the trailer.
That all changed for me when I came across a book called The Last Week by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Borg and Crossan literally go day by day during the last week of Jesus (which is Holy Week) and tell us what’s going on.
What we have come to know as “Palm Sunday” likely took place at the time of Passover in Jerusalem. The population of Jerusalem swelled every year from 50,000 to 200,000 people during Passover and it was a time of great celebration. But it was also a time of great tension and social unrest. The Jewish people – who gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate their freedom from Egypt – were not unaware that they now lived under occupation by the Romans. Every year there was talk of rebellion and revolt against Rome.
So every year, the Romans would have a huge military parade that entered from the West side of the city. They’d bring out their war horses, chariots, soldiers, military gear…you name it. Political figures and dignitaries marched in it – waving to the crowds. It was a big spectacle meant to impress people.
But it was also meant to scare people.
Rome was sending a message about who was in charge and what would happen to you if you got in their way. Theirs was a system of domination and punishment. They didn’t care if you practiced your own religion or kept your customs and traditions. But if you stopped paying your taxes, organized against them or disrupted their bottom line, there was going to be trouble.
On this particular Passover, however, we have a different kind of parade happening on the East side of the city. Jesus – who no doubt knew that the Roman parade was happening – organized a parade of his own.
On Jesus’s side, it was the island of misfit toys. These were just your average salt of the earth kind of folks and a lot of people who didn’t quite fit in anywhere else. Very little money. No pomp. Definitely no circumstance. Second hand clothes. Parade started late. And Jesus is riding a donkey – very intimidating!
But Jesus’ parade wasn’t just a quaint gathering. It was an act of political resistance, a protest. Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara once said “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” What Jesus was doing on Palm Sunday was a direct affront to the powers that be and he knew that he’d be labeled a threat.
That’s one reason why the crowd was all excited and shouting, “Hosanna!”
The word “hosanna” literally means “save us” and the people that Jesus hung out with wanted to be saved from the crushing systems of the empire that broke their bank accounts, broke their bodies and broke their spirits. They were psyched that someone had finally come to turn this thing around.
But Jesus’ revolution didn’t quite fit their expectations either.
The crowd that gathered around Jesus no doubt expected him to have a world-altering plan. I imagine some were like, “Jesus, I love the donkey, that’s a nice touch, and the minimalism is key…but where are the chariots and the weapons?”
Jesus said, “We don’t have any. We’re going to do this another way.”
Jesus knew that weapons, jails and walls would never get us to where we needed to go. These things do not keep us “safe.” As the organizers in our community have been chanting for a year, “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!”
Writer Mia Birdsong wrote a beautiful book called How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community. In it she says that “safety is each of us having the things we need to live a life of well-being – food, shelter, education, health care, love and connection.” She goes on to say that instead of abdicating this work to someone one else in the community, we get the future we want by practicing it now.
Jesus’ Palm Sunday demonstration wasn’t just a public act of protest against the Roman domination systems. His parade was trying to model what it might look like when we use our lives to make that happen.
I can’t remember exactly what day it was last Fall when a group of activists had set up an encampment outside of City Hall. While it was part of a wider movement of protest against police brutality and the killing of Daniel Prude, it was about so much more. People without housing were given donated tents and sleeping bags to sleep in. A food station fed anyone who wanted a hot meal or snacks. Street medics and emotional support people were available for anyone who needed care. People were doing chalk art on the street, singing songs, doing the electric slide to a pop up DJ and holding teach-ins. It was really an amazing experience to witness and gave us a taste of an alternative to the way we live.
Political theologian William Stringfellow said that Palm Sunday represents an invitation to the church to enter into the depths of the world’s existence with nothing to offer but our own lives.
Our lives are God’s plan to change the world.
Every week during the eucharistic prayer, our celebrant – as they lift up the bread and wine and juice – invite us to offer the gift we have to bring – our lives. Our amazing, ordinary, broken and beautiful lives.
Alice Walker once said that, “we are the ones that we have been waiting for…” While I wholeheartedly agree with this, we may need some retraining.
One of the challenges that I think we face, however, is that most of us have been deeply impacted by and soaking in the practices, values and thinking of the empire. This is what has come to be known as “normal” for most of us. So if we’re going to develop an authentic alternative, we will actually need to be led by those have been left out.
