Palm Sunday 2019

Why do we do this? Every year we read two accounts of the final days of Jesus, ending with a young man hanging on a Roman cross – crucified, the most horrible form of state authorized execution – as an example to others: Do not challenge the Power of the Empire; Do not challenge the monopoly on Access to the God of the Bible – The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Power and Access. Palm Sunday this year we read Luke’s account: Luke 22:14-23:56. On Good Friday we read the account in John.

Threats to those who possess Power and Access are routinely dealt with by acts meant to instill fear. Such fear is meant to temper any thoughts to challenge the Power of the Empire and the monopoly on Access to the God of the Bible. Historically, such acts of fear have included acts of mass killings: genocide and holocaust.

Where and when the story before us takes place, Jerusalem during the week of the Feast of the Passover, calls us to look back at two previous holocausts: the killing of Hebrew babies ordered by Pharaoh and the killing of Hebrew babies ordered by Herod, the King of the Jews under Caesar. Passover in Jerusalem would also be a time to remember the destruction of the First Temple in the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.

When Jesus enters Jerusalem during the Passover festival, there are already hints that a new holocaust and destruction of the Second Temple was not far off. Indeed, in Luke’s account as Jesus is lead to the cross, he says to the women along the way, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children… For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" I am just one man, he seems to say. Much worse is on the way. In fact, when Luke is writing this account, the city and the Temple have been burned to the ground, and upwards of one million Jews have been killed by the same Roman Legions tasked by Pilate to execute the young man from Galilee. A young man who asserts that there is no Power but that of God, and that no one and no system of sacrifice can control Access to this God of all Creation.

We do well to note that at the time of Jesus many of those in charge of Access to God through the Temple system of Sacrifices have also been tasked by Rome to enact the will of the Empire. They live lives of a kind of affluence and privilege not experienced throughout the rest of the country. We do well to note: Jesus did not divide the people of Israel. Rome divided them against themselves, so often the strategy of colonial rule.

As Jesus enters the city in what can only be described as the highest form of political theatre, on a donkey with people placing their own cloaks, their own clothing, along the way, perhaps to cushion the footsteps of the beast of burden, the procession is in stark contrast to the arrival of Roman dignitaries on mighty steeds, legions of soldiers, incense burning before and after the procession to protect the Royal visitor from the “smell” of the people and the city streets. Jesus enters as one of the people, one of us, and one can imagine the shouts of triumph and praise punctuated with much laughter and joyful mockery of those who control all Power and Access within the city walls.

Some in the crowd have experienced Jesus and have followed him to see what comes next. They know him as a man who provides Access to God through healing, sharing meals together and his teachings on forgiveness and mercy – such healing, forgiveness and mercy and access to the God of all Creation is free and without charge, without sacrifice, available here and now.

We are mistaken, I believe, that Jesus had to die as some sort of payment and sacrifice for our sins. Indeed, our sins are many, and his call to turn our lives around, repent, and begin a new way of living, walk a new path of love, mercy and forgiveness lies at the core of his teaching, and even more so in his actions. Actions that threaten those who would control Access to God through appointed sacrifices in the Temple, and those charged with maintaining Roman controls of Power.

As Franciscan priest, monk and theologian Richard Rohr reminds us, Jesus did not come to change God’s mind about us. God’s mind did not need changing. God loves all creation and at ever step of the way of creation’s unfolding God declares it to be good. We are good. We are God’s Beloved. No, Jesus, says Rohr, came to change our minds about God – and about ourselves – and about where goodness and evil really lie. [Rohr, The Universal Christ: Convergent Press, 2019 – page 151].

For hundreds of years before Christ the Hebrew Prophets had repeatedly reminded us that our God does not require human, animal, grain, oil and fruit sacrifices. What God wants us to do is to embrace what is good: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. [Micah 6:8]

Jesus comes to us to show us just what justice and mercy look like, and how to walk humbly with God and with one another. How to show justice, mercy and humility toward others. In his life, even to his death, he utterly destroys the very notion of there being any sacrificial requirement for God to love us. “Go, learn the meaning of the words, what I want is mercy not sacrifice,” he says, quoting Hosea who himself adds, “I want knowledge of God, not your holocausts.”

God is love. Love cannot be bought with sacrifice. Forgiveness that needs to be bought and paid for is not forgiveness. God in Christ on the cross spills blood to reach out to us in love meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back to trust and love of the Creator. [Ibid Rohr, 144]

As Paul urges the church in Philippi, urges us, “ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--

even death on a cross.” [Philippians 2:5-11]

Jesus died because he lived a life that said that the Power of God is greater than any earthly pretender, and that Access to God is offered freely to everyone and everything throughout all creation. Rohr suggests that the meaning of the death of Jesus reveals the problem we are up against and gives us a way through it:

It is not God who is violent. We are.

It is not God that demands suffering of humans. We do.

God does not need or want suffering – neither in Jesus nor in us. [Ibid Rohr 146]

The problem of divine love is settled from God’s side. In our insecurity, we keep re-creating necessary sacrifices. As we listen to this story with the eyes of our hearts open, we are to know that in this story God is calling every one and every thing, not just a few chosen ones, to God’s self – to the very heart of God’s love, justice, mercy and humility.