Column on Palm Sunday background

Back in Indiana, a local pastor said her rarely spoke on Palm Sunday, but he much preferred to speak about the events of Holy Week. “How much can you say about a parade,” he asked. Today, I thought I would give our readers a bit of a glimpse into sermon preparation, where much material goes into background, or church education class, but may not ever see the light of day on Sunday morning in the sanctuary.

I am interested in how quickly things changed for Jesus. How could the Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday of Hosanna (save us, or more likely a shout of acclaim) turn into cries of ‘crucify him” so quickly? The gospels suggest crowds of some size, and that alone would gain Roman attention, especially because of the crush of people visiting the temple for the Passover sacrifices. (For serious looks at the historical context of the last week of the life of Jesus see the 2 volume Death of the Messiah by Raymond Brown, Crossan’s biography of Jesus and his little book, Who Killed Jesus, Meier biographies of Jesus, N.T. Wright’s huge collection of work on the topic, among many others.)

Paula Frederickson would argue that Jesus had his fate sealed by the Triumphal Procession itself. The critical issue would be if Jesus were proclaimed as King of the Jews during that demonstration. The gospels cite Zechariah 9, and he speaks of a king. Christians point out that Jesus was redefining messianic expectation here and arriving as a man of peace and gentleness. However, Judea was under Roman occupation, with Ronan soldiers garrisoned nearby, especially for the Passover festival. Such a phrase would arouse suspicion in Pilate’s mind immediately, given the turbulence of politics in that time and the sometimes restive political nature of the separate area of Galilee, the home of Jesus. Galilee was a hotbed of religious reformers, and that often spilled over into political messages. Passover often spelt trouble as it recalled the exodus from the oppression of Egypt, so it was not a large step to equate Rome with Egyptian oppression.

We know little about Pilate, but what evidence we have is not noble. Pilate’s disposition was inflexible, stubborn, and corrupt. In other words, he was a typical colonial administrator. . He was removed from office not that long after the death of Jesus because he ordered the massacre of pilgrims in Samaria, the area between Galilee and Judea in the south. A few times, he incited protests by carrying Roman standards, with the image of the emperor, into the Temple precincts.

The gospels also put the prediction of the Temple’s destruction and the symbolic overturning of the tables in a small corner of the Temple may have led toward Jesus being considered trouble for Roman order. Herod started an enormous reconstruction and expansion of the Temple complex that lasted almost a century, and almost as soon as it was finished, Rome destroyed it. the Dead Sea Scrolls have material that speak of cleansing the temple as a prelude to two messianic figures, a priestly one to reform religion and a political one to offer political freedom.

Our gospel accounts are religious documents, so they have heavy theological import and symbolism throughout. Pilate could not have cared less about Jewish theology. Quite simply, if he heard that a potential troublemaker had alerted the attention of leading people in Jerusalem, he would act decisively to nip a potential movement with political overtones in the bud. He had Jesus executed. Crucifixion was a political statement of rome as a warning to others. To avoid this horror, keep quiet and passive. the mere threat of it was enough to turn demonstrator from dreams of a new way in the world to cries of crucifixion in the blink of an eye.