Isaiah 50.4-9a, Philippians 2.5-11, Luke 19.28-40
Palm Sunday, 24/3/2013
I want to suggest to you this morning that the friendly crowd who met Jesus at the gate of Jerusalem was a flash mob.
Which is an odd suggestion because flash mobs are a contemporary phenomenon, a by-product of telecommunications and social media. Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English defines a flash mob as ‘a group of people who organize on the Internet and then quickly assemble in a public place, do something bizarre, and disperse.’ In one of the original flash mobs, in 2003, 200 people flooded the Manhattan Hyatt hotel and engaged in synchronized applause for about 15 seconds, and in another, a shoe boutique in SoHo was invaded by participants pretending to be tourists on a bus trip. [1]
Some flash mobs - otherwise known as smart mobs - are less playful and more purposeful, such as the protests which took place demanding a recount of the Florida votes during the U.S. presidential election of 2000 - there were over 100 of these protests, many involving thousands of participants; and they were all organised through a website rapidly set up by an individual called Zack Exley.
In the Philippines in 2001, a widespread exchange of text messages brought demonstrators to the Shrine of Mary, Queen of Peace, to protest the corruption of President Joseph Estrada. The peaceful protest grew quickly, and Estrada was soon removed from office. [2]
They have the appearance of being spontaneous - and to some extent they are - but flash mobs require someone at the centre to organise them: to conceive the idea, to set things in motion, to spread the word which will bring people together in a common purpose.
And so back to Jesus, who seems to have pre-arranged a colt that had never been ridden to be waiting for him in a village ahead of him on the approach to Jerusalem. And who seems to have pre-arranged a code word for the disciples to use. Jesus told them, ‘If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say this: “The Lord needs it.”’
How do we account for the sudden appearance of large crowds lining his path, and for their behaviour, spreading their cloaks before him as he rode the donkey into town? Had Jesus fixed it so that word had got around that he, Jesus - regarded as a rebel, seen as a leader of a quiet revolution - was riding into Jerusalem by a back gate on a donkey, posing ridiculously as a mock king on the very same day, and perhaps at the very same time as the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, was riding into Jerusalem by the main gate, in all the pomp and ceremony of his exalted position, to keep order in the city during the Passover festival.
It may not be stretching our imaginations too much to suggest that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was a carefully orchestrated one-off event - a flash mob, if you like; a deliberate provocation towards the Roman imperial power with all its military hardware designed to keep the Jewish people compliant, and the Roman imperial theology which upheld the emperor as not simply the ruler of Rome, but as the Son of God. Jesus adopted the donkey-king persona to mock the emperor’s pretensions and to playfully assert his own status as God’s Son, entering the holy city by the back door in a silly but pointed peasant procession.
And ‘the two processions [into Jerusalem that day embodied] the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion’. [3]
Jesus’ procession deliberately countered what was happening on the other side of the city. Pilate’s procession embodied the power, glory and violence of the empire that ruled the world. Jesus’ procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God. This contrast - between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar - is central [...] to the story of Jesus and early Christianity. The confrontation between these two kingdoms continues through the last week of Jesus’ life. As we all know, the week ends with Jesus’ execution by the powers who ruled his world. [4]
And this is how the confrontation unfolded.
On the Monday Jesus shut down trading in the temple in protest against the unjust practices of the temple authorities in their collaboration with the Roman imperial power. [5]
On the Tuesday the conflict with the temple authorities deepened as Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple and the coming of the Son of Man - the ultimate triumph of Jesus’ kingdom of righteousness and peace, over the corrupt structures of the world. [6]
On the Wednesday, at a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, a woman anointed Jesus with expensive ointment, Judas protested and entered into an agreement with the imperial collaborators, to remove Jesus, and cracks began to show in the group of disciples who each in their own way would betray Jesus later that week. [7]
On the Thursday Jesus again secretly went ahead of his disciples to make another set of secretive arrangements - this time for a Passover meal in an upstairs room. A meal which ended with betrayal, the spiritual and emotional torment of Gethsemane and the arrest and trial of Jesus by the high priestly authorities and the Roman ruler. [8]
Sometimes we spiritualise the meaning of Jesus’ death, and it is hard for people to comprehend precisely what is meant by him ‘dying for the sins of the whole world’.
But the events of what we call Holy Week were concrete not abstract, and the meaning of Jesus’ death is entirely bound up in his confrontation with these earthly powers and authorities.
Jesus’ execution is the last desperate act of the kingdoms of this world to assert their dominion over those who oppose them; Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God over those forces.
We call it Jesus’ passion, this week of confrontation and suffering, the word passion coming from the Latin passio, which means ‘suffering’. But we more commonly use the word passion to describe those things we are deeply interested in, enthusiastic about and committed to. [9]
The entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem expressed his passion for the kingdom of God, his enthusiasm for affirming the arrival of that kingdom in the face of forces who would oppose it. It sometimes gets called the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, and it was a triumph, the triumph of a successful flash-mob, a triumph of protest, a triumph asserting liberation over oppression, peace over violence, life over death.
We can see the influence of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in the prophetic protests of our time, for instance:
- The 1930 Salt March of colonial India, in which Ghandi led thousands to the beaches to gather salt in nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly, triggering the Civil Disobedience Movement which led towards independence; [10]
- The Jarrow March of 1936 in which 207 people walked almost 300 miles from Jarrow to lobby Parliament against unemployment and extreme poverty. [11]
- And in my own experience - the People’s march for Jobs of 1981, in which I was myself involved, as one of the unemployed walking from Liverpool to London to draw attention to our plight, [12] and the Pilgrimage for Poverty in the year 2000, where I joined Christian pilgrims on the last leg of their 670 mile walk from Iona to London calling for more radical action by Government to end poverty in the UK by 2020. [13]
We can see how Jesus’ assertion of the values of the kingdom of God underlies the Anglican bishops’ current call to government to reassess the punitive Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, which is likely to push 200,000 more children into poverty; [14] and Pope Francis’ demonstrable commitment to the well-being of society’s poorest. [15]
We can also see how those who share Jesus ‘passion’ for these values and follow in his ways will encounter their own form of crucifixion - Ghandi’s nonviolent protesters being beaten by police, the Jarrow and Liverpool marchers being met with a cynical response by unyielding governments, and Christian leaders being publicly mocked or pilloried for speaking out on social issues.
Just as a flash mob scandalises conventional society, so Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is a scandal to those who regard religion as an accessory of empire, not a critique of it. But the events of what we call Palm Sunday offer to those who yearn for it a real difference in the here-and-now, an expectation that concrete change is possible for those whose world is a world of suffering and hurt. This is what the gospel is really about. This is at the heart of all that I preach, in the hope that those who hear it will be energised to embrace the kingdom of God and live it out day-to-day. It’s been my privilege and my joy to share it with you.
Notes
[3] Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, p.2-3. The entire thesis of this sermon owes a great deal to Borg and Crossan’s inspirational work.
[4] Borg and Crossan, p.4-5.
[5] Borg and Crossan, Chapter Two.
[6] Borg and Crossan, Chapter Three.
[7] Borg and Crossan, Chapter Four.
[8] Borg and Crossan, Chapter Five.
[9] Borg and Crossan, p.VIII.
[12] Union Badges: Peoples march for Jobs 1981
[13] Martin Wroe, Pilgrims March to abolish poverty, Independent, 8 August 1999, Memorandum submitted by Gerard Turner for Church Action on Poverty , www.parliament.uk, March 2000.
[14] See last week’s sermon, Placed among the poor
[15] David Willey, Pope Francis' first moves hint at break with past, BBC News, Rome, 16 March 2013
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