Parade, Protest,
Procession, Prelude (Mark 11:1-11)
Palm Sunday, March
29, 2015
Picture it.
Jesus sits on the donkey, slowly moving toward Jerusalem. His followers and crowds, either curious or
hopeful, line the roadway and wave palms.
“Hosanna,” they shout. “Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David.”
This event in scripture, Jesus’ slow
ride into the city on the Sunday before his crucifixion, has been titled “the
triumphal entry.” The title fits. Crowds are calling out their hopes and laying
those hopes on Jesus’ back. He is the
star of this show. This is his parade.
It certainly looks like a great
triumph. Recall Mark chapter 3. Scribes – legal experts – traveled from
Jerusalem to the north where Jesus was teaching and healing and driving demons
out of people. The scribes came and
checked out the fuss being made over Jesus.
They called him “Beelzebu” (3:22), a demon. His own family tried to rein him in. Now, here he is parading into the great city
of David. Crowds praise his name. And this is all happening around the time of
Passover. Victory will be his. Yes, this certainly looks like a parade for
Jesus.
We cannot stop there. We have to go deeper into the story.
Yes, Jesus is ushering in the Kingdom
of God. But it is not a kingdom the
Romans would respect. The Kingdom of
Jesus stands on love and compassion, not intimidation and force. The Romans would have appreciated the “shock
and awe” military campaign our nation tried to impose a little over a decade
ago. We’ll
force our will by way of power. It
is very Roman, very military; it is not very Christ-like.
Some scholars believe that around the same
time Jesus rode his humble donkey into Jerusalem, maybe even the same day,
another procession was parading into town.[i] The Roman governor Pontius Pilate was
processing, on gallant stallions, with all the pomp, circumstance, power, and
intimidation the legionnaires could muster.
They would should these denizens of Jerusalem what real power is. Jesus showed Jerusalem and the world what God
is about.
His Kingdom was not for Rome, nor was it
for the Jewish temple scribes. They are
in the privileged class and they enjoy the benefits their position brings. Jesus, the Son of God, identifies with the
lowliest in society – shepherds, the blind, children, prostitutes and tax
collectors, women, and even gentiles.
Who are those people in our world you might think of morally base or of
low status. Jesus locates himself with
them. The elites of Jerusalem,
themselves heirs of Abraham just as Jesus was, would feel threatened by his
identification with the humble of the world because he came to lift the lowly.
Thus his “triumphal entry,” as it is
sometimes called, his parade was a protest march. His actions communicate a resounding “no” to
politics of power. His stance negates
the idea that might makes right. He also
protested the calls of the revolutionaries who were in the crowd shouting
“Hosanna.” They wanted him to lead the
sword-bearing charge that would evict Roman.
Many people in the crowd that waved palm branches in his honor had
patriotism and nationalism in mind.
Jesus had the salvation of all humanity in mind. There were conflicting agendas.
He protested the Romans who worshiped
power, the Jerusalem establishment who cozied up to that power, and he
protested those who would have him play a role other than the one God
intended. He was not a violent
revolutionary. His victory would come
through sacrifice. No one around him was
prepared for what was coming. This
parade, which was in actuality a protest march, was also a funeral procession.
Jesus had said so on three
occasions.
Mark 8:31, “31‘Then he began
to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected
by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after
three days rise again.’ 32 He said all this quite openly.”
Mark 9:31, “‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they
will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ 32 But [the
disciples] did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
Mark 10:32, “He took the twelve aside
again and began to tell them what was to happen to him,33 saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of
Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will
condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; 34 they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog
him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’”
When Jesus rode into town to the tune
of the hopeful “Hosanna’s,” he knew more was coming. So too did the first community to read the
book of Mark as a completed gospel. The
stories that informed Mark’s writing circulated through Christian communities
from the very first days after the resurrection, but the document we find in
our New Testaments as the book of Mark was not put together until after 60AD,
maybe after 70 AD.
When someone, maybe Mark himself,
first stood and read this work in a worship service, the core group knew Jesus
died on a cross. And they believed it to
be historical fact that he rose from the grave.
Some of the older members were probably among those who met the
resurrected Jesus in person (see 1 Corinthians 15:5). The disciples did not understand that after
Palm Sunday would come Good Friday. The
day would only be called “good” for what it means, not how it feels.
As we go through Mark and see the
utter lack of vision displayed by the disciples, we must extend them
grace. In their shoes, not knowing the
resurrection was coming, we would do no better.
They, so close to Jesus and yet so blind, should be one more impetus to
us to show grace upon grace. That is why
Jesus died out of love and as an act of compassionate love and grace for all
sinners. For you and me.
The shout, “Hosanna,” a quotation from
Psalm 118:25 literally means “Save us, we pray.” Those shouting it thought salvation would
come with a new David, a new Goliath-slayer.
Clearly, they did not realize God had a different plan. Their cry was appropriate though. Jesus would save everyone in his death and
resurrection. Seeing the story as we do,
from the standpoint of knowing how it turns out, we know that this parade in
which Jesus protested violence, conquest, elitism, and many other pains that
have resulted from the infestation of sin in the world – this parade was his
funeral procession even before he was forced to drag his own cross to his place
of execution.[ii]
But it does not end there. The story of Jesus and of us – following
Jesus, running from Jesus, hiding from Jesus, denying Jesus, and ultimately
being found by Jesus and made new by Jesus – this story does not end at the
cross.
It pauses there. We cannot sing Hosanna’s Palm Sunday and then
skip to the Hallelujah’s of Easter. We
have to go through the Thursday of bread and wine and washing feet. We have to linger in the bloody, black
darkness of Friday when our Savior was hung on the cross, nailed to it by our
sins. We have to worship in awareness of
our dependence upon him.
This drama plays out every time we gather. We come as sinners saved by grace. To say we are sinners means we have been hurt
and we have hurt others. It means we
have cut ourselves off from God. But, we
are saved from this alienation and the death that comes with it. We are saved to joyous eternal life, lived in
relationships of love with one another as sons and daughters of God, brothers
and sisters in the family of God. The
highs and lows of this story must never be forgotten.
We acknowledge the pause, while remembering we are a people
defined by the light on the distant hill, the light that emanates from an empty
tomb. The parade that is a protest that
is in fact a procession to death in the end is a prelude to a new age. At Thanksgiving, at Christmas, on Palm
Sunday, on a nondescript Tuesday in August, and on every day in between, we are
Easter people. We are born again. We are made new, called into eternal life in
Christ. The story of Palm Sunday is the
introduction to the great work of literary art that speaks in words, in images,
on the screen, and in way we live our lives.
It is the prequel to the greatest story that can be told, the unending
life lived in the Kingdom of God and the part God invites us to play in
it.
Palm Sunday is our lead-in prepping us for resurrection. But, more on that next week.
This week, we worship and rejoice because of who Jesus is and
who we are in Him.
AMEN
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