Another World Is Happening

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week as we celebrate Palm Sunday. Holy Week is really the culmination of so many themes, rituals and symbols in the life of the church that it is hard to touch upon all of them. But we will try! Today’s post will be slightly longer than usual because we’re teeing up the week and setting the stage for what is going to happen in the next few days.

As I have mentioned in other places, my thinking around Palm Sunday has changed a lot. A major shift came when I read Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s The Last Week (2007) a while ago. In fact, their work shifted a collective understanding of Palm Sunday for many folks in church circles and actually made Jesus’ actions make more sense for a lot of us.

To understand it, however, it’s important to have some context. 

Every year during the time when Jesus lived, the Jewish population would converge on Jerusalem for Passover. The faithful would come from all around to celebrate what is, perhaps, the most important story in Hebrew history – their liberation from bondage in Egypt.  Every year, the population of Jerusalem would swell to almost 4 times its size with people coming in for Passover festivities. And we think a lot of folks are coming to Rochester for the eclipse!

But along with the celebrations of Passover, certain groups within the Jewish community also dreamed of overthrowing their current occupiers – the Romans. The Passover festival conjured not only a celebration of prior freedom but a thirst for freedom from Rome. While Rome allowed those it conquered to practice religion and customs, they were brutal to anyone who messed with their politics and money. And these whiffs of revolution every year in Jerusalem were not good for business.

So every year, during the Passover celebration, the Roman governor would ride in to Jerusalem from his coastal residence west of the city. He would ride in with war horses, chariots, and tons of soldiers in a massive parade that went right through the city. The message was clear to the Jewish people: You can celebrate Passover all you want, but do not resist us or you will feel what we can do. Furthermore, Rome considered its emperor to be god, so they were sending a secondary message as well – that their “god” was more powerful than the Jewish god.

Debbie Thomas in an essay called Parade or Protest? says that “this is the background…against which we need to frame the [Palm Sunday procession] of Jesus.” Jesus had clearly planned a counter-protest entering from the east of the city. Where the imperial procession was polished and mighty, Jesus and his ragamuffin crew limped along with no “weapon” but love and community. They were the powerless, the rejected and the vulnerable.

She goes on to say “as Borg and Crossan remark, ‘What we often call the triumphal entry [of Jesus] was actually an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the conquering emperor’” and all his might.

Jesus knew, however, that by doing this that he would be a marked man.  But that didn’t stop him. Love was a greater force for him, and I think he wanted his followers and the world to see that “another world is necessary, another world is possible and another world is happening (Grace Lee Boggs).” (To see a beautiful woodcut of this phrase go to https://community.amplifier.org/art/another-world-is-possible/)

And instead of directly fighting Rome, Jesus presented an alternative. As Fr. Jim is often known to say (and I believe he’s referring to St. Francis), “The best criticism of the bad is to do the better.” I know that many of us can spend a whole lot of precious time and energy trying to tear down old systems and fighting “the powers that be,” and I know that there are times when this is necessary. At the same time, the more we engage the toxic systems – especially using some of their very own tools – we run the risk of becoming more like them and can neglect to use our time and energy in the building of an alternative.

So all told, Palm Sunday offers me at least two powerful lessons.

First, the world needs an alternative to the militaristic, dominator model. We need continued examples of nonviolent, revolutionary love and models of what that looks like at the individual and collective level. How would people know that our God is a nonviolent, God of peace who spent his time with the outcasts and rejects making sure that they had what they needed and heard the “good news” that God loved them and would liberate them from bondage? 

People will know it because they will feel it in our interactions and in the ways that we move through the world. They will feel it in how we care for each other, build community with the poor and engage in mutual aid. They will feel it how we show up for each other and become advocates for justice and equity. And they will feel it in the ways we challenge the status quo and empire.

A second lesson I take from Palm Sunday – related to the first –  is that the work of making God’s kin-dom a reality in our midst is not on Jesus alone. What he set in motion is ours to carry on. He may be the parade leader, but we are in the parade (if we choose to be). And the beauty of this parade is that it is a “come as you are” parade. No qualifications. No prior experience needed. No titles. No pomp or circumstance. Just a willingness to offer what you have in your life and be open to transformation.

The great Martin Luther King, Jr.  – preaching just 2 months before he was killed – said that Jesus gave his followers a new definition of power and greatness. It was not the kind reflected in the parade on the west side of Jerusalem that day. It was the power and greatness reflected on the east side parade. And in this parade, the path to power and greatness rested in servanthood. 

By giving us this definition and model of greatness, Jesus was thus saying that (in the words of King) “everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace [and] a soul generated by love.”

Today as we mark yet another Palm Sunday, may we remember that another world is necessary, another world is possible and another world is happening. This new world is a parade of servants, clowns, misfits, sinners and people with no formal training – but people with hearts full of grace and souls generated by love. May this parade continue with us and through us.