Mar 21 | “To conquer Death,” (Palm Sunday Sermon, March 20th 2016)

Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, the most sacred time of the Christian year, are incredibly awe-inspiring to me. And yet what always comes to mind, year after year, is Jesus Christ Superstar. Love it or hate it, this musical, and particularly its 1973 film adaption, was hugely influential to my Christology and life of faith.

Luke is the only Gospel that mentions the interaction between Jesus and Herod. I love Superstar’s take on it. I think I’ve started loving it more recently because for some reason it seems terribly relevant. See, Herod kind of reminds me of Donald Trump.

If you’re remembering the same slightly tubby white-Afro-sporting yellow-shaded cavorting beach boy in sparkly white shorts that I am, understand I’m still being serious. He’s florid, crass, complacent, ostentatiously wealthy, and above all, deeply cynical. The fact that Herod is surrounded by hangers-on mirrors the popularity of the Donald, and cements my belief that there is nothing new under the sun. People of all stripes have always been attracted to swaggering loudmouths; it seems to be deeply written into the human psyche.

Hey, maybe the serpent was the first one. “Listen, baby, who are you going to believe: the joker who invented the platypus or me? This fruit? Best fruit. I know this stuff, I’ve eaten like every fruit in this garden. And since when does God have the right to tell you which trees you can eat from? Wait, don’t answer that. Naw, I didn’t say that. Don’t recall.”

I feel like now every time I think of the serpent I’m going to hear the voice of Donald Trump – a swaggering loudmouth shilling snake oil statecraft, and booking it out of there when it gets real.

The biggest difference, of course, is that the serpent never told Eve to punch Adam in the face if he tried to stop her from taking that fruit. Trump, however, had a planned rally in Chicago canceled because of escalating violence outside the venue. This isn’t surprising, considering the footage that has surfaced from two other earlier rallies that clearly shows elderly white men physically assaulting young African-American protestors. Trump’s stupefying response to this was a lament for the “good old days,” when, I quote: “There used to be consequences for protesting.”

When he said that, I remember thinking, “Which good old days is he talking about? Is he talking about the ones where, yeah, there were consequences for protesting? Like…fire hoses and attack dogs? Like ‘This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio?’”

First of all, that’s awful. Which I feel like I really shouldn’t have to say. Second of all, come on, man – there are still consequences for protesting. It just depends on who and where you are.

If you’re a young white kid in Victoria, BC in 2003 at a huge march condemning the US war in Iraq, as I once was, there aren’t any. If you’re a young black kid protesting at a Donald Trump rally in 2016, though, video evidence shows you can expect to be sucker-punched by a known white supremacist and immediately arrested on the spot – while the guy who punched you in full view of stadium security will be ignored for a couple of days and then finally brought in once video of the incident goes viral online.

If you’re a young Jewish man in first century Palestine, riding on a donkey…well, we know that story.

Just imagine things from the perspective of the people in power: Here comes this hayseed Galilean, surrounded by a bunch of other hayseeds and a pack of local troublemakers, not just walking into the city but riding into it on a donkey surrounded by adulation and palm branches. The religious leaders would have known the passage from Zechariah:

“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.”

This is not a neutral act, friends. In fact, biblical scholars Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan even wonder if there were two processions into Jerusalem occurring simultaneously: one, Jesus and his disciples, and the other, Pilate and his guard. It was barely a week before the Passover, you see, and it was common for governors to arrive in style at places like Jerusalem during great religious festivals to make sure everyone knew their place.

I actually feel great sympathy for the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Although the Gospel writers mostly exonerate Pilate by making him out to be an indecisive dupe, according to the history we have, Pilate was actually a petty tyrant. First-century Jewish historian Josephus writes that Pilate once spent Temple money to build an aqueduct, and when informing the people of this, hid disguised soldiers among the crowd, who killed protestors. The scholar Philo describes Pilate as having “vindictiveness and a furious temper.” Pilate’s term as governor ended shortly after an incident in which he had a group of Samaritans visiting Mount Gerizim massacred in a conniving sneak attack.

You can imagine why the religious leaders would be suspicious and hostile toward Jesus, arriving in the Holy City accompanied by zealots, the latter of which regularly stirred up trouble against the Roman state and eventually helped instigate the First Jewish-Roman war, which destroyed the Temple.

But Romans, Pharisees, and zealots alike misunderstood Jesus’ message.

As Jesus Christ Superstar hauntingly puts it, “To conquer death you only have to die.”

It might seem weird that we just celebrated with such pomp, only to move straight into the stark Passion account. Who and what exactly are we celebrating here? Certainly not the one we would expect. This is why I think it’s so important to combine Palm Sunday with Passion Sunday. Our celebrations should not be for the ones who insist they are entitled to them, or the ones who respond to the violence of Empire with calls to crush and maim, or even the good-hearted powerful ones who stay silent while the weak fall around them.

Our celebrations should be for the ones who walk into hostile territory exposing the folly of Empire with their own poverty.

Our celebrations should be for the ones who embrace weakness in order to shame the toxic misuse of strength.

Because the world, right now, today, needs to know this story. The world needs to know that our God is a god of action as well as a god of the Word. The world needs to know that our God wouldn’t preach resistance to life-denying forces if God hadn’t done it first. The world needs to know that God wouldn’t tell us to die to ourselves if God hadn’t done it first. The world needs to know that when we say “Death is not the end,” we really believe it.

Most of all, the world needs to know that our God remembers.

Our God remembers covenants and abandoned slaves. Our God remembers wayward nations and fallen sparrows. Our God remembers us, and calls us to remember.

There is a Greek word, anamnesis, which refers to a part of the Eucharistic prayer. It ostensibly means ‘to remember’, but it doesn’t refer to quiet reminiscence. It is always linked to action. It bears witness to the past and incarnate it into the present, because God’s work occurs outside as well as inside the walls of time. In the Bible, when God remembers, God delivers. God saves the world from bondage and isolation. God literally re-members.

On this day, and throughout Holy Week, we will re-member, in story, song, and sacrament. What we do together matters here. We are the broken, triumphant, incarnate Body of Christ, forever nourishing ourselves and each other through the unifying mystery of the sacraments.

Blessed are we, who come in the name of the Lord.

Amen.