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April 2, 2023
by Sara Baron

Protest or Revolt? based on Galatians 3:23-4:7 and Matthew 21:1-11

For many years, I have had the chance to work with a camper I’m going to call Penny today. (So, not her real name.) Penny is a woman who has Down’s Syndrome, a huge personality, and a stubborn streak that can rival my own. She is also world class at engaging in passive protest.

In practice, at camp, this most often looks like a group getting ready to go somewhere, and Penny will sit down, and simply refuse to come along. Unless, that is, someone sings her favorite song and then slowly walks away from her, requiring her to follow in order to keep hearing the song.

The song, if you were wondering, is “This Little Light of Mine,” and it gets sung A LOT when Penny is at camp. Like, 50 times a day? Maybe more. Penny is very good at bending people to her will, and she really, really, REALLY likes that song.

A thing I respect about Penny is that she isn’t going to do what she doesn’t want to do. You can threaten her, bribe her, argue with her, or beg her. But she will simply hold up one finger, and dance it around a little, to let you know what she expects of you.

The thing is, that the camp I run is highly dependent on people being willing to function as a group and move as a group. We’re stuck when one camper doesn’t stay with the group, and it can force us out of adequate supervision! Refusing to get up is the PERFECT protest for our camp, because it puts the counselors and staff into a crisis. Truthfully, Penny gets what she wants because singing “This Little Light of Mine” all day every day is a lower price to pay than not being able to function or keep our campers safe. So she gets what she wants, we get what we want, and if there is a particular song stuck in one’s head for years after, at least you eventually learn to smile about it.

Also, by most ways of looking at it, Penny doesn’t have a lot of power in the world. So, God love her for using what she has well.

Penny at camp functions a lot like Jesus outside of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jesus used what power to bring the change he wanted. He was up against the Roman Empire, but he similarly managed to put pressure on a sensitive point and get his message across clearly. The Roman Empire, however, did not concede as gracefully as the camp staff does.

Passover in Jerusalem was a conundrum for the Roman Empire. On the one hand, they wanted to show respect to an ancient faith tradition, and maintain the narrative of the Emperor’s power, might and goodness. On the other hand, Passover was a celebration of God’s actions in freeing the people from the oppressive power of a mighty empire, and a whole lot of people gathered very close to each other to do so, and that… felt dangerous. Because while I’m sure the Roman Empire didn’t think of itself as an oppressive overlord, they maybe had a bit of an awareness that some others did. So how do you respect this important religious festival while also keeping it under control?

The Empire came up with a good answer. The local leader Pilate, the “king of the Jews,” marched into the city with a full imperial processional. There were soldiers on gleaming horses, drumlines in union, glittering silver and gold on crests, golden eagles (the symbol of Rome) mounted on poles. It was a BIG time show of power and reminder of the Empire and its hold on Jerusalem. The people who came to watch would have shouted the things they were taught to shout: Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord.

The Empire’s plan was to remind the people of the POWER and MIGHT and THREAT of the empire’s military while also being “present” for the rituals – and keeping an eye on the messages from their carefully selected high priests.

It seems Jesus saw through it.

And his processional, the one that came through the East gate, brought a lot of clarity to what was happening at the West gate. Instead of a tall shiny horse, Jesus rode in on an unbroken colt (or donkey. Or both ;)). Jesus came in his ordinary cloths, without the sparkle of gold or silver. Instead of being accompanied by soldiers with weapons, Jesus came with his disciples – ordinary men known for drinking a bit too much and the inability to keep their mouths shut when they should. Instead of banners declaring the power of Rome and displaying the golden eagle, the people shimmied up palm trees and cut off the branches to wave. Palm Branches were the national symbol of Ancient Israel, their flag. The people laid their cloaks on the road for Jesus’ colt to walk on. That is, they used the very little power they had as a carpet for Jesus’ feet.

Zechariah 9:9 reads “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Did you hear it? Your KING comes riding on a colt. Jesus wasn’t just borrowing a colt – and he wasn’t just being humble. He was connecting himself to the expectations of what the Jewish Messiah would look like. In fact, he was more or less claiming the crown. And the people supported him. So Jesus comes on a colt – which declares kingship – and the people wave the national flag – celebrating a new king!

