5th
Palm Sunday Sermon - I Love a Parade
I have always enjoyed a good parade: the spectacle, the sounds, the gathering of people together in a common celebration. While I know not all of you may enjoy parades, something about them is in our DNA; can you imagine Thanksgiving without the Macy’s Parade or summer without the Mt Kisco Firemen’s Parade?
Parades are definitely in my DNA; after all, before Charlie Curry and Kathy Jamison were my parents, they were trombone players in the Grove City College marching band. That’s where they met. Maria and I met in marching band, too.
Parades were part of growing up. Twice I remember marching in children’s parades. One was the Children and Pets Parade at Fredonia Old Home Week in my grandfather’s hometown in Pennsylvania. There were four of us grandchildren at the time: I was 7, my sister Jen was 5, my cousins Andrew and Megan were 4 and 2. We were dressed in matching short suits and were accompanied by the families’ three Shetland Sheepdogs: Branka, Toby and Katie. I pulled the red wagon with Megan on-board. Just to tug a little more at the heartstrings of the locals, we all wore Pittsburgh Pirates baseball caps. This was the early eighties and some of you may remember those caps: the cylindrical ones with the flat top and the horizontal stripes. Everyone in Fredonia called my grandfather “Butch,” though he had gone by “Harold” for decades; that day Butch was very proud. And we took home a blue ribbon (maybe every kid did—if you were there, don’t tell me).
Our family had another success in the children’s parade realm when we entered the Billy Bowlegs Little Pirates Parade at the Santa Rosa Mall in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. This was a couple years later, but again I was pulling a red wagon. We disguised the wagon as a pirate’s ship with the help of a lot of cardboard, markers and duct tape. My sister Becky was on-board this time. Jen and I weren’t wearing Pittsburgh Pirates hats, instead we were dressed head to toe as the other kind of pirates: bandanas on our heads, our old jeans and shirts respectably distressed and tattered, we wore eye-patches that we constantly switched from one side to the other. We made chains out of black construction paper and put them on Becky’s chubby toddler ankles, but the real booty we took home was first prize: a shell-encrusted treasure chest and a gift certificate for a department store at the mall. The parade officials were so impressed by us that they asked us to march in the “real” parade the next night. We did march in that parade… all two miles of it, though our cardboard pirate ship — which had been designed for the carpeted and climate controlled environment of the shopping mall — was left in the gutter bout ¾ of a mile along the route.
I could tell you about other parades in my life – remember, I was in the marching band—but we have another parade of sorts to address this morning. The church’s Palm Sunday ritual is to look to our children to reenact Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem, but we should probably be reminded that this was not child’s play or even Old Home Week; the consequences of Jesus’ actions were a march to the cross a few days later.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The story from the Gospel of Mark shows that this was an event carefully orchestrated by Jesus. In fact, the actual procession into Jerusalem is covered in four or five verses, while it takes 7 verses to describe the preparations. In the Gospel of Matthew, which we didn’t hear today, the writer is so careful to describe the preparations that he has Jesus riding both a colt and a donkey.
Preparation is a major theme each Passover, and that is the real reason so many people are gathered in Jerusalem. It is the Passover meal that Jesus has so carefully planned to celebrate with his Disciples in the Upper Room this week.
The crowds of Passover meant Jerusalem’s population was probably double its normal size. The size of this crowd and the emotions of this holiday celebration deiverance and freedom threatened Pax Romana in the region, so Rome took this opportunity to throw its own parade; this parade which ushered the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to the palace in the middle of Jerusalem contrasted greatly from the Palm Sunday procession, but it ultimately serves as the context for the actions of Jesus and his followers.
Pontius Pilate’s parade was a show of Roman military strength. Chariot after chariot was joined by the unfurled banners and golden eagles atop tall staffs. Soldiers on foot wore armor and carried their swords and spears. Fanfares would have gone before the Roman governor’s chariot so that there was no doubt that Pontius Pilate was in charge here. If you were looking for a contemporary parallel here, you might think of the procession of American tanks into Baghdad six years ago crossed with a tickertape parade for the New York Yankees. The people of Jerusalem would have been strongly urged to attend this parade and offer their solemn salute.
So, when Jesus throws his own parade, the contrasts would have been obvious: here the soldiers are replaced by children and peasants; the weapons of war replaced by palm branches; the national flags replaced by coats covering the dusty streets. Jesus would not have been mistaken for Pilate in this parade—there were no war horses or golden chariots. Instead Jesus was on the back of a donkey, and a colt of a donkey at that. It would have been almost comical, Jesus probably had to lift his feel to keep them from dragging on the ground. The solemnity of Pilate’s parade is replaced by the sounds of boisterous celebration: “Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna!” The people were offering the greeting due to the Messiah and the King.
And Jesus is Messiah and King; his parade comments on just the kind of ruler he is. This is street theater, a satire of the Roman imperial power structure that reveals both the oppressors and the Jerusalem religious and political officials who march in step with it. If we pay attention, this Palm Sunday procession also reveals our own imperial problem; Jesus’ claim of authority on our lives challenges the other powers that claim our allegience: our national identity, our greed, our acquiescence to the systems of oppression that form our own sense of Pax Romana.
The great American poet Carl Sandburg once related the story of a little girl coming to him after he read his description of battle and saying, “What if they gave a war and no one came?” We are, in a very real sense, called to decide which parade we will join: the tanks and John Philip Sousa marches which proclaim “might makes right,” or the Holy Week procession which shows a King and Messiah on a donkey barely big enough to carry him. We are challenged to think of whether we rely on the temporary peace enforced by sword and spear, and threatened by missiles over the Pacific Ocean, or will we look to the Prince of Peace and welcome him with shouts of “Hosanna, come save us!”?
If we choose to pick up palm branches we will also be choosing to walk through Holy Week with Jesus and experience him with towel around his waist washing his friends feet. We will gather around the table for an intimate meal with Jesus as both host and meal. We will try to stay awake when Jesus prays in Gethsemane and stay loyal when Jesus is arrested. We will be asked to take up our own crosses and walk with Jesus to Golgotha. And here’s why it will all be worth it: in one week, we will go to the Garden and find Jesus’ tomb empty.
Of course, its never so simple. I am sure that some of those who were in the crowd shouting “hosanna,” were giving their voices to the cry of “crucify him.” If we are honest, we have Good Friday moments everyday. Our hope is that the disloyalty, fear and death of Friday and the darkness of Saturday eventually and always leads to a Sunday morning. As Christians, we can call this the parade of life, and as I have said, “I love a parade!”
