Readings for Palm Sunday: John 12: 12-16; Isaiah 50: 4-7; Psalm 22: 17-24; Philippians 2: 6-11; Mark 14: 15-47
Today is Palm Sunday. For Christians, it begins "Holy Week" which recalls Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), his Last Supper (Holy Thursday), his torture and execution (Good Friday), and his resurrection from the dead as the culmination of a long history that began with the liberation of Hebrew slaves from Egypt (Holy Saturday).
As just noted, the saga begins today by recalling what the Christian Testament remembers as the day when Jesus was greeted by chanting throngs as he entered the city seated on a donkey while the crowds waved palm branches and shouted "Hosanna." They spread their cloaks before the animal that bore him to the temple precincts where he famously evicted money changers and vendors of sacrificial animals.
The event is full of political significance for those of us whose government has proudly inherited the mantle of the Roman Empire. That's because the supposed events of Palm Sunday were probably part of a much larger general demonstration of faithful Jews including Jesus against the oppression that is part and parcel of all imperial systems including our own. As such, today's narrative calls us to resistance of U.S. Empire as Rome's contemporary successor.
To understand what I mean, consider (1) the significance of the Jerusalem demonstration itself and the role that palms played in its unfolding, (2) the demonstration's chant "Hosanna, Son of David" and (3) the meaning of all this for our own lives.
Jerusalem Direct Action
For starters, think about what actually happened in Jerusalem during that first Demonstration of Palms.
Note at the outset that if the event wasn't a whole-cloth invention of the early church, it's highly unlikely that Jesus would have entered Jerusalem as a universally acclaimed figure. That's because the gospels make it clear that all during his "public life," Jesus confined his activities of healing and speaking to small villages where his audiences were poor illiterate peasants.
Given their small numbers, poverty and the expenses of travel and lodging, their massive presence in Jerusalem would have been highly unlikely. This meant that Jesus' profile would have remained exceedingly low in larger cities and nearly non-existent in his nation's capital city, Jerusalem. He would have been largely unknown there.
Again, if the event happened at all, it is more likely that the part Jesus and his disciples played in it was marginal and supportive of a larger parade and demonstration supported by well-organized revolutionaries such as Judah's Zealot cadres whose raison d'etre was the expulsion of the occupying forces from Rome.
This also means that the demonstration's climax with its "cleansing of the temple" would probably have represented a much larger assault on the sacred precincts where only large numbers of protestors would have stood any hope of impact rather than an individual construction worker supported by 12 fishermen.
(Remember, the residence of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, was actually attached to the temple itself. So were the barracks of Jerusalem's occupying force. The annex was called the Fortress Antonia. During the Passover holidays, everyone there would have been on high alert rendering any small demonstration - and probably any large one virtually impossible. If the temple itself were not crawling with Roman soldiers, they would have been surveilling the whole scene.)
But even if (before that) Jesus were welcomed by the frantic crowds as depicted in the gospels, the event would have been precisely intended to be seen by the Romans as highly political and perhaps even decisive in defeating their hated occupation and bringing on in its place what Jesus described as the Kingdom of God.
(Jesus' high hopes surrounding the incidents of this final week in his life are suggested by the words Mark records at the Last Supper in today's gospel reading: "I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." In other words, Jesus evidently thought that the events of this first "holy week" would signify a political turning point for Jews in their struggle against Rome. Their uprising would finally bring in God's kingdom.)
Jesus' Anti-Imperialism
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