We stand on the cusp of Jesus’ final, “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem, his rhetorical jousting with religious authorities, culminating in his inevitable confrontation with Rome’s rulers and the Temple’s bouncers.
How great would it be if “getting right with God” were a more civil, reputation-enhancing, and less disruptive affair? Instead, Lent beckons us to peer into the face of history’s tragedies, including those in our own hearts.
In response to Jesus’ provocative entry into Jerusalem, the crowds lining the street covered the road with cloaks and “branches,” probably palms, objects of public recognition for royalty and often symbols of military victory in Near Eastern cultures. This clamor was an incendiary challenge to ruling elites and foreign occupation.
“Hosanna!” is more than an entreaty for blessing and peace in the immortal bye-and-bye. This street theatre evoked expectations of both spiritual redemption and national liberation. “Hosanna!” meant “come and liberate from history’s constrictions.”
The Passover observance in Jerusalem brought extra garrisons of Roman soldiers to town to suppress outbreaks of Jewish nationalist agitation. On what the church has since named “Palm Sunday,” Jesus is riding on a lowly donkey, not something a military leader would do. (However, the prophet Zechariah references it as a messianic sign.)
Other sources tell us that Judea’s collaborating King Herod also paraded into Jerusalem this same week, but from the other side. He was wearing his elaborate armor, displaying his deadly weapons, and riding a war horse.Thus, Jerusalem became the stage for parades and competing claims on the nature of power.
The crowd proclaimed Jesus as “Son of David” or merely “King,” both references to Israel’s King David, who personified the golden age of national splendor. These demonstrators did not comprehend the nuance of Jesus’ upside-down intervention.
Nor, as yet, did his disciples. Nor, as yet, do we.
In the coming week, we face Maundy’s mandate and Friday’s calamity, and, well, Saturday’s betwixt-and-between daze and discomposure of Jesus’ disciples and revelers. Then and now, the dominant culture remained confident in the security of the tomb’s immovable stone and the legionnaires’ vigilance over its irrevocable seal.
It is best not to bank on resurrection’s circumvention of death’s ascendance and terror’s reign. Few doubt the market’s rule enforced by the sword’s regime.
Be clear about this: There is no bystanding in this drama. There is no skipping Maundy Thursday’s directive and Friday’s threat on the way to Sunday’s uprising, no leap from crib to cross to crown of glory.
In prosperous cultures like ours, voyeurism is the great pretender as an agency of spiritual formation. Titillation substitutes for texture and substance. The quest for emotional novelties, intellectual baubles, and experiential souvenirs displace incarnation’s fleshly ordeal.
In my native West Texas idiom, a pretend rancher would be described as “all hat and no cows.” You can dress the part without engaging the reality. This is simply “spirituality” as levitation from history’s crucifying peril, the luxury of hope’s assurance severed from the context of threat, singing the blues without paying the dues, and the pretense of faith despite no back against any wall.
Holy Week epitomizes the story of history’s brutal affliction upended and overturned by heaven’s insurgence. Good Friday is good, not because of what it displays, but because of what it foreshadows.
Easter’s eruption is our hymn of invitation to join this mutiny. There is no “getting right with God,” there’s only getting soaked.
Only the passion opens onto the Spirit’s efficacy. In a suffering world, only a suffering God is believable. The Way is enjoined by imitating the One we adore.
Let this be our adoration. Let this be our testimony to heaven’s insurrection for earth’s reclamation. In the words of an old proverb, let this be our eulogy: They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.
Ken Sehested writes at prayerandpolitiks.org, “at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action.”
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Curator of prayerandpolitiks.org, an online journal at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action, and author of, most recently, In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions. He was the founding director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and founding co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina.
