Palm Sunday, quick and dirty:

• Passover is a Jewish holiday
  celebrating God’s acts in freeing oppressed people from their
  oppressors, and leading them to freedom even when a superior
  military force wanted to prevent it.
• The Celebration of Passover
  brought crowds of faithful Jews into Jerusalem to celebrate God’s
  power to free them from their oppressors.
• Judea, and Galilee were
  functionally Roman Colonies, overburdened with taxes that took the
  wealth of the land and transferred it to the wealthy artistocrats at
  the top of the Roman hierarchy.
• The Roman Empire was fairly
  nervous and jerky about large crowds of religiously faithful people
  who believed in the power of God to overcome oppressors.
• Thus, before Passover, the
  Roman Empire had a HUGE military parade into Jerusalem emphasizing
  the power of their military and bringing the Governor into town to –
  as they would say – keep the peace.
• The military parade and the
  presence of the Governor functioned as THREATS OF VIOLENCE against
  anyone who might think God was up to freeing people from oppression
  once again.
• (It may be worth remembering as
  well that a few decades later there WAS a big protest and the Empire
  responded with a massacre as well as the destruction of the temple.
  They weren’t kidding about the threat of violence.
• The military parade happened
  EVERY YEAR.
• Knowing this, Jesus engaged in
  NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION to parody their parade and clarify the
  differences between Rome’s violent power and God’s nonviolent realm.

As the Jesus Seminar puts it,
“For his part, Jesus made it clear that he was entering Jerusalem
to face death.  In that case, the ‘triumphal entry’ as Mark depicts
it is a satire of revolutionary processions and of the kind of
triumphal entry the Romans enjoyed making into cities they had
conquered.”¹
That is, “Jesus was not making a statement about his own
messiahship, but contrasting God’s imperial rule (‘Congratulations,
you poor!  God’s domain belongs to you”) with Roman Imperial
Rule.”²

When I think about nonviolent
direct action, this Palm Sunday protest parade is an outstanding
example.  It is up there with the best.  I believe most of you are
aware of the lunch counter protests whereby people of color (gasp)
sat down at lunch counters where they would not be served to draw
attention to that injustice (and take the space of someone who might
be served AND PAY).

I believe most of you are aware
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, when for over a year African Americans
refused to ride buses in Montgomery, Alabama until the buses stoped
having segregated seating.  They refused to ride AS second class
citizens, and without their participation, the buses weren’t
sustainable.

Nonviolent direction action is
really, really hard work.  In both of those cases people faced
violence and hardship in response to seeking justice.  I’m always
astounded at the commitment people made FOR MORE THAN A YEAR in the
bus boycott, and in the face of VIOLENCE at lunch counters.

Those actions changed our
society for the better.  They didn’t counter violence with violence,
but rather with nonviolence.  They showed up or didn’t as needed, and
allowed their nonviolent actions to create change.

Our society isn’t particularly
fond of protest, or at least that what I hear when Black Lives
Matters gets brought up in most places.  I hear that people should
seek justice in other ways, which makes it clear to me that a lot of
people don’t actually understand the point of protests.

Protests or nonviolent direct
actions are what you do when other avenues of justice are closed OR
you need to increase public awareness of injustice in order to work
through other avenues of justice.  If a problem can be solved
directly, most people chose that route.  Nonviolent direction action
is the HARDER way forward – one that comes at personal cost, often
with a threat of violence against those who are involved with the
action, and when other avenues are closed.

I’m quite confident that if a
nicely worded letter to a Diner or a local paper managed to
desegregate restaurants, people would have done that.  I’m assured
that if a phone call to a city councilman or a postcard campaign to
the transit authority would have desegregated buses, people would
have been thrilled to take the easier route.  

Several years ago now, the Poor
People’s Campaign NY did a series of nonviolent direct actions in the
New York State capital to draw attention to the ways that the needs
of people in poverty are being ignored.  The one I thought was most
creative was the Fort Orange Club action.  Kevin Nelson was present
and he explains it this way:

“We were protesting the
influence of lobbying interests (and their related campaign
donations) on policies that subvert the interest of average New
Yorkers. We had a human chain thing from the Legislative Office
Building (LOB) to the Fort Orange Club, with “bags of money”
along the chain to indicate the money flow. We blocked exits and
entrances to the parking lots at the Club for several hours.”

This one particularly reminds me
of the Jesus Palm Sunday protest, in that it seems equally BRILLIANT,
and infuriating to those in power.

