Opening
Matthew 21:1-11

March 16, 2008


As you come out of the narthex of Summertown United Reformed Church in North Oxford, there is a short entry way right to a pedestrian cross walk on the Banbury Road. Directly opposite the church begins a narrow-laned street called South Parade, a small shopping area. It doesn’t take long before you realize that there is also a North Parade, again a very narrow street about 2 kilometers south, also full of shops, restaurants and pubs. Just so you have it straight now, North Parade is in the south and South Parade is in the north. Why, don’t they study geography there?

During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s Roundheads besieged Oxford and eventually established this little street South Parade as the southern boundary of their camp. North Parade was likewise instituted as the northern boundary of the Royalist contingent. In between was no-person land, though somebody else knows what people did in the middle between North and South Parade.

Parade is a military term, the parade field being the place where the troops congregate for inspection. Parade can also indicate as series or succession, as in “a parade of choices.” Parade is used often as a verb, to walk in a public procession, to display something publicly in order to impress or attract attention. And there are times we say about some scoundrel that he or she has “paraded as” someone they really were not.

St. Patrick’s Day parades are legion in various places, especially where the Irish lurk, and these can be both quasi-religious, quasi-political events - the Kennedys, the bishops and cardinals, the Knights of Columbus.

Most of us can remember the television reels of the May Day parades of tanks and missiles in Moscow and other Cold Warrior nations. Was anyone allowed to have fun at those parades, I wonder?

But there are parades and processions that capture every emotion. The famous funeral parades in New Orleans with the band leading the way first in somber, slow dirges, then changing the whole theology of the moment as the saints go marching in, and dancing too.

It has been easier to reduce Palm Sunday into a warmer version of a St. Patrick’s Day parade, without the politicians sitting in the back seats of convertibles. Everybody’s cheering, waving palms and other branches like we might wave the appropriate flags. The Messiah, the ultimate hero is arriving to take over his kingdom. Hallelujah! V-E day when the Allies paraded into Berlin; when Castro entered Havana, when the Communists entered Saigon; always a little bit of military hardware included in those parades. The palm wavers were certain Jesus was entering Jerusalem triumphantly to overthrow the Roman regime. Let’s get ready for Easter.

Jesus was getting ready for something. When they arrived outside of Jerusalem, he gave precise, if not clandestine, directions about securing the services of animals for Jesus to ride. The disciples must have been scratching their heads about all of this fuss - “It’s not that far, we’ve always walked before.” Apparently, Jesus was trying to recreate something of the image from Zechariah 9:9 about the king arriving into Zion, “triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.” It is never mentioned explicitly and even the evangelist Matthew doesn’t quite get the point. Not understanding how Hebrew poetry often deals in parallel verses describing the same thing, he portrays the very awkward picture of Jesus somehow riding into the city on the backs of two animals at the same time. Nevertheless, all the secret plans and passwords are delivered and it works. There is even a crowd provided.

The crowd gets or is given the idea and offers what we would call the red carpet treatment for Jesus and his ride, garments and leafy branches are laid across the road to create a softer surface for the animal. The crowd is now in front of and behind Jesus, moving as one mass down the road into the capital city, shouting provocative acclamations, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!” The Pharisees would have called it arrogant and blasphemous, somebody trying to put into the heads of the common folk that here is the Messiah.

By the time they were inside the city walls, this moveable crowd and parade of Jesus and followers has grabbed the attention of quite a few more people, for after all it’s Passover time and estimates have swelled the numbers in the city to 2 and ½ million pilgrims. The city was all shook up, in turmoil, never a happy state in a tense time like that. Riots could break out over very little and the Roman occupying authorities viewed any unrest as a threat to their position. If the city is too all shook up, everybody would be the losers.

Jesus walks directly into the Temple and drives out all the money changers who have transformed the House of Prayer into a den of robbers. The blind and the lame come to him for healing, the children keep up the parade festivity, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” The chief priests and scribes are scandalized, for as far as they were concerned, Jesus was parading as a Messiah.

In recent years the Lectionary guys have attempted to push this idiosyncratic parade out of the picture and call today Passion Sunday instead. The reason is a practical, yet sad and impoverishing move. This week, this Holy Week, is the one period of the year where we can walk in step in time with Jesus and his disciples and betrayers. Maundy Thursday is the night of the Last Supper, then we fall right into the shadows of the night, with its betrayal and arrest and desertion. Good Friday includes the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, then burial. Saturday is not a day in which nothing happens while Jesus is in the tomb, descended into hell, but it is an empty day like the original one in which we do not know what direction in which to turn. Sunday morning, the Third Day, is a day no one could have expected, and from now on, a day no one can do without.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, much of our society does not have the time, freedom or inclination to live out these days in their order. Sunday mornings are allotted to religious practice, so a lot of ministers realized that no one would hear the stories of the real Passion if they only came on Sunday to worship - the frivolity of the Palms followed by the defeat of death on Easter. Religion is just up and upper-ups, after all. Palm Sunday is a little too confusing, after all, so they dispense with the parade and begin with the betrayal, Judas Iscariot inquiring of the chief priests what will they pay him to deliver Jesus to them. Stick around this week, we will hear it all.

Palm Sunday is an odd day, is a preview of the joy to come, yet laughing at our efforts to reduce it down to a simple case of a parