Paul must have known something about April Fools jokes because he refers to the foundation of Christianity as “the folly (or foolishness) of the cross,” so maybe my perspective on Holy Week is not so unusual after all. Some of my thinking about the foolishness of Christianity and Holy Week has been encouraged by a book that my adult education class has been using for a Lenten study. It was written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and is called “The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem.”
In a way, Palm Sunday can be seen as a “sight-gag.” Most processions into Jerusalem usually involved the King or Roman Procurator and were lavish demonstrations of power, complete with plenty of soldiers and weaponry. Part of that show of power was to provide immediate protection, but the larger reason was to discourage those who would even consider rebellion against King or Empire. To use a phrase from Borg and Crossan, the imperial procession was a tangible demonstration of the overwhelming power of the Roman “domination system.”
On Palm Sunday, Jesus enters the city by a different gate, accompanied by a very different procession. There are no horses or chariots, no soldiers or armor, and the crowd was probably a rag-tag group of peasants. And he’s riding on a donkey! Is he trying to stage a spoof of the imperial procession? Perhaps, in a way he is.
The “script” for his entry into Jerusalem comes from the Hebrew prophet, Zechariah, who lived about 500 years before Jesus. While the Roman Empire advertised peace, that illusion of peace was created by massive imperial force. Those who challenged the pax Romana were summarily executed, usually by crucifixion.
Zechariah describes a very different kind of peace, brought by a very different kind of Messiah.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.
Zech. 9: 9-10
We must think carefully if we are to “get the joke.” How is this humble Messiah supposed to extend his rule of peaceful dominion “to the ends of the earth?” How crazy is that?! Everyone knows that the only way to defeat violence and terrorism is by even greater violence and terrorism! Right?
Our “Christian Nation” (as some would call it) has put its lot in with the “imperial procession” and its demonstration of superior force. But that’s the joke, don’t you see? The moment we side with “force as the only road to peace,” we’ve lost the message of the “humble king, riding on a donkey”.
As I think of it, while the Palm Sunday procession might in some ways ridicule imperial power, the real April Fools Day joke is perpetrated by the domination system. The joke is that force can bring peace! Christianity, according to Jesus, proclaims that violence can never conquer fear; only love can conquer fear. How long are we going to fall for the imperial joke?
Wayne Gustafson
“God is still speaking.”
The United Church__of Christ
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