Jesus lived in a land that was occupied by a foreign power
and ruled by a corrupt few. While nearly everyone in his hometown were no doubt
of the same race and religion, they all knew that outside of their little
sliver of land they called home, that they were considered strange, ignorant,
and backward. Their way of worshipping just one God was considered quaint and naïve, their traditions were considered backward, and their customs about diet,
dress, and marriage, and especially how they initiated males into their
covenant through circumcision, was considered weird and even gross by the rest
of Roman civilization.
The Roman government ruled all their territories with an iron
hand, and everywhere they picked out locals who would carry out their rule. In Palestine, that meant that they hand-picked every official from the
corrupt local Jewish king, Herod, to the local Jewish tax-collectors whose
livelihood depended on efficiently collecting those taxes from their neighbors. Sad to say, but they found many willing collaborators.
Sure, the iron hand wore a velvet glove. The Roman Empire
built paved roads…a big improvement over dirt paths worn down by feet and
hooves…and these roads allowed chariots and wagons to move from place to
place…and Roman legions protected the roads from bandits and brigands. They
also made the sea lanes safe for ships to move about the Mediterranean Sea.
Trade with people as far away as Rome, Gaul, Athens, and Alexandria and even
Asia and India was all possible because of the peace of the Empire. But this
peace came at a price and the Jews of first century Palestine were but one
group that paid that price.
And Jesus also knew about mobs.
Jesus was very effective as gathering large groups of people
and holding their attention. We know that he preached from the tops of hills,
on plains, and sat at the bottom of small valleys or speaking from boats at the
side of lakes using the natural amphitheaters they provided. He would talk to
thousands of people at a time. We hear that he spoke the Sermon on the Mount to
5000 people and the sermon on the plain to 4000…and these were only the men.
They didn’t count the women, children, and slaves that necessarily would come
along. In an era when a really big walled city might amount to ten thousand
people, this was really something!
Jesus attracted such crowds that he could barely find time
for himself. If he sailed across the Sea of Galilee, the crowds would run along
the shore to meet him on the other side. People lined the streets of their
towns and villages, climbing trees just to catch a glimpse, reaching through
crowds hoping to touch just a piece of his garment as he walked by. People
would crowd around the houses where he ate and slept. Women would barge into his
dinners and weep at his feet. And desperate people would even tear off the roof
of one of those houses to lower a sick friend on a mat for him to touch.
And because Jesus knew about mobs and he knew about
oppression, he knew about what the powerful would do to keep people in their
place, especially when crowds got whipped up. So, Jesus must have known that he
was playing with fire when he rode into Jerusalem on a colt while crowds of
people lined the road with their coats and waved branches of palm proclaiming
him as their King.
Jesus’ grand entrance on the ride of a peasant challenged
the local puppet king, and he was stirring up the emotions of the masses. If
someone lit the fuse, who knows what would happen when this brew exploded?
The problem with oppressors is that as soon as you stop
being useful, you’re disposable. And as soon as you threaten or call out how
paper-thin their power really is, they will strike back.
And the problem with mobs is that they love you… until they
don’t.
When both the powers-that-be and the mob both turned on
Jesus at the same time, he was done for! The powers-that-be came down hard, and
the masses that greeted him as a hero quickly became the mob that cried out for
his blood. In less than a week, Jesus would move from a conquering, victorious
savior, to an executed and rejected loser.
In Jesus’ passion, the two ways that humans exercise Big
Power—the military and economic power of the few, and the popular movements of
the many—would come down on Jesus like a ton of bricks and kill him. It wasn’t
the cross that executed Jesus, it was our humans passions and our thirst for power
that betrayed, arrested, scourged, mocked, and killed Jesus.
It is easy to stir up fear, hatred, and violence. It is easy
for people to hide inside the big group and let the emotions of the many take
over our actions. The thing that makes rock concerts, street festivals, and
even worship services wonderful, can also make for political rallies and riots
where people get beat up and neighborhoods burn. We have become so good at
this, so efficient that we can join a mob, bully a teenager, or even relentlessly
shame someone from our laptop and even our phones!
I am reminded of what that wise sage Agent K said to Edwards in the film Men in Black. Remember that movie? After Edwards learned about the extra-terrestrials living secretly in New York, he asks K—who is recruiting him to join the secret organization—“Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.” K replies: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
It
sounds cynical, but this is exactly what Jesus rode into when he entered
Jerusalem. This is what Jesus knew as he went from the Gates of the City to the
Temple and from there to the Upper Room and from there to the Garden all on his way to arrest, interrogation, and execution.
Here is God’s honest truth. People have power, and we can’t
handle it! We have the power to love, and before you know it becomes a
possession to protect. We have the power of imagination, and inevitably it
becomes the habit of the familiar. We have the power to create, and yet we are
easily bored. We have the power to build together, and we turn our unity into
violence.
God knows both sides of us. And in order to release the
love, Jesus will have to confront the hatred. In order to tap into the holy, he
will have to face the sin. And to release life, he will have to defeat death. Jesus
will face the worst of what we have to dish out so that he can lead us to the
best God made us to be. There is no other way to get to the life, the love, the
unity, the peace, we crave except through the cross where will we encounter
face to face the power of oppression and the fickle violence of the mob.
In every age, people come along who become drunk with the
power of the mob in their quest for the power at the top of the heap. In every
age, there comes a person who thinks they can manage and control, even profit
from, the passions of the mob. In every age, there comes a person with easy
answers to complex questions, who taps into our fears, and who uses our need
for unity and turns it into blind obedience. We have seen this before, time and
time again. Pilgrimages become crusades, revivals become lynch mobs, and
rallies become riots. Inevitably, the
people who think they can control these passions will be consumed by what they
have unleashed.
When Jesus entered into this, he came knowing the powers of oppressor
and mob are only defeated by the power of God. It will be the power of God to
turn death into life, it will be the power of God that will take all the
spiritual forces of darkness, rage, fear, oppression, and yes, even death,
where it will go to that cross and there all that works against God will die.
We will see and know in Jesus’ resurrection, that all that is in us that is
attracted by fear and brute force, is overcome with love. It is in Jesus’ death
and resurrection that we see the power of God to make all things new. It is
through his passion, death, and resurrection, that Jesus turns our passions
towards God’s healing of creation.
Once again, we hear the siren song at work. Once more, we
hear the promise of protection from the other, of prosperity without sacrifice.
We hear it from our pundits and politicos at home and from despots across the
globe. We hear it from those who play on our fears and urge us to imagine the
worst. Once more, we are drawn into the exhilaration of our helplessness being
turned into rage. Once more, we feel the release of our darkest thoughts and
feelings being said out loud. Once more, we are given permission to lash out at
someone—anyone!—who we are told to think of as the source of our pain. Once
more, we are tempted to look away from where we really hurt and to turn aside
from the source of our real power—to go for the easy rationale instead of the
noble, the lovely, the patient.
This is how evil works. Evil takes what is true, and lovely
and good, and turns it into lies, ugliness, and horror. Evil tells us that good
people can do bad things for good purposes—and while that, of course, is a lie,
we fall for it every time.
But God is neither defeated nor distracted by this
distortion. God is ready. And God always does the things that evil hates—God
always turns the tables on evil. And because of Jesus’ journey to the cross and
grave, evil is deader than a door nail, and evil knows it. It can scream, it
call rally, it can lash out all it wants. But through the cross, and in the
resurrection, death and evil are defeated. We have the power of God to love. We
have the power of God to create! We have the power of God to serve! We have the
power of God to heal! We have the power of God to overcome hatred with peace!
We have the power of God to stand firm!
So when we go to the cross and face what Jesus faced, we
know that in him, and in his love, and in his powerful humility, none of this
has power over us!
Jesus knew power. Not the world’s power… God’s power! Jesus
knew that the love, presence, and power of God that transforms hate into love,
gives purpose and direction, and makes us not a mob but the gathered people of
God. Jesus knew that divine love will always overcomes human power.
+ + + + + + + + +
Bulletin for Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion April 10, 2022 here
Video of Sermon for April 10, 2022 here.
Video of the Liturgy for April 10, 2022 here.
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