“Parades!!!” Palm Sunday sermon March 20, 2016 Keswick-Ravenshoe Pastoral Charge

People love parades, don’t they? It’s so easy to get caught up in them, even if that wasn’t your intent. We have Orange Bowl Parades, Santa Claus Parades, St. Patrick’s Day Parades, Easter Parades. It’s a big thing in almost every town at Christmas, to have a Santa Claus Parade and always we have to take the kids.

Then there are other parades – like demonstrations, for example – crowds of people walking for social justice issues, food issues, water issues, anti-war parades. I remember a parade in Winnipeg – called a demonstration but really a parade, opposing the continued war in Viet Nam. As we walked, even the police joined us. Parades – called marches – in the southern US to gain rights for blacks.

There are other parades - military personnel and machinery goose stepping down main streets, saluting and parading machines and weapons. We have all seen pictures of military, in many countries – Germany, Chile, China – as a few examples. Threatening people with might – a pattern repeated through history which has never worked.

A few years ago, at a conference called Epiphany Explorations in Victoria BC, I heard biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan talk about the political world of Jesus, particularly Jerusalem, a city essentially run by the Romans. Passover tended to be the time when insurrectionist movements gained strength, troublemakers came into the city to stir up anti-Roman sentiments. Jerusalem was a huge centre, and in the Passover season, the population swelled to hundreds of thousands. The whole week was an incredibly busy holiday season. If people didn’t have reservations, forget finding anything for the Seder, let alone a place to sleep. Prices would have been through the roof.
Now Jesus was extremely politically astute. I don’t think it was accidental that he sent the disciples ahead, knowing that there would be a donkey available. It wasn’t his first time up that road, so he had likely passed the place before. He staged his entry into Jerusalem – to provide a counterpoint to another entry. So, the story we’ve put together tells us Jesus borrowed a donkey, and rode into Jerusalem, to cheering crowds who waved palms and shouted ‘Hosanna to the one who comes in the name of God!!’ 

So we have to read between the lines, using our knowledge of history and culture. Jesus was a Jewish peasant, entering Jerusalem. Essentially he had been a thorn in the side of the Jewish religious leaders, but not any kind of serious threat otherwise. Yet he knows that some of the leaders want to kill him, and he’s decided that he is going to confront them; he knows it’s become political. He borrows a donkey, and rides into Jerusalem through the north gate – kind of the back entrance where the ordinary people will also be. It’s likely some of the people travelling with Jesus are going ahead, laying their cloaks along the roadway, shouting ‘Hosanna!’, which means “Save us!”. Ordinary people get caught up in this parade – people who have been stepped on not only by the Romans but by the leaders of their own people – Herod and his cohorts, the religious leaders who charge enormous sums in the temple for birds or animal sacrifice. The money changers who are only there to make a shekel or two off the backs of the poorer among them. In comes Jesus, surrounded by scores of people who get caught up in the emotion of the moment. It’s a parade, a joyous one, with a promise of something better.

Then there’s the other parade. The Roman governor Pontius Pilate comes riding in through the West Gate – essentially the front door reserved for the big shots. Normally, Pilate lived in Caesarea by the sea, a quiet life at the beach. But he also knew that at Passover, excited and devout Jews celebrating their liberation from Egypt might also try to get liberated from Rome. They had tried before. So the Roman Governors would put on a display of force, the marching military machinery, the strength of Roman power. Once a year, during the Passover, Pilate and his entire entourage moved headquarters to Jerusalem, just in case there might be some attempts at insurgency. 

The second parade included cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold, drums beating, bridles clinking, marching feet shaking the ground. No ‘Hosannas!!’ here. Pilate led a regiment of soldiers as a show of force, also aware that there were several more battalions of Rome’s finest garrisoned outside Jerusalem in case they were needed.

Mark’s Gospel, written about thirty years later, in fact lets us know that Jesus’ parade was not a spontaneous. Mark, the first Gospel to be written, tells more about preparations. It is made to  seem that Jesus intentionally timed his entrance to be in stark contrast to the Roman display, contrasting the realm of God and the realm of Rome. Matthew written about 70 years after Jesus’ death, has the disciples bring a donkey and a colt and Jesus sits on them and rides them both. The disciples and the people in their group spread their cloaks on the road and some leafy branches, as does Mark. Luke has no branches.

The Gospel of John written about 100 years after Jesus’ death, names the branches as palms. Now, waving palm branches was a welcome for conquering military leaders. For John, Jesus is a conquering hero, while the other three Gospels set it up as the equivalent of a poke in the eye with a big stick to both the religious leaders and the Romans.

In the book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, Bishop John Spong notes that at Passover the only branches around would have been palms. It is also possible that Jesus’ death of Jesus took place  at the festival of Sukkoth, the harvest Festival of Tabernacles . Pilate would have had to show force, and in fact there are some details of the festival that suggest that the crucifixion did not happen at Passover. At Sukkoth, worshippers processed through the city, into the temple, waving branches made of willow, myrtle and palm, and they recited the Sukkoth Psalm 118, “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord.”  Hosianna!!! 

Well, the parallels and differences in the Gospels are fun, and I love looking at their differences, and there is also a point. It is really important to realise that the Gospels were all written in retrospect, and all with a particular agenda on the part of the writers through the lenses of their Jewish beliefs, to show who Jesus was, within his time and his context, and who he became for his followers.

Pastor Dawn Hutchings, at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Newmarket, in her Palm Sunday sermon, says “So, what are we 21^st century Christians to do with the Palm Sunday?  Well, it seems to me that no matter how you look at the story of this amazing procession into Jerusalem, you can’t help but see the image of a Jesus who offers us a choice between two parades. The attraction of the power and the might of Pilate’s military parade with all its glory and wonder is still there to tempt us. The temptation to use force and violence, military might, nuclear deterrence, shock and awe, is still marching its way into the hearts and minds of so many people.”

We have two parades coming in two different places in Jerusalem. People got caught up in the first one because it was boisterous  - but did they commit? Or were they just caught up?  After sober second thought, do we go with the other guys because they have all the weapons and the might?  Is it safer to go with them in the long run? Who do we choose, when the excitement is over?

This week, one of the Poet Matriarchs of clergy and the church died. Ann Weems was a Presbyterian elder, and author of many books. Her poem “Between Parades” was published in the book ‘Kneeling in Jerusalem’.

BETWEEN PARADES

We’re good at planning!
Give us a task force

and a project
and we’re off and running!
No trouble at all!
Going to the village

and finding the colt,
even negotiating with the owners
is right down our alley.
And how we love a parade!
In a frenzy of celebration
we gladly focus on Jesus
and generously throw our coats
and palms in his path.
And we can shout praise
loudly enough
to make the Pharisees complain.
It’s all so good!

It’s between parades that
we don’t do so well.
From Sunday to Sunday
we forget our hosannas.
Between parades
the stones will have to shout
because we don’t.
Sources:

1.      Parades!! A sermon by Fran Ota, originally preached Palm Sunday 2013.

2.      “Marching in the Wrong Parades” by Rev. Dawn Hutchings, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Newmarket, ON.

3.      Ann Weems, “Kneeling in Jerusalem”. Westminster John Knox Press 1992.