To bring this into focus, Jesus riding a donkey into the East gate raised some questions:

Who is King of the Jews?
From where do they derive their power?
Does power come from the capacity to inflict violence?
Does their power come from sharing power?
Is Pilate there to celebrate God or to stop God’s work?
Which parade is God in?

Jesus found the weaknesses of the Empire – in the need they had to maintain power and control with violence and with the overarching narratives of their goodness. He gave people ways to question it all, just by riding on a donkey.

While I think the Palm Sunday processional was one of the greatest nonviolent direct actions in history, it came with a very steep price. Leading people to those questions undermined the Empire itself. The Empire read it as a revolt, in fact they decided to read it as a VIOLENT revolt, which probably means it shook them to their core. Which is both VERY IMPRESSIVE as protests go, and VERY DANGEROUS as protests go. The Empire killed Jesus for leading a violent revolt agains the Empire.

And the only thing they got wrong was that it was nonviolent.

Actually, scratch that. They got two things wildly wrong. First it was nonviolent to its core. Secondly, they thought killing Jesus would kill his movement. You, listening to this sermon, right now are part of the proof of how wrong they got that one!

But to go back to the nonviolence for a moment… this is absolutely key to everything about Jesus, and it shouldn’t be glossed over. The world tells us that the only power that matters is power over, and power over is enforced with violence. David Graeber in the book “Debt: A History of the First 5,000 Years” points out that only societies with inequality have police forces. And, only countries that are taking unfair shares of the world’s resources spend extravagantly on their militaries. It turns out there is a direct correlation between inequality and violence, specifically state sponsored violence.

The Roman Empire was the military superpower of its day, and was also exemplary a taking wealth from the land and from the poor and syphoning it to the very, very wealthy. Who is exemplary at that today?

Anyway, Jesus didn’t play by those rules. He didn’t enact violence, or permit it, nor did he let the threat of it stop him. He engaged in power with, not power over. He lived nonviolence and by his very life taught its power. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, says this as well as it has ever been said. “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, there is no male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

Well, that takes care of power over!! That simple sentence teaches us that as followers of Jesus, none of the coercive power of the world applies anymore. And once that power-over is gone, along with it goes the need for violence to enforce it. What is left is space for people to work together, collaborate, help meet each other’s needs, and build connections and community. Which, to be honest, is a darn good reason to join that Jesus parade and choose his values instead of supporting the representative of the Empire on the other side.

But today, I’ll admit, even this story that astounds me every time I approach it, and even this Galatians passage which has one of my two favorite verses in the New Testament, still fall flatter than usual.

Because here we are, 2000 years later, in a society that sanctifies violence rather than nonviolence. In a society with about the same income distribution as the Roman Empire. In a society that STILL functions as if some people matter and some don’t. It is enough to make me wonder how well this Jesus movement is really doing after all. Furthermore, there is the “Christian Nationalist” thing that claims the name of Jesus while doing all the things of the Empire… power, violence, hierarchy, in groups and out groups, all of it.

And, this being the start of Holy Week, I’m going leave this here, in the discomfort. In the reminder that things are not OK, that people misuse the name of Jesus, that God is against violence but our country specializes in it, in the incredible power of the Palm Sunday parade that was a large part of why Jesus was killed. I’m going to leave us here in the brokenness. Spoiler alert: next week I have some good news to share. But for now, here we are.

May God hear our prayers. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

April 2, 2023

Sermons

“A Hope-filled Crowd”based on Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Mark 11:1-11(…

March 25, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

One of the most repeated myths about Jesus’ death is that the crowd who celebrated him on Palm Sunday turned on him and demanded his death on Good Friday. This one isn’t true at all, and its repetition keeps us from seeing clearly what did happen in the last week of Jesus’ life. It has been useful to those who want claim that humans are fickle, and crowd mentality is dangerous, to claim that the same crowd changed sides, but that isn’t reflective of the story we’ve read.

Instead, the crowds remained incredibly excited about Jesus and loyal to him. Their presence and their fidelity to him was the largest part of his threat to the empire. I mean, he also engaged in two really emphatic demonstrations of nonviolent resistance, but no one would have cared if he hadn’t done so with many, many people watching.

