Palm Sunday Meditation
Rev. Laura J. Collins
April 13, 2003
Tanks roared into the center of the city this week -- crowds lined the paths shouting and singing. Images of oppressive rulers were torn from walls and toppled from pedestals and dragged through the streets. Mouths proclaimed freedom even as looting and chaos continued to reign. The war had been won, reporters announced as early as Wednesday evening. Liberty secured.
A man came into the center of the city that week -- crowds lined the paths shouting and singing. Images of a new ruler were offered -- palm branches and a trail of cloaks and shouts of "Hail to the king!" Voices hoping for release from oppressive rulers shouted, even as the man sat humbly on a donkey, no crown on his head, no sword in his hand.
Two scenes for us this week of entering the city. Entering the place where governments reside, where people live in hope and fear, in poverty and wealth, in close proximity and distant understanding. Cities have long been places of mixed symbolism for us: they are the crowning achievement of human effort and they are the hubs of human depravity. They hold our finest treasures and hide our darkest possibilities. They represent the center of power and seethe with lives far removed to the margins. We love them, loathe them, admire them, fear them.
Entering the city can mean many things. What did it mean to the soldiers driving those tanks this week? What did it mean to the people looting and the people fleeing and the people still cowering in basement rooms?
What did it mean to Jesus?
Jerusalem represented all that cities can mean to us and more. It was the heart of the faith -- the home of the temple. It was the place of business and commerce, of pilgrimages and prayers, of religious rulers and Roman forces. It was a symbol of freedom -- the heart of the promised land -- yet it was an occupied city, controlled from afar.
Jesus came in on a donkey. A humble, worker's animal. An animal like his poor mother had ridden only 30-some years before. Surely he was thinking of the prophet Zechariah who said, "Shout aloud, daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you ... humble and riding upon ... the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the ... war horse from Jerusalem ... and he shall command peace to the nations." (Zech. 9:9f)
What did this entry into the city mean to his disciples? They set him on the donkey, they lined the streets with cloaks, they shouted their joy and their hope, they named him a king.
What did it mean to the religious leaders who tried to quiet the crowds? Were they worried for the safety of the group -- worried that the words would sound treasonous to the occupiers and lead to preventable death? Or did they disagree with the songs and shouts, disapprove of the religious fervor, believing it misplaced and poorly understood?
What does it mean for us? What does it mean for us, here today, images of entered cities fresh in our minds? Living on the edge of the city where the power of the world resides?
We live in a city of wealth and poverty, of the powerful and the powerless, a city full of great ideals and a city home to deep-felt fear. How do we hold these two images of urban entrance in tension with each other? What wisdom do they offer us? What dissonance? What challenge?
Jesus knew that his entrance into Jerusalem was the beginning of the end. He didn't need superhuman, godly power to understand this: he simply needed the wisdom to see the world as it was and himself as he was. The truth could not be silenced, but he knew that some would try to kill it nonetheless. He told the Pharisees who tried to quiet the crowds that even the creation itself would witness to the truth, if we humans ever failed to. "If these disciples were silent, the stones would shout out." And isn't that the case? Doesn't creation cry out destruction even when we fail to name it?
Jesus knew that walking into the seat of power and the middle of the marginalized would be a test. And he was right. He walked into a death trap. And he died.
We stand beneathe the cross of Jesus because he chose to walk into the center of things -- the heart of religion, the point of power; the place of dreams and the core of terror. He refused to stay away from that hub of human existence and in that place, he became the scapegoat for all the fears and all the brokenness and all the sin and all the violence. He stood and took it all on. He carried it with him to his execution.
In a few short days a death sentence was made. Betrayals and denials by confused friends sealed the deal. Mobs of terrorized citizens joined in the death chant. Religious rigidity and political expedience bedded down together.
The story is told briefly of his death and yet it forms the basis for our gospel stories. Each of the gospel writers spent more words on his last four days than on any other days in the previous months and years of Jesus' life. Some details jump out:
We call the Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem the "triumphal" entry of Jesus. But maybe this word is misplaced. Because the Palm Sunday procession takes us straight to death row. We forget this sometimes, since we don't use crosses to kill people any more. Perhaps we need a little electric chair in the middle of our communion table to remind us what this is. This cross is the instrument of death. Of state-sanctioned and taxpayer-supported death. Of pre-meditated, torturous death. It is a symbol of how human power and human fear coalesce into a belief that violence saves. Violence liberates. Violence wins.
But in this story violence doesn't save, doesn't liberate, doesn't win.
In this story, it is not the one who kills that saves, but the one who dies.
When the disciples turned silent, the stones did shout and tremble and roll away from the tomb of death to reveal the reality of resurrection.
Thanks be to God.
Fred Craddock. Luke, Interpretation Series. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990).
Murphy Davis. "Still Hungry for Revenge," Hospitality, vol. 16, no. 10, October 1997.
Ched Myers, et al. Say to This Mountain: Mark's Story of Discipleship. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996).
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