Palm Sunday Reflection
“Are you gonna go my way?”
Last Sunday, millions of Christians gathered in churches around the world to celebrate the beginnings of Holy Week with Palm Sunday. No most of us are familiar enough with the details of Palm Sunday: how Jesus rode into Jerusalem from the east humbly on a donkey, fulfilling the prophesy of Zechariah 9.9-10, as he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds laying their cloaks and palm branches on the ground in front of him, while crying out with some version of, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11.9). Hosanna means, save us. Save us from what, we might ask?
This is where several historians lately have suggested that there was also another triumphal procession happening at the same time but coming from the west of Jerusalem. Where every year at passover, as the population of Jerusalem would swell from its usual 50,000 people to well over 200,000 people -the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate would ride up to Jerusalem on a warhorse clad in armour with a procession of roman soldiers marching from his coastal residence in the west.
As the jews gathered to celebrate and recall how their God had liberated them from their ancient oppressor, the Egyptians, Pilate would come in all of his imperial majesty to remind the Jewish pilgrims that Rome demanded their complete loyalty, obedience, and submission and if they tried any funny business, the Romans were ready to brutally put down any uprising.
This sets the scene for us: where on the one hand, we have Pilate representing very much the power of empire, force, coercion, terror, and violence that is so characteristic of authoritarian type rule in our world both past and present; while on the other hand, we have Jesus, riding on a donkey, defenceless, and showing us that unlike the rule of Pilate and Caesar, the rule of God’s kingdom is going to be marked by words and actions of love, humility, long-suffering, and sacrifice.
Palm Sunday reveals to us that just as there were two successions entering into Jerusalem, marking two very different ways of being in this world, we too always have before us, at least two ways of say, entering into a conversation, or how we deal with one another, or how we exist in this world by what values we cherish and operate by. Where on the one hand, we can take the “my way or the highway” approach, I’m right and you’re wrong, or you better do as I say or else; or on the other hand, we can cherish each other, we can admit with humility and courage where we have been wrong or where we have hurt one another. Where we can seek forgiveness and reconciliation and achieve real and lasting peace with each other, versus ruling our world with an iron fist and with the so called “strong man leader.”
Last Sunday, again, millions of people went into worship to mark the beginnings of Holy Week and the way that Jesus will inaugurate the Kingdom of God with what will later transpire during the week with the events of the Cross and the Resurrection. While at the same time, we also saw various armies of the world bombing their enemies which also included helpless civilians. Save us! The people cry. Jesus asks us, like Lenny Kravitz once sang: are you gonna go my way? For, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14.6) So let us choose life. Amen.