Mia Birdsong says often in her book, that a lot of what she learned about creating real and authentic community she learned from those who have been excluded from the systems of power and privilege – queer and trans families, people in the disability community, those living on the streets or in poor communities. These folks have lived on the margins and have had to develop systems of mutual aid and support to keep themselves and each other alive because the systems don’t even try to do that. But their lived experience gives them an ability to design new systems that are inclusive and belonging for everyone.
Over the past 6 months, my friend KeKe Smith has been instrumental in setting up food boxes in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Rochester. She grew up in the 14621 neighborhood and knew what it was like to go without – so she decided to do something about it during the pandemic when so many people were struggling. She partnered with Rochester Food Not Bombs to construct these cabinets that are placed throughout the community – but especially where some of Rochester’s poorest people live. Those who are able to stock the cabinets with food, diapers and other essentials, and those who need it come and take it. People helping each other, and I know that some people from our Spiritus community have been faithfully stocking the shelves. Thank you!
But on one occasion I heard KeKe say, “Make sure you put the boxes and items down low enough so that kids can get them because some kids are the ones coming to get food for their brothers and sisters…” She didn’t know this because she read it in a book. This comes from personal experience, and this kind of knowledge reminds her to design things differently. You design a different system based on a different experience.
So many of the systems that we’re living in were designed by folks in the parade on West side. These systems are not broken. They’re actually functioning like they’re supposed to because they were designed in such as way so as to leave some people out and benefit others. And while they hurt some much more than others – they impact and harm everyone.
I know a lot of us are still reeling from the impact of 2 mass shootings in less than a week – let alone trying to wrap our hearts and minds around a pandemic. We keep being broken open in the current systems that we’re living in and it can be easy to give in to the fear-based responses that our culture so often amplifies.
But we as humans are built for connection, interdependence and caring. It’s part of our DNA and we even have parts of our brains whose only job is to feel empathy and compassion for others. The more we get accustomed to not caring for each other, being afraid of one another and excluding people the more it eats away at our humanity.
Now some have called Palm Sunday a “tale of two parades” and that we kind of have to decide which parade we’re ultimately going to be part of – because they lead to radically different worlds. If we’re going to be in the parade on the East side – Jesus’ parade – we have got to make changes.
As many of you know, we’ve had a daily blog during Lent and people have been commenting almost every day. It’s been a fantastic dialogue. In response to one of my recent posts about making these kinds of changes, one of our parishioners, Sarah, commented:
I feel like there are just so many requirements to be a decent person these days and no way to really meet them all. I’m supposed to exercise, cook healthy meals, garden, compost, spend quality family time, sleep at least 8 hours, practice mindfulness, pray daily, keep a journal, keep up on the news, read (both to my kid and on my own), take time for myself, have a date night with my husband, write my congress people, volunteer, take care of my neighbors…all in addition to working 50 hours a week, commuting, and running my kid around…I haven’t seen a movie not by Disney in 10 years…
A lot of us are ALREADY feeling the weight of our full lives, full hearts and layer upon layer of personal and collective trauma. And now we get to feel guilty that we’re not doing enough for the Jesus parade. Great!
Jesus’ parade is not supposed to be yet another project that we need to add to our list of all the things we don’t have time for. Like, “I can fit that in between 3 – 4pm on Tuesday but I’ll need to leave early…” It’s about how we relate to each other. Mia says it’s about building a world “where people feel seen and accepted, where we feel like we have enough of what we need and can ask for what we want, where we love up and lean on each other.” We can do that in all our interactions.
Do the people in our families feel seen and accepted? Do our colleagues? Who is being left out somehow?
Does everyone have what they need? Are they able to ask for it and what happens when they do?
Do people feel loved up and able to lean on us? Do we have people who do that for us?
The beauty is that we can ask these questions on the committees we are on, in legislative chambers, in our own homes and in this church.
But doing this is not always very efficient, and it takes time. Efficiency is not a very high value for Jesus, however. He wants a parade that includes everyone, and that takes time.
The invitation of Palm Sunday is to keep going deeper into Jesus’ parade and to make his parade happen in a public way wherever we are. And as we’re more and more part of this amazing street celebration, our rhythms start to change. And as we make more and more people “family” to us, our time and attention begins to shift to the structures we live in because we want all our family to do well.
The great James Baldwin once said, “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” Palm Sunday urges us to create a world where everyone will fit, but it will not exist until we decide to make it.
The parade is underway, I hope you’ll join.
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