The injustice I have spent the
most time working to change is the structural institutional
homophobia of The United Methodist Church.  Because of my work there,
I’ve seen the ways that all other avenues have been blocked.  Since
1972, petitions to change the homophobic stances have come to the
floor at General Conference, with no positive action.  The judicial
branch of the UMC has upheld the discrimination, and most Bishops
will enforce it.  LGBTQIA+ people and their allies lack the votes,
the power, and the access to justice.

Thus, there has been a need to
increase the pressure to create change, to increase anxiety, to bring
attention to injustice, and to be clear that the only way to stop the
demands for justice was to BRING JUSTICE to God’s people.

There have been a lot of
protests, and I want to talk about two of them.

For the first, I’m going to
share it in the words of Rev. Dr. Julie Todd who spent many DECADES
as an activist for Queer and Trans rights in the UMC.  This is from
the “Love Prevails Blog”

There was a regularly scheduled
communion at every lunch break in the plenary hall at General
Conference 2004 in Pittsburgh. On the day the votes went badly yet
again for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ)
people, we decided as a movement to go to that communion service,
where we could stand in the presence of the broken and resurrected
Body of Christ. We did this as a means of re-asserting our presence
in that Body. We did this as a means of resistance against the false
institutional proclamation of one cup, one Body, and one baptism,
when clearly the actions of the General Conference actively sought to
harm and exclude members of that Body. All forms of our resistance
and disruption are embodied statements that the unity of the church
cannot continue to come at the cost of LGBTQ lives. These same acts
of resistance are theological affirmations that the resurrected Jesus
lives on in our whole and beloved queer bodies.

There was weeping and there was
anger at communion. There was a need for a deep and spiritual release
of the violence that had just been done to the queer body of Christ.
Because when votes are cast against the very existence of LGBTQ
lives, that is what is happens: violence. Christ’s body crucified
again. To not act in the face of such violence does further violence.

When the sacrament was over,
Rev. James Preston grabbed a chalice from the communion altar and
smashed it on the floor. The smashing of the chalice was not a
planned disruption. While there were many interpretations of that
moment of breaking the chalice, in fact there was no chaos, no
storming the altar, no desecration of the sacrament. There was a holy
anger that took shape in a prophetic act. A movement of the Spirit
interceded to express anguished sighs too deep for words. In the
breaking of the cup, Christ spoke to the real brokenness of the
moment.3

The
destruction of that chalice REALLY upset a lot of people.  To this
day I remain horrified that they were upset at the breaking of a
sacred symbol, but not at the ways the church has broken God’s
beloved PEOPLE.

At
that same 2004 General Conference, people started wearing short
rainbow stoles to symbolize a commitment to full inclusion of
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer person in the life and
policy of The UMC.  Rainbow stoles become particularly symbolic at
Annual Conferences and their ordination services  – when they are a
sign of protest over who gets the authority to wear a stole (a symbol
of being ordained) in The UMC.  When I was ordained, I was supposed
to have a red stole placed on my shoulders, as red is the color of
pentecost and ordination.  Instead I was ordained with a rainbow
stole (and still won’t wear a red one – not until all those called
can serve).  My mentors laid hands on me without their robes or
stoles (and one of them in a LOVELY rainbow shawl), as further
expressions of my objections (and theirs.)

In
the scheme of things, what a clergy person wears or doesn’t while
being ordained into a homophobic institution is a pretty low form of
protest.  (I joined to bring change, but I’m often still
uncomfortable with it.)  There were no consequences, and no changes
came from it.  But I remember having a colleague I was getting
ordained with asking me to refrain from those signs of protest so
that our shared ordination could be “sacred.”  And I remember
responding that I couldn’t refrain from sharing my objections about
ORDINATION AT ORDINATION.  (By the grace of God, that colleague later
changed their mind and told me so, thanking me for my witness.)

So, this Palm Sunday, this day
of remembering a nonviolent direct action that was responded to with
deadly force, I invite you into reflection on justice, protests, and

nonviolent direct actions.

When you see a protest – ask
yourself – what justice is missing, and WHY and HOW  is it blocked?

When you see an injustice, talk
with others and pray about what means of responding will bring
change.

It seems that’s the Jesus way,
thanks be to God.

Amen

1. Acts
of Jesus, 120.

2. Acts
of Jesus, 121.

3. https://loveprevailsumc.com/2016/05/12/on-the-body-being-broken/