Palm Sunday column

Palm Sunday gets difficult for pastors to work with year after year. I recall a well-respected pastor ho said that he disliked (well something stronger) working with it, as he “had little to say about a parade year after year.” John Dominic Crossan imagines Palm Sunday as a protest demonstration against Roman imperial power. Maybe it even lampooned its power. The legion came in before Passover. Jesus, using the words of Zechariah 9 comes in on an animal of peace. It would be like placing a flower in the barrel of a gun. Maybe it was not even noticed by the Roman authorities.

Palm Sunday could be an object lesson for what is to come and theology as well. Jesus is acclaimed; Scripture is cited as being fulfilled, but it is a little parade in the face of the Roman legion marching in. The Prince of peace looks small compared to military might. In a way, it encapsulates the highs and lows of the life of Christ. Put differently Holy Week is framed by two utterly different forms of exaltation, Palm Sunday and Easter, around the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus does not march in to defeat Rome with a legion of the angelic heavenly army; he comes in peace.

This year I seize on the reading from Philippians 2:5-11. This is thought to be a hymn in the early church that Paul uses to consider the nature of Jesus Christ. I just received a book on interlibrary loan by Michael Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God. In looking at this section, he calls this view of power counter-intuitive. He quotes John Howard Yoder that “the creative power of the universe…poured itself into the frail mold of humanity,” a self-giving power in apparent weakness.

Paul sees Jesus as not grabbing for the power he had, not grabbing, snatching away, the power of God. Paul envisions the life of the community being formed by the mind of Christ -- by a spirit of humility and loving service to one another rather than competition and grasping for power and control. Power seeking and power struggles do not honor the name of Jesus. By following Jesus, we give ourselves away in service to a suffering humanity. We look to the interests of others rather than our own interests.  Susan Eastman, of Duke writes: “For this very reason, the story of Christ also moves from separation to solidarity, and from difference to likeness, as Christ moves into the most despairing depths of human experience… he mirrors back to us the reality of our own enslavement to sin and death. He comes very near, so near that he "gets under our skin." This is the "kindness" of God, in that God becomes one of our kind, kin to us. This is the incarnation; God gives us the desire and the energy to enact Christ's compassion in the world.

In the movie the Shack, a small scene conveys divine emptying. Does divine love have no cost? The Creator maternal divine figure shows scars on her wrists that reflect the scars of Christ on the cross. What is in the divine and human aspect of Christ that can face pain and struggle and yet remain divine or human?  Love may well require release of power over, may require that love does have a cost, at least against egotism. For the Christian, God is revealed at a parade in Jerusalem for peace, and at Calvary. God is revealed in the midst of death’s deep darkness, even in what seems to be utter defeat. God is God with us, God for us, all the way to the grave. Then, Easter can make the tomb, womb of new life.