Palm Sunday/ 29th
March 2015
Mark 11:1-19
A
parade, palms, and shouts of praise. These
are the things that come to mind when we hear this story. And, yet, there’s
something about this day, the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem, that’s not
quite right.
We
call it Palm Sunday, but it’s never called thus in the text. Did you notice that Mark’s text never says
anything about palm branches? Instead,
he says they “spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields,” (Mark 11:8), not from
trees. The church sings its hymns, All Glory Laud and Honor to thee, Redeemer
King, to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring![1], as we did this morning, but there are no children singing sweet hosannas in
Mark’s text. Our hymns often enhance and amplify the biblical story. Sometimes
our hymns distort and diminish the meaning of the biblical story. If I was in Jerusalem that day, with my son
or daughter at hand, I probably would have made sure that we were no where near
the procession route. Why? Because, as Mark tells it, this was a risky,
dangerous, provocative parade that Jesus orchestrated here. There’s nothing sweet about this story. It’s bittersweet.
“Hosanna! Hosanna!” the people
cried. By the end of the week some of
the same were no doubt in the crowd shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” It’s knowing this that makes the entire story
extremely odd, even disturbing. Knowing
what we know, about what transpired that week, the hosannas sound hollow. What’s going on in this story? What were their expectations? What did Jesus hope to achieve with this
demonstration? What did the disciples
think was going on? What about the
crowds, the onlookers viewing this spectacle? What were their thoughts? And what do they really mean by “Hosanna! Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of
our ancestor David!”
. . .
The more I read and reread the story
of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and study contemporary biblical scholarship, at
least one thing becomes clear (or clearer): this
is carefully choreographed political street theatre.[2] It’s loaded with symbolic meaning, the least
of which is Jesus’ riding on a colt, instead of a full-grown horse.[3] Brian Blount, one of the leading Mark
scholars of our day, Presbyterian pastor and president of Union Presbyterian
Seminary in Richmond, says, Mark “spends more time describing the preparations
for Jesus’ entry, than the entrance itself, more time talking about a colt,
than talking about the intentions of the one who will ride on it.”[4]
Mark’s gospel is the shortest; he has an economy of words, the narrative moves
quickly. But here it takes seven verses
to talk about the colt. Did you notice
this? Mark has two verses describing
what the people were shouting before they enter the city, then just one verse
describing the entry itself. And, this,
too, is a very odd verse: “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple;
and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went
out to Bethany with the twelve” (Mk 11:11).
What was the procession for? Nothing.
What did it really achieve? Not much.
Maybe that was the point: to get the attention of the city and to
forewarn them that something new was about to occur.
The next day, in Bethany, Jesus
curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit.
And then he enters Jerusalem a second time, goes straight to the temple
mount, turns over the table of the money changers, and effectively takes over
the administration of the temple. “My house that be called a house of prayer
for all the nations” (Mark 11:17, quoting Isaiah 56:7)! And that’s when things start to become really
ugly. And when evening comes Jesus and
the disciples leave the city again.
So, what did those hosannas really
mean the day before? Hosanna is Hebrew for, “Save, we pray!” “Save
us!” “Save,” they shout to Jesus. Save!
Save from what? From whom? For
what? They’re not saying, “Jesus save us from our sin.” They’re not saying, “Jesus, save our souls
for heaven.” It’s not that individual;
it’s not that spiritual, even. They’re
saying, “Save us, Jesus. Blessed are
you, the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom
of our ancestor David!” We have to pay
close attention here to this verse.
If
Jesus is bringing in his kingdom,
announcing his rule over the city,
then what happens to Caesar? If Jesus is
claiming his title as a descendant of King David—which is clearly what the
crowds are saying—it becomes obvious that what the people are hoping to be saved
from is Roman occupation and the domination
of the empire. And all of this is
occurring during Passover, when the population of the city swells with pilgrims
in town to celebrate the Passover meal—which is, itself, a commemoration of
Israel’s liberation from an earlier empire, from the domination of
Pharaoh.
Religion and politics combine
here. It can’t be ignored—it’s blatantly
obvious. You have thousands of people pouring into the city of Jerusalem to
celebrate the liberation of God’s people from the yoke of oppression, in God’s holy city, Jerusalem, this city of
Yahweh’s “shalom,” Yahweh’s peace and wholeness, surrounded by legions of Roman
soldiers brought up annually to the city from the main Roman garrison along the
coast to make sure that the city remains peaceful. We know that the city was
full of religious zealots and protests against the Romans. And the Jewish authorities running the
temple—not all the Jews, but those in authority of the temple precinct,
essentially the Sanhedrin—we know were essentially collaborators with the Roman
authorities. It was their invested
interest to maintain the peace.[5] Rome rewarded them for doing so. And so into
this powder keg we have Jesus’ own,
carefully planned march on Jerusalem, riding in on a colt, mocking the Romans,
as the people shouted “Save us, Jesus!” with the religious and political
authorities looking on. His actions the
next day lead to the destruction of the temple economy.
I
don’t know why we love overlook the political dimensions of this story. We love to spiritualize the Bible,
domesticate it, and in so doing we distort it, thus making it difficult to
really “hear” what Mark is saying about Jesus’ life and ministry.
Paula Fredriksen, a leading New
Testament scholar, makes this clear: Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, during
Passover, this religious holiday of national liberation, an entry that was
directly the result of Jesus’ own commitment to the kingdom of God, “would have
been understood by any Jew that the present order was about to cede to the
Kingdom of God.”[6] It’s an act of social, political, economic,
as well as theological revolution.
“Save, we pray.” But things start to turn ugly and the crowds
and even some of the disciples start to turn on Jesus because they want him to
save them, save Israel, on their terms. They want him to take on their
oppressors and liberate them. They want
him to restore things to the way they were.