In fact, throughout the end of Mark, we’re told repeatedly that the authorities were trying to figure out how to take out Jesus without creating a riot by crowds faithful to him.

11:18 “And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.” 11:32 “they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet.” 12: 12 ”they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.” 14:1b-2 “The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.‘”

John Dominic Crossan in God and Empire, suggests that the Good Friday crowd wasn’t really a crowd at all, but rather 9-10 people who were advocating for Barabbas, likely his followers. They weren’t the same people, and there weren’t many of them.

Throughout the Gospel of Mark there are tensions with crowds. Jesus keeps attracting crowds, and then tries to get away from them!! When he can’t, he teaches them, heals them, feeds them, then he tries to get away again. In Mark, the crowds are seen as a little bit dangerous, because they feed into the fear the authorities have that Jesus is going to start a violent revolution. The tension is ALWAYS there.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t going to start a VIOLENT revolution, he was starting a nonviolent one, but the difference didn’t end up mattering. Jesus was killed by the Roman Empire on the charges of inciting a violent revolt, EVEN THOUGH he’d only engaged in nonviolent actions. (Two notable ones: Palm Sunday and then on Monday the Temple Cleansing.) It seems that the fear the authorities had of the crowds and their power made the difference between violent revolution and nonviolent action less important to the authorities. They were too scared to pay attention to their own laws.

So, why were so many people following Jesus? What was it that was so attractive about him, or so irresistible? From what I can tell from the stories about him, his teaching was certainly mind-blowing, after all we’ve been struggling with it for 2000 years without coming to many answers. He also seems to have been a good healer. But those two pieces don’t quite explain the power he has in the stories about him. They don’t explain why the crowds were SO passionate for him that they protected him. They don’t explain why people were willing to walk away from the lives they’d known just to follow him.

I think he must have been profoundly rooted in God’s own love, AND very charismatic, AND incredibly empathetic, AND insanely insightful while also clear spoken, AND profoundly gifted at knowing what people needed and finding ways to fulfill it. The sort of live changing experiences people had with him, instantaneously, are really shocking. So is the story of Palm Sunday.

The story says that the crowd showed up at an anti-Imperial procession, that functionally named Jesus King, while shouting King-supporting phrases that were blasphemy and sedition in the Roman Empire, WHILE waving the national symbol (Palm Branches) of Israel, AND they laid their cloaks on the road in front of him. The Jesus Seminar thinks this is an expression of early Christian imagination, rather than historical memory. Historically speaking, at best, they think Jesus MIGHT have ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey as a symbolic act. That seems very likely, and it may be helpful for some among us to keep that in mind (and for others to ignore completely).¹

For those of you who have heard me preach on Palm Sunday before, you may remember that it is said to happen just before the celebration of the Jewish Passover. The Passover is the celebration of God’s actions to free the Hebrew people from slavery and give them new life together, eventually in the Promised Land. This central story of Judaism is of a God who cares about the oppressed and acts to free them.

Thus, the Roman Empire which had colonized the Jewish homeland, got a little nervous around the Passover celebration, all the more so because 200,000 people came to Jerusalem to celebrate it, swelling the city that usually had 40,000 residents. Thus, before the Passover began, the representative of the Empire entered the city through a formal processional with full military might on display. This wasn’t subtle, at all! It was a direct threat of violence, should any revolts or riots break out. The Empire was there to remind the people that they’d be crushed if they attempted to reenact their history of being freed from oppression.

People at the Roman procession yelled, “Hail Caesar, son of God; Praise be to the Savior who brought the Roman Peace; Caesar is Lord….” Those were the shouts appropriate to the Empire. And, that’s what makes the shouts said to happen at the Jesus parade so significant. They defied the power of Rome. They were blaspheming against the Empire, and doing so while seeking God’s help in overthrowing it! They also shouted “Hosanna”, a contraction of the Hebrew phrase “save, we pray.” The word, which we use as praise and adoration, to the people yelling it as Jesus rode the colt, literally meant ‘save’. Thus it meant “Hosanna!” Be our savior! Rescue us! Deliver us from our enemies! You are like the great King David! You come in the name of the Lord to bring us salvation from above!² They were speaking to YHWH, in Hebrew, seeking salvation from the Roman Empire.³

