Palm Sunday (March 25, 2018)

Mark 11:1-11

Today, at the beginning of Holy Week, we heard first about Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and then we heard the account of his execution just days later. Our human brokenness is realized in our Lord’s crucifixion when the same disciples who confessed Jesus as Lord ran away and hid after he was arrested.

We’ll visit the events of the Three Days – from the last Supper through Holy Saturday – later in the week during our worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but today I want us to stay a little longer with the crowds shouting Hosanna, crying out to Jesus to “save us.”

Marcus Borg, a theologian and scholar who wrote about the historical Jesus in a number of books including one titled The Last Week, described what was taking place that day. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, the “festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from” Pharaoh who had enslaved the people of Israel centuries earlier.

The Roman governors of the region lived nearer to the Mediterranean coast, but they regularly traveled to Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. Proceeding down the western Watershed Ridge, Pilate and the imperial army would have approached Jerusalem in a mighty procession with armored foot soldiers, the cavalry on horses, weapons, banners and all the sounds of a conquering army.[i]

According to Mark’s gospel, which was written in Rome, to Christians living in Rome, between 65 and 70 CE, Jesus approached from the opposite side of Jerusalem,
from the eastern Mount of Olives, riding into the city,
not on a stallion, but on a borrowed colt. Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Louisiana-Gulf Coast Synod notes, “Royalty arrives on a donkey in times of peace (Genesis 49:11, Judges 5:5, 10:4). [and it] arrives on a horse in times of war.”

For Roman citizens, familiar with the governors’ triumphant marches, Jesus’ arrival would have been a clear and obvious challenge to the status quo. Instead of riding high atop a warhorse, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, rides into town on a donkey, not as a conquering hero, but as a humble servant king.[ii] Instead of a lavish demonstration of human power and military might, Jesus displays the already (but not yet) present kingdom of God. The kingdom is not yet fulfilled because we still live in sin, but God is present in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of persistent injustices and unacceptable deaths.

Most of us have never lived under occupation, nor known the oppression that enslaved peoples have known. Few of us, including me, have even witnessed it first-hand. But Jerusalem was an occupied city, where Israelites lived under Hellenist Greeks until 164 BCE and then fell again in 63 BCE to Rome. The emperors were brutal and exploitative, and when there were revolts, whole cities burned and rebels were crucified en masse.[iii]

While it is ancient history for us, for Mark’s audience, those massacres would have been as familiar as the horrors of the Holocaust are to us today. In the midst of this destructive and disruptive violence and dis-ease, Jesus affirms that “God’s resolve for peace in human communities is unshakeable.”

As large as the crowds were on the road between the Mount of Olives and the City of David, they wouldn’t have included everyone. Some might have been obligated to attend the governor’s procession or been curious about the spectacle. And John’s gospel tells us, “[the Jewish religious leaders] had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.”[iv] That meant being rejected, exiled from worship and cut off from community. So, some people would have stayed away because they were afraid. The cost of choosing instead to follow Jesus was high.

Now as then, following Jesus means choosing another Way, one that isn’t rooted in fear or force but in the Good News of God’s saving power and life-giving grace. The Good News, as Pastor Bobby Wilkinson writes, “those who wield death … have no real standing against the One who wields the power of new life.”[v]

Entering into this Holy Week, we are invited to hear the gospel call to prayer and action for the sake of the world and to take the risk of following Jesus in plain sight, all the way to the cross.

Let us pray…
Hosanna, Lord God,
Thank you for Your Son Jesus who comes into the world and brings life to all of us who choose death;
Accompany us through this Holy Week that we would confess what we have failed to do and receive your forgiveness and mercy;
Lead us by Spirit to bring life and light into our community as witnesses to Your love.
Amen.

[i] Marcus Borg. The Last Week. 2-3.
[ii] “Passion/Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018.” https://bishopmike.com/, accessed 3/22/2018.
[iii] Borg, 14-15.
[iv] John 9:22
[v] https://robertwilliamsonjr.com/palm-sunday-time-trump/, accessed 3/23/2018.