The Tension of Holy Week

We began our celebration of Palm Sunday this morning with the blessing of palm branches and a procession around the Church and into this magnificent setting for worship and devotion to God through his Son Jesus Christ.  It is a glorious reenactment of the procession of Jesus and his followers into the city of Jerusalem on a beautiful spring day in the year 30.  The choir then followed with an introit from Handel’s Messiah.

Prior to beginning our procession we read from Luke’s Gospel that two of the disciples brought a colt to Jesus; “and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.  As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

‘Blessed is the king

who comes in the name of the Lord!

Peace in heaven,

and glory in the highest heaven!’”

Then, “some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, "’I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”

What we are not told in this portion of Luke’s gospel is why the Pharisees wanted the procession to stop, why they wanted silence.

The text goes on to tell us that Jesus, upon entering the city, wept over it.  He said, “If you…had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!... The days will come… when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children, … because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

In our Palm Sunday observance we resonate to the pomp and circumstance of the procession and triumphal entry into the Holy City, but we miss the tension that is the hallmark of Holy Week.  It is a tension between celebration and suffering, between sharing a Passover meal together and the agony and death that follows.

In their book, “The Last Week,” Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan discuss not one but two processions that happened on Palm Sunday.  “One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession.  From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers…. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers.  Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.”

Consider the contrasting processions.  As the writers of “The Last Week” put it, “A visual panoply of imperial power cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold.  Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums.  The swirling of dust.  The eyes of silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.”

Here is the contrast: “Jesus rides the colt down the Mount of Olives to the city surrounded by a crowd of enthusiastic followers and sympathizers, who spread their cloaks, strew leafy branches on the road and shout, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!  Hosanna in the highest heaven!’”

Can you imagine the contrast?  Can you feel the tension between these two processions?  Borg and Crossan write, “Jesus’s procession deliberately countered what was happening on the other side of the city.  Pilate’s procession embodied power, glory, and violence of the empire that ruled the world.  Jesus’s procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God.  This contrast – between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar – is central not only to the gospel… but to the story of Jesus and early Christianity.

“The confrontation between these two kingdoms continues through the last week of Jesus’s life.  As we all know, the week ends with Jesus’s execution by the powers who ruled his world.  Holy Week is the story of this confrontation.”

The story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem is just the beginning of all that will happen during this week.  We are invited to enter into the tension between these two realms: God’s kingdom of peace and compassion, and Pilate’s kingdom of imperial power and violence.  We shall come together on Thursday to celebrate the Last Supper and clear everything away for the suffering and death of Good Friday.  It is only through living through these realities of our common life that we can come with joy to the celebration of new and resurrected life on Easter morning.

A prayer by Walter Brueggemann is titled, “Loss is indeed our gain:”

The pushing and shoving of the world is endless.

   We are pushed and shoved.

   And we do our fair share of pushing and shoving

in our great anxiety.

   And in the middle of that

            you have set down your beloved suffering son

            who was like a sheep led to slaughter

            who opened not his mouth.

   We seem not able,

   so we ask you to create the spaces in our life

   where we may ponder his suffering

   and your summons for us to suffer with him,

   suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to

         newness.

So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,

   when we are driven to denial –

not to notice the suffering,

not to engage it,

not to acknowledge it.

So be that way of truth among us

that we should not deceive ourselves.

That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain,

We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live. Amen.