Jerusalem wasn’t just the capital city of the former Jewish empire, according to Crossan “it was a capital city where religion and violence – conservative religion and imperial oppression – had become serenely complicit.”⁴ Jesus choose it as a place for his demonstrations because it was the center of this complicity with violence. Crossan says, “Jesus went to Jerusalem because that was where his deliberate double demonstrations against both imperial justice and religious collaboration had to be made. … It was a protest from the legal and prophetic heart of Judaism against Jewish religious cooperation with Roman Imperial Control.”⁵

The day after this peaceful, but POWERFUL, protest (Palm Sunday), Jesus went into the Temple and had another peaceful and POWERFUL protest. Crossan writes, “In Mark’s story, attention is focused on the demonstrations as twin aspects of the same nonviolent protest. … Each is quite deliberate. Each takes place at an entrance – into the City and into the Temple. Together, and in the name of God, these demonstrations are a protest against any collaboration between religious authority and imperial violence.”⁶

In all of this, the crowds stayed with him. Whatever it was that attracted them to begin with, there was substance under it that kept them there when things started getting dangerous. It is one thing to listen to a teacher in some field in Galilee and glean hope that life could be better than it is now. It is quite another thing to follow a leader who is protesting the Empire that has military might that has never been seen before, and to keep him safe with your sheer numbers. What kept them there?

In part, I suspect the crowds stayed because life outside of the Jesus movement was hopeless, and Jesus offered real and substantive hope for a different life -if not for those who followed him, then for the ones who came after them. Maybe the Spirit was there too, and the people could feel God at work, and wanted to be a part of it. Maybe the energy of the crowd was empowering and uplifting as few things were. Still though, I think Jesus just offered something no one else did – he saw them, he loved them, he wanted good for them, and he taught them how to work together to change the world so things could get better. People need to be part of something more than themselves, and the beaten down Jewish people KNEW in their hearts and in their bodies that there was more goodness in life than they were getting to experience. They knew God and God’s vision for them, and that the domination and oppression system wasn’t God’s will at all! In addition, I think Jesus’ love of them made it possible to see their own worth and to live it!

I ask about that crowd, because I think as later followers of Jesus it is worth wondering why we follow him too! While the disciples were all killed by the Empire for continuing the work of Jesus, for most of us there is much less of a cost in following. At the same time, there are a whole lot more distractions to following Jesus than there ever have been before. There are ways to numb ourselves out to the pains of life, options ranging from the simple distractions of smart phones, YouTube, and TV to the terrifyingly common addictive substances that pervade our society. There are other ways to “build community” and feel connected: sports teams, political groups, non-profit boards, game nights, and the list goes on. Following Jesus isn’t the easiest option. It calls us out of comfort zones, it prods us to love God’s people even when they drive us NUTS, it asks a lot of us.

It also gives a lot back. Following Jesus gives us an alternative vision: one where all of the people on the planet are God’s beloved children (not commodities and means of profit-building); one where there is incredibly important work to do together – building the kindom of God (not just individuals fighting to make it through day by day) ; one where there is hope for a truly good system of life together (not just Band-Aids on mostly broken systems); one where the nonviolent power of connection and community dominates (not violence or the threat of violence); one where HOPE dominates (not fear). It still sends shivers down my spine, how different God’s vision for the world is from how the world is at the moment, and the idea that God is working through us to make the vision into reality. May we join that hope filled crowd around Jesus, the ones following his vision, the ones making it possible for his work to continue, the ones who trust in his way. Amen

1Robert W. Funk and The Jesus Seminar, The Acts of Jesus (USA -HarperSanFransicso: Polebridge Press, 1998) 230.

2 From http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2004-2005/2005-03-20.shtml, Commentary by Rick Marshall, accessed on March 16, 2008.

3Marcus Borg and John Dominc Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (Harper Collins: 2006)

4John Dominic Crossan God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now(USA: HarperOne, 2007), 131.

5Crossan, 131-132.

6Crossan, 134.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 25. 2-18