Marching For Our Lives

I am not preaching this weekend. In my tradition, however, there is a liturgy of the Palms that remembers Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem that is then followed by a dramatic reading of the Passion of Christ. This year it comes from Mark's Gospel. Six years ago, I preached the sermon below at St. Francis Holden, when I was still the rector there. The context of the world and my own context in ministry have shifted since then. But today I marched in Worcester against gun violence, with many thousands across this nation who are marching for their lives. Led by the students of the Margery Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL and amazing youth from Worcester today, I feel inspired to do more marching. I invite you to hear this six year old sermon with new ears as we enter into Holy Week - and Passover. May those with ears to hear, hear. 

I want to think with you today for a bit about the crowd. Over the years, when we Episcopalians do this dramatic reading of the Passion Narrative, I almost always have a hard time finding someone willing to be cast in the role of Jesus. While Judas is another tough role to cast, interestingly enough I find that it’s usually slightly easier to find a Judas than a Jesus! Most of us, it seems, would rather be a bystander or a slave-girl or even Peter. I may be wrong, but I don’t think that’s generally about a discomfort with public reading so much as it is about the roles themselves. 

In any case, there is also the crowd, a role that all of us are asked to play. Every year at least a few people will confess to me at the door: I didn’t say my lines. I don’t like to do that. I refuse to shout out, “crucify him, crucify him.” 

During this Lenten season I’ve shared with you a number of photos from my trip to the Holy Land two years ago. Today’s cover comes from a Franciscan church in Bethphage—the House of the Little Fig. That church is where we began remembering the events of Holy Week as we made our way to the Holy City and ultimately through the streets of Jerusalem for the Stations of the Cross.

Before that pilgrimage, I tended to think of the crowd that greets Jesus with palm branches shouting, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” and the crowd that shouts, “crucify him” a few days later as one and the same, as comprised of the same people. I wasn’t alone. There are some very good Biblical commentaries that suggest that people are fickle: one minute we are looking for a messiah and the next we are wanting to kill him for not being the kind of messiah we wanted. And our liturgy reinforces that point because those indeed are the very lines all of us have spoken today.

And it’s not bad theology, actually. We do sometimes set up our heroes in order to tear them down. There is a verse in a rather old Good Friday hymn (by old I mean going back about four hundred years) that I think is very much in sync with that reading of who “the crowd” is. It goes like this:

            Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?

            Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.

            ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:

            I crucified thee. 

(Hymnal page 158, words by Johann Heermann (1585- 1647)

I think that there is depth and wisdom in understanding the Passion Narrative in this way and on the positive side it keeps us focused on confessing our own sin, our own complicity with evil, our own capacity for mob mentality. And in that sense it is good for us to shout out, “crucify him” because it has the potential to keep us from scapegoating others.

Because that is what we do when we don’t see our own complicity. We blame and scapegoat somebody else. We project our own capacity for evil outwards. Throughout Church History, there is a great deal of evidence that the ones who have been blamed are “the Jews.” Not the individuals who conspired together in a specific context under a specific set of circumstances but just “the Jews.” 

They killed Jesus…

So it can be a good and healthy thing to see how tempting it is to project evil outward, onto someone else—usually someone who doesn’t look like us, someone who prays differently than we do. In saying those difficult lines as we enter into the events of this Holy Week we are forced to confront that part of us that wants our God—our Messiah—to fix everything. To be the Messiah we want Him to be. And when Jesus disappoints us, we kill him. I crucified thee.

So maybe that is right, even if it is pretty jarring. Crowds are fickle and can easily be turned into mobs. And we are a fickle bunch. If we are not careful we can contribute to the polarization and demonization that are part of the human condition, and that lead to so much violence and fear in this world, where the innocent suffer and die. We want to stand on the side of justice, but if we aren’t careful we can become what William Sloan Coffin used to call “good haters.”

Having said all of that, however, what I learned when I was in Bethphage two years ago is that more recent scholarship imagines two crowds, and suggests that this week begins with two parades. This makes more and more sense to me as I reflect on it. One is the official state propaganda; the other is a counter-demonstration. After all, it’s Passover. King Herod, the guy who literally claims to be “the King of the Jews" without any irony, is in town for all the festivities. And of course Pontius Pilate is there too. In other words, these politicians are there for their own big event and no doubt in the midst of all kinds of official festivities, the ones with the brass bands and the marching centurions.

The suggestion, then, is that our parade, the one that begins in Bethphage on a donkey, is more of a protest march. It’s the original Occupy movement, a band of outsiders from the hills of Galilee who have finally arrived in Jerusalem. While they have been adding numbers along The Way, they are (at least when compared to the official parades) a much smaller, but passionate group.

In this reading of the text, they totally get it that when they claim Jesus as King of the Jews—as the Son of David—they are directly challenging Herod’s authority. That’s not a “spiritual” claim. It’s not an otherworldly claim. It’s a direct challenge to the rulers of this world and the claims of the Roman Empire. When they say that Jesus is the true one, the awaited one, it’s a rallying cry. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. 

Hosanna in the highest heaven. We shall overcome! Deep in my heart, I do believe…

So in this reading, essentially what is about to unfold as we remember the last days of Jesus’ life is that these two crowds are about to collide. And as always happens, the stronger force will win. The powerful will crush the weak. They will silence the demonstrators by executing their leader. They’ll use force to scare them into running and hiding. 

Well, at least that is their goal. And that is what they will believe that they will have accomplished by Friday afternoon. And yet as it turns out, and as you all know, that isn’t the end of the story.

I have not yet had a chance to see The Hunger Games. I will see it once I get through Holy Week! But I did see Donald Sutherland, who plays President Snow in the film, on CNN the other day with Soledad O’Brien. He talked about the film as an allegory, and potentially a generation-changing catalyst. The clip they played goes like this, with President Snow saying:

Why do we have a winner? Hope….hope is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem offering a lot of hope. And that is definitely stronger than fear. But it is also a very dangerous thing. It makes the powers-that-be incredibly nervous. 

Pontius Pilate in this reading is not nearly so innocent as he may appear. He’s an astute politician, a President Snow, who knows how dangerous too much hope can be. And so, before you know it, there is an angry mob that has been stirred up, a mob that cries out for the death of an innocent man even as a guilty man is set free.

Now if this reading is correct, then a whole new set of questions emerge for us as we live our lives in this time and place. Which crowd do we choose to associate with? Where do we choose to stand in this world, in the midst of deeply contested narratives about who is lord of our lives and of this world? Do we stand in an angry mob or with those who are willing to lose their lives to find them, for the sake of the Gospel? What do we render unto Caesar and what do we render unto God?

In this reading, the “crowd of protesters” that choose to stand with Jesus—over and against all that hurts or destroys the creatures of God—becomes a visible witness to an alternative way to be in this world, a counter-cultural community over and against an angry mob comprised of those who allow themselves to be manipulated by those who have the most to lose whenever too much hope is unleashed.

Yet even here, truth be told, it is probably best to be humble about where we stand. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we stand with the Communion of Saints, a great cloud of witnesses, and we rightly shout out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” And sometimes we get sucked into the ways of this world and we find ourselves a part of the mob that shouts, “crucify him.”  

The Good News here, though, is that Jesus dies for the sins of the whole world: not only for the band of faithful disciples but for the sins of the mob—and for the sins of Judas and Barabbbas, and Pontius Pilate and Peter and those women from Galilee. The righteous and the unrighteous, the saints and the sinners.