Palm Sunday

 Luke 19:28-40; 22:14-23:56

Palm Sunday always a weird sort of day to me.  Such strong dichotomies. It begins with a celebration and ends with death.  It begins in protest and ends in sorrow.  And it is a day that shows us that crowds are powerful.  For good or ill, crowds are powerful. 

This year we are living in the Gospel of Luke and I like Luke.  He is more focused on the disciples, and because he writes for a wider audience, he is better at taking in the bigger picture.  And we began our day with Jesus’s Triumphal Entry, which especially in Luke can only be described as protest march.  While the other Gospel writers remember the crowd shouting in Jewish slogans in Aramaic, Luke remembers how they shouted Roman slogans reserved for emperors, governors and generals to an unarmed man, born as a peasant and riding on a donkey.  We hear them shout "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest" but rendered in Latin it sounded and awful lot like “Blessed is the ruler for comes in the name of the emperor to bring peace on earth and glory in the highest” which is what these same crowds were expected to shout when Roman rulers like Pilate and Herod arrived in their military processions to Jerusalem for the festival.  The Romans promised the world Peace and Security at the point of a sword, but only to those who would stay quiet and obey without question.  And make sure to shout the right slogans because the Romans always understood that crowds were powerful.  Bread and circuses after all.

And early this morning the crowds chose Jesus to be this king de Jure.  But no matter what the crowds say, Jesus was never that kind of king.  If humble riding on a donkey with nothing but peasant cloaks in place of imperial banners didn’t make it abundantly clear.  The opening scene from the Passion reading today certainly did.  After that great display of albeit understated Roman power the disciples get interested in their own greatness.  But Jesus has something entirely different to say. "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Jesus has always been insistent that he never desired to rule as a Roman ruler, but even this humility won’t save him now, because crowds are powerful.  And Jesus has now become caught up in a political drama beyond their, beyond anyone’s control.  And Luke is clear, more clear than the others, that the crowd, the people, the frenzy of fear and excitement that surrounds this day are primarily responsible for Jesus death.  Even the hostile Roman authorities, like Herod and Pilate, secure in their power and control could care less about an upstart like Jesus.  He is barely on their radar.  But they still know that crowds are powerful and in the end they give them what they want.  And what they want this day is a visible, brutal death, where cruelty is the point.  What they want is self-censorship, a reminder to all who see that their job is to stay obedient and quiet, that Peace and security at the point of a sword is all anyone should hope for.

And maybe that is one thing we would be wise remember this day, that Crowds are powerful.  Crowds are still powerful.  Crowds are unwieldy and their allegiance is easily swayed.  And crowds can be cruel in ways that individuals rarely are.

But also that in this story, the crowd doesn’t win, not for long at least.  Because what we learn from Jesus is that no matter what the crowd does, love wins.  Jesus, the humble servant wins, not over the crowd or the empire but over death itself.  We learn that love is even more powerful than all of the forces of evil that the earth can muster.  Humility and love, acts of service and care, the path that Jesus teaches right until the end, is still the most powerful force in the world that still topples the cruelest empires.  And so as we journey with Jesus through this harrowing week, through this harrowing time in our history, we too will again and again be asked to choose.  Peace and security or love and service?   It is the fundamental choice of humanity and in the end, the only one that matters.  Amen.