Celebration and Determination
The Rev. Dr. Seth Weeldreyer, First Presbyterian Church of Kalamazoo
March 24, 2024 – Palm Sunday
Mark 11:1-3, 7-19; Philippians 2:1-11
Parades are for celebration! Do we feel it today? Waving our palms, singing out strong. Maybe other festive occasions come to mind—school homecoming, Thanksgiving Day, the summer Doo-Dah here downtown, St. Patrick’s Day a week ago. Mardi Gras just before Lent, put on by some grand sounding organization like the Faithful Order of the King’s Cross. A stately name belied by loud music, cheery floats and costumes, moonpies, bead necklaces, nerf toys, and incessant candy. Or maybe a July 4th family parade with kids’ bikes, wagons, and strollers all decked out in red, white, and blue, a few classic cars, followed by a band of ordinary people striking up a march or sentimental tune. Maybe, if lucky we’ve been to a triumphant sports championship procession or presidential inauguration. Parades are for celebration! What ones have we joined?
Sometimes we parade as protest. We share commitment to join other friends and strangers in some march for a cause, here in Kalamazoo or driving all night to Washington D.C., walking in solidarity through main city streets to the Bronson Park stage or Lincoln Memorial. Sometimes we parade to address a social concern—raising money to fight hunger with the CROP walk, to fight cancer, homelessness, gun violence. I wonder what parades we recall fondly, and to which we’d commit faithfully.
Parades are for celebration … and intimidation, Jonathan Walton remarked when he was with us two weeks ago. Yeah, that stuck with me, imagining us together on Palm Sunday. You see, that’s what the Romans did in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day. At Passover, the highest holy day of the year, faithful Jews would stream from a few miles or days away, into the Holy City, up to the Temple to make their sacrifice of thanksgiving. During the holiday festivities (which were all about liberation) revolutionary rabble tended to get a bit feisty, rising up against Roman occupation. And so, Pontius Pilate arrives days before through the grand main city gate, astride a bristling white war horse or glistening chariot, flanked by his ultra security guard, the way lined by centurions, flags flapping, swords, spears, shields shining … intimidation. Remember who’s in charge here … as Pilate settles into his castle as close as City Hall to our sanctuary and likely literally looking down upon the Temple grounds. So, we can bet they saw it with soldiers on full display and spies slipping among the crowds, and we can bet Jesus knew it when from the opposite direction in opposing spirit he got on a donkey in his simple homespun tunic and well-worn sandals.
You see, friends, for all our celebration and theirs long ago, this parade today is really a parody. Mimicking and mocking royal powers belied by the voice of commoners. From the Mount of Olives where scripture says the Messiah will come, down the main city street, past the Garden of Gethsemane where in a few days, betrayal will come. Can we imagine who’s in the crowd lining the way to a much smaller, humbler side gate? Surely some who didn’t have a clue what it’s all about; just caught up in the swirl of activity on their way to somewhere else. Not unlike when I came downtown a week ago Saturday to drop a book at the KPL and pop into here … turn the corner and next thing I know I’m in the middle of St. Patty’s parade revelers. Even dogs cloaked in green with shamrocks on their heads. Most likely, in biblical language, it was widows and orphans, blind and lame, success stories, sinners, outcasts of all kinds from tax collectors to Samaritans. People whom Jesus touched much earlier on his lifelong parade of service. They knew who he was. They got what this street theatre was all about. And people for whom Mark tells this story would get the point being made, mimicking, mocking, making clear Jesus is Lord. He gets our devotion and service, the very cloaks off our backs, not Caesar.
Now, friends, let’s just pause a moment to note this is all highly, inherently, intentionally political. When people like us want to keep politics out of church life together, I get we don’t want partisan rancor to ruin our relationships. I agree. Still, especially today and throughout Holy Week to come, we see the political impact of Jesus’ life and ministry. He cared about social concerns. He tried to make all the hopes and intention of Hebrew Law—all about structuring common societal life—he tried to make that order and promise of Holy Love real in life with people he met. He healed, taught, shared meals with individuals. Yes, it’s personal, intimate, me and Jesus. And every time he did, every time we do, it’s not in a cultural vacuum. It’s ever within a frame of powers—positive or more prejudiced and oppressive—that shape our reality. It’s precisely people in positions of power who felt threatened by Jesus and colluded to crucify him. Jesus didn’t want Pilate or Herod’s throne, Caesar’s kind of power. Even when he cleansed the Temple, he didn’t come to attack people like them. In fact, many people with status and privilege crucially supported Jesus. Still, crowds shout “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”
And it’s exactly what’s said of Caesar and all who rule for him. And leaders of faith who benefited from the tenuous balance of power—what Rome allowed them to do … when they heard those crowds, their fear, their anger, their selfish insecurity said: we must do something about this! And so, Jesus ends up on a cross, precisely because that’s where the parade of his life, ministry, sacrificial service to others would lead. This meek and mocking celebration moves toward confrontation.