But that’s not his plan.
There’s something else we need to
remember when we read Mark’s gospel. We
have to remember when Mark wrote it,
around 70 AD. And what happened in 70
AD? It’s one of the most important years in the history of the world, one of
the most significant dates for both Jews and Christians. The Roman siege of Jerusalem and, eventually,
the total destruction of the temple—the same temple that witnessed Jesus’
demonstration several decades before—occurred in 70. And we know from the Jewish historian
Josephus (37-100), that in 66 AD, at the start of the Jewish Wars (66-70 AD), there
was a man named Menahem, a leader in the Sicarri, an anti-Roman Jewish
insurgent group. Josephus said, he “took
some of the men of note with him, and retired to Masada, where he broke open
king Herod’s armory, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other
robbers also. These he made use of for a
guard, and returned in the state of a king to Jerusalem, and became leader of
the sedition, and gave orders for continuing the siege.”[7]
Mark wrote his gospel only a few years after Menahem’s triumphal entry, someone
also claiming to be king of the Jews. Mark’s hearers would have known about this
story. Jesus and Menahem are not the
same. Jesus comes in a different way.
. . .
Pray, save us.
We, too, sing “Hosanna!” on this day.
What does it mean for us? What
are we really saying? Blessed in the one who comes in the name of
the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom. What is this kingdom? Where, exactly, is the kingdom? The kingdom is
not “up there” in some heaven, but here and now for Jesus and Mark. The focus
of the gospel is on the kingdom. Our
thoughts during Holy Week are focused so much on the cross. How could they not be? But the cross, itself, has to be understood within
the context of Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom, the kingdom Jesus came to
announce and embody. Jesus faces a cross
because of his commitment to God’s
kingdom, to God’s empire, which is
one way to translate the Greek here. It’s because Jesus comes bearing the
kingdom—God’s empire—in the midst of false empires and principalities and
powers, that the religious and political powers unite against him and seek to
destroy him. Cornel West, a
contemporary philosopher of religion, said it beautifully, succinctly: “Holy Week
is fundamentally about love in the face of empire.”[8]
Jesus
is a threat. His way of love is always a threat to our ways, our assumptions,
our ethics, our visions for the way the world should be. We want Jesus on our terms. But he comes in a different way, on a colt,
not a stallion. And when he calls you and me to follow him it’s an invitation
to take his road, to walk his way into the kingdom, on his terms. And so, I
wonder, are our hosannas any less hollow when we expect God to “save” on our terms?
These “Hosannas” offered by the
crowd bother me, they disturb, even haunt me. There’s something disingenuous and hollow
about them. Again, maybe because we know
the chorus will change its song by Friday.
And we, too, risk being hollow and disingenuous when we say, “Hosanna!” “Save
us” and don’t work toward the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus gave his life
to show us, which is effectively the same as saying, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Our hosannas are false when
we’re not willing to suffer—or, at least, become just slightly
uncomfortable—because of Jesus’ way of mercy and compassion and peace and
generosity and hospitality grace and justice and wholeness. What does this kingdom of God—the very things
the crowd affirms in Jesus’ arrival—what does it really mean for us, today, what does it look like in places
such as Ferguson; the impoverished places of Baltimore; in the halls of
government and the board rooms of corporations that overlook the needs of all
God’s children; in places such as Yemen and Tunisia where sanctuaries become
fiery pits of hell, where ISIL/ISIS and Boko Haram—the very face of evil—inflict
heavy crosses for the followers of the man who once rode on a colt; where
technology is wed with the desire to self-destruct unleashing wave upon wave of
grief and pain, inflicting wounds that will fester and never heal? What does
the kingdom of God look like in these situations?
These are heavy questions. It’s a heavy week. Crosses are heavy. But love requires honesty. Love calls for truth. This is the world that confronts us daily, of
which we are all a part, a world of crosses and crucifixions, a world that
still turns on its savior, a world the savior came to love and heal and save, a
world the savior continues to love and heal and save. In such a world, I want to offer honest, heartfelt hosannas. Don’t you?
I want mine to be different. Ours have to be different. The hosannas we can offer to the Lord, the
hosannas we sing, the kingdom we pray for and hope, is the kingdom given in the
Risen Christ. Heartfelt hosannas are
risky, dangerous, and often provocative.
This is what’s required of a disciple of the Risen One. To sing “Hosanna!” to him means we have given
our hearts, again and again, to his
way, to his life, his truth, his vision for the world, his
love for the world. It means aligning
our wills with him so that it might be “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew
6:10). Blessed—blessed, indeed—is the
one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna!
Hosanna!
Image: Emmanuel Nsama, Triumphal Entry (1969), mural in the chapel at Njase Girls Secondary School, Choma, Zambia.
[1] “All Glory Laud and
Honor” is an English translation of a Latin hymn text “Gloria, laus et honor,”
written by Theodulf of Orléans (c. 750/60- 82) in 820. The hymn is based on Matthew’s (21:1-11)
account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
[2] See Ched Myers’
masterful commentary Binding the Strong
Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), 294ff.
[3] A colt is a male horse
not more than four years of age.
[4] Brian K. Blount and
Gary W. Charles, Preaching Mark in Two
Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 187.
[5] For more about
Jerusalem during the time of Passover and the complex relationship between the
Roman and Jewish authorities, see Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach
About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem (HarperOne, 2007). See also Richard Horsley, Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the
New World Disorder (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002).
[6] Cited in Blount, 189.
[7] Cited in Myers, 289.
[8] Cornel West, https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=870874972971952.
1 comment:
Yes! Hosanna to that King!
Thank you Ken...
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