holy week & unholy war

This week the focus of First Born Son is both Holy Week and the 5 Year Anniversary of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.

Today is Palm Sunday... the beginning of Holy Week. On Thursday we will remember his agony in the garden, His final meal with his disciples, and his arrest. On Friday we will remember his crucifixion, death and burial. And on Sunday we will celebrate his rising from the dead and that he is alive. But the week begins with remembering - and often reenacting - his celebrated arrival in Jerusalem that began the Passion Week.

The Scripture tells us that when Jesus entered the city on the back of a donkey, large crowds of people - who were in town for Passover - ran out to meet him. They waved palm branches while shouting praises to Jesus as he entered the city.

Palm Sunday at my church growing up was pretty typical. Along with the standard bulletin, the ushers would hand everyone a large palm branch as they entered the sanctuary. During the opening worship anthem, everyone would sing out loud while waving their palm branches back and forth in the air.

And just about every year, without fail, a group of church members would be recruited to reenact the scene. All the men, women and child actors would be decked out in blue, red, green and brown bed sheets cut to look like poor representations of first century Middle Eastern garb, while for the men smaller cuts of fabric would be tied around their heads and draped over their shoulders. And one man would always be decked out in a white robe, long hair wig, and fake beard. This man was our Jesus.

The sanctuary was rather large, with five sets of isles leading to three doors at the back. Usually during the first singing of the chorus, with the congregations palm branches swaying back and forth, our “Jesus” would walk in from the back center set of doors. As he slowly walked up and down the isles and around the sanctuary, the “Passover crowd” followed waiving their palm branches.

One year someone got the idea to make the scene more dramatic. This particular time started off as any other. The music started, the congregation stood, and we all began singing and waving all palm branches as the back door opened. But this time, instead of on his feet, our Jesus was sitting on top of a real... live... donkey.

And somewhere during the second stanza, while heading up the third isle, the donkey - who had to be a little confused and frightened by this mass of people waving palms in one hand while pointing at him with their hymnals in the other - did what most animals do when the moment is right: He shit on the sanctuary carpet.

The next year the worship committee made sure that didn’t happen again. When the back doors flew open and our Jesus made his triumphal entry, he was again on the back of a real live donkey. But as the animal cleared the doors and fully entered the sanctuary, everyone could see that something was different: The ass was wearing a huge diaper.

That's authentic first century realism.

For me, this is the image I always have in my mind as we begin the most sacred of weeks in the Christian year. But the image of the real event had to be pretty amazing. As the word of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead had spread, the people in Jerusalem had to be getting excited.

It was Passover: The annual remembrance and celebration of when God delivered his people out of slavery and called them his own. And now here they were, in a land occupied by a foreign, pagan power, at the bottom of the social order. They were ready to be delivered again. They were ready for a savior. And this Jesus might be the one.

But I’ve learned something about those palm branches I never knew. In Jesus’ day, the palm branch to the Jews was a symbol of military victory. A kind of nationalistic flag in a way. So when the throngs gathered they thought they were greeting their King mighty in battle. What they were getting instead was a Suffering Servant mighty in sacrifice.

By waving those palm branches, they show that they were expecting Jesus to be their military hero: overthrowing their enemies, redeeming their exiles and re-establishing them as the top power in the world. But what they failed to realize that Jesus had come to overthrow a greater enemy than Rome, to redeem all of humanity and to establish a Kingdom where the last would be first, the hungry would be fed, the homeless would be sheltered, the sick would be healed, the widow and orphan taken care of, and where enemies would be forgiven... and maybe even invited to the table.

This didn’t fit with the people’s agenda, and by the end of the week the crowds that had cheered for his welcome now chanted for his death.

I think it is significant that Palm Sunday opens a Holy Week that falls on the same week of the five year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Why is this significant? Because I know of too many pastors and churches who, from the run-up to the war until now, have waved the flag before the Cross, and in doing so have missed the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.