Triumphal Entry cannot be separated from the cross and call to justice, Amy-Jill Levine affirms. She’s a faithful Jew, and leading scholar of the gospels from a Jewish perspective. Jerusalem is the Holy City, occupied by the Romans, she writes. When we enter a place where we know we oppose leaders in power, what do we do? What do we say? The crowd—that’s us—we know what we want. Political reform—a meek king guided by compassion rather than conquest. Balanced budget, affordable health care, a strong military, clean water, peaceful streets, lower taxes, good schools. But leaders can’t do everything on their own. The Bible insists that kings rely on God and on other people to carry out God’s will. As we praise a “Son of David” we should also ask how much are we willing to give in order to achieve these goals? How much responsibility, work, sacrifice … as we’re called into the procession of justice, of compassion, of peace, of the kingdom of heaven as God wants it to be. To take up the cross, Levine urges, meant being willing to accept hardships and loss, humiliation and imprisonment, even Roman capital punishment, to proclaim a vision of a better world, a divine rule, and then to work for it.[i]
Do we feel it? This humble, grateful celebration moves us through confrontation, rising to inspiration. Sometimes we can get disheartened, or maybe worse, desensitized, even a bit cynical about problems and tragedies we hear and see, that persist without much progress. Friends and family with gripping illness or ailments, or climate change and its impacts upon especially the most vulnerable. People who are unhoused, or unsure about their next meal, all the forms and impacts of generational poverty. Like a high school friend she told me about. Talented, “a math whiz far more than me,” who she just knew wouldn’t make it out of town—Hispanic, tenuous family resources, so his best option was the military. Shrapnel and PTSD in Iraq … just found out recently he jumped off the highest bridge in our hometown. What social concerns strike home for us? Move our hearts, make our minds question? Immigrants on the border. Another mass shooting, and incessant assaults in Ukraine and Gaza. Another person right before us without shoes and socks in bitterly cold weather—a child who doesn’t even know what size to wear because it’s always whatever they can find—floppy or painfully tight. Friends, as we try to assess and address our social concerns (yes this is inevitably and at best the process of politics) one of the great challenges lies in taking off lenses of ideology and our limited experiences to humanize every situation and concern … even loving people with whom we might disagree about solutions.
That’s what must have been behind Paul’s letter to the early church in Philippi. Some kind of conflict between companion followers of Christ; how they lived faith. We note that there at least three different kinds of palms among us today. Raise them high again? Maybe they argued about who’s were the best. Paul appeals with a positive complimentary tone, celebrating goodness they’ve embodied, even more remarkable given he writes from prison.
Confrontation, seeking inspiration … for Paul, our faithful witness takes the form of imitation. We live faith in the way, truth, and life Jesus paraded among people every day. If there is any encouragement in Christ, any loving consolation, any compassionate collaboration … and he implies: we know there is! We feel it! Then rise above selfish concerns, pet agendas, petty conceits. Humbly look to serve others needs more than our own. Let the same mind be in us … that is, the same desire, the same will, the same vision and orientation as we’ve come to know in Christ. And here’s what that looks like, he urges. Jesus emptied himself, pouring out his heart, his effort with no concern for press attention, gold stars or special awards, any status earned. He humbled himself and embodied God’s way even to the moment of death on a cross.
And for me, friends, here’s the crucial point as we enter Holy Week. Powers of Rome and religion take him by force. They humiliate and torture him. They execute him stripped naked. But they do not defeat him. They do not silence him. They do not, in fact, end his life. He suffers, but he is no victim. Amid the disgrace of persecution and dehumanization, he retains his dignity, his agency, his divinity—that same beloved essence in all of us. They can take his breath, but they cannot take his spirit, his power—he chooses to empty himself. He chooses the parade route he’ll travel. He makes a statement and takes a stand in the most public and unabashed way he can—overturning tables, the whole ritual system of the Temple.
And so evermore, this courageous and indominable Palm Sunday celebration instills in us determination as we parade through all our days to come. We’re something like true members of the order of our King’s Cross. Every day is our homecoming, Thanksgiving, independence, even Doo-Dah fun parade! Yet, it will be no Christian Triumphal procession attached to any nationalistic or party-affiliated form. We will believe that God in Christ loves Republicans and Democrats, Libertarians and Socialists. We will act like God loves all people regardless of whether society deems us a loser or a success. Facing public concern, we will rise above partisan conflict, choosing to empty ourselves through humble service. Because friends, as we wave our palms we proclaim that Jesus’ reign is not power over people, rather power for, with, through all people—empowering every person and all creation to flourish with the purpose of God.
Dear friends, as cheering, chanting, dizzy crowds—that’s us—turn from hailing acclaim today to crying “crucify” by Thursday, we know we can’t save the world. Only God, the power of Holy Love we know in Christ working in and beyond us can ultimately bring the fullness of new life. Grace calls us to join the chorus of voices proclaiming that “You Are Loved!” promise—often contrary to powers of our world, our society, our community, maybe even family. We line Jesus’ way among us like crowds on Palm Sunday, crying: Hosanna! Save us! We cry with tears for every beloved person ill and ailing, and everyone trying to care. We cry with fear for every soldier or innocent person caught in a crossfire of bombs and bullets. We cry with frustration for human beings suffering abuse, poverty, loss, prejudice. We cry with hope, celebrating every victim that becomes valiant. We commit faithfully today to line Jesus’ parade in defiant parody of powers that threaten and intimidate. And we sing: Ride on, ride on, ride on in majesty! We sing for inspiration! We sing through confrontation toward imitation! We sing with devotion and determination! We sing, trusting by God’s grace resurrection will come!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2018), 24, 34, 36.