Today Western Christianity observes what’s called Palm Sunday. The name is derived from the palm fronds that were waved in acclamation as Jesus entered the holy city of Jerusalem, crowds lining the streets overcome with joy that the promised king had finally arrived, the one foretold, so they believed, by the prophets. Occupied and oppressed by Rome, here was their deliverer coming in power and might.
During the week that followed the voices shouting “Hosanna!” would give way to other cries as people struggled with seeing the king refuse the mantle of power. But what was power for if not to crush your enemies?!
Did you know that the ashes used to mark us on Ash Wednesday as mortal and fallible (“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”) are the burned fronds waved during the previous year’s Palm Sunday worship service? There is something shatteringly poetic about that, I think.
It is impossible for me to separate the journey of Holy Week from our country’s current situation, where values like kindness and mercy and goodness are up against raw power, the lust for vengeance, and the desire to snuff out whatever is just and true. And the most offensive part for me is the utterly cynical use of Jesus — showy group prayers, gold crosses dangling on a necklace, selectively culled Bible verses — all the while loudly justifying actions that are completely opposite of what Jesus calls us to do and be. It’s obscene.
From what I can see, too many Americans who today claim the identity of Christian want to put Jesus in a box and set him up on display to be used as a threat, a means of intimidation, as a lever for their control over others. They want to put an AR-15 in the hands of the Prince of Peace and AI-airbrush him into some weird fantasy beefed-up “alpha male” instead of accepting the mystery of the Alpha and the Omega. Or put Jesus in a Brooks Brothers suit and hand him a suitcase full of cash as he gives two thumbs up in homage to the Almighty Dollar.
How inconvenient the story of and the person of Jesus can be, confronting with The Way that eschews “power over” for “love alongside.”
This Jesus, the one who comes riding along on a donkey instead of mounted on some mighty steed at the front of a military parade, is the one that keeps me with one foot in Christianity, struggling as I am to believe any of…..this (gestures around an imaginary cathedral). It’s the hope this Jesus offers that I can’t let go of, the hope of a new way of belonging to each other, of a new way of being in the world, of caring and tending for everyone and everything.
That’s why I’m not mincing words right now. I’m angry and grieving about so much, and calling it like I see it.
Jesus isn’t here to satisfy anyone’s power needs today, any more than he was 2,000 years ago. This I do believe.