March 29, 2007
Parades
Palm Sunday Lk 19.29-40
There has been talk, perhaps even suggestion, albeit tangential in my experience, of creating a cabinet-level Department of Peace. If there is a Department of Defense, one might argue, which, of late, has perhaps been more offensive than defensive, why not one of Peace? When one of the more prominent candidates for the presidency heard of this, he was reported to have said, “Peace? We don’t want peace, we want victory.”
I don’t know if he realized how ludicrous was his statement or whether he subsequently backtracked and changed what he said. Strangely, though, I’m rather glad for his remark, for I believe it sums up in brief the truly bellicose, the war-mentality of our time.
It seems next to impossible for us to define peace in any other way save in terms of war. And it seems next to impossible for us to define war in any other way save in terms of victory — or the implicit alternative of defeat. The opposite of winning for so many is not losing. It is quitting. Victory — even with Viet Nam continuing so vivid in our minds — is the only acceptable alternative.
Coincidentally, Palm Sunday is about war and about peace, but it is a different peace. It is the peace of Jesus who is the Prince of Peace. It is the peace of the man of paradox, of the one who said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10.34). And later, on the very eve of his crucifixion, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (Jn 14.27). Perhaps the contradiction fades when we realize that in the overall context for Jesus, peace meant not the absence of violence, but the presence of love and justice.
We celebrate on Palm Sunday, the entrance of Jesus, the King of Peace, into Jerusalem. We even act out his parade in our liturgy. But there was another entry into Jerusalem on that day, an entry of which we rarely take any notice and of which few probably even know, an entry not about peace, but about war and oppression. It was the entry of Pilate, the lesser Roman satrap, not on the foal of a donkey, but with his legions on the armored stallions of cavalry. It was an entrance not to celebrate with the Jews, but to guard against and stamp the Roman boot on the possibility of any colonial insurrection at that time.
A very integral part of our celebration of Palm Sunday must be, then, more than only a reenactment of that exciting and humble scene of Jesus riding on a borrowed jackass, not only of the messianic satire of Jesus’s parade. It must also be a choice between defining peace in terms of war and peace in terms of justice, a choice between the servant kingly reign of God and the imperialistic dimensions and temptations of our own worst selves.
On this Palm Sunday and as a whole throughout our own time, we are faced with not only our present international geopolitical reality, but perhaps even more critically with the ongoing theopolitical life of our church. Our nation’s leaders are careening unilaterally toward empire and challenging our great political experiment in the balance of powers on their way. And ironically, with so much of our church’s manner of governing itself patterned after our nation’s, our leaders are wrestling for our lives with those who would turn it once again either toward Rome or some unreasonable and equally imperial facsimile.
“As (Jesus) was now drawing near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works 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! And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out’” (Lk 19.37-40).
As once again we celebrate this great Palm Sunday parade, let us turn to and listen carefully. Across town, there is being lead another parade. Will it take the very stones, themselves, to convince us which one to follow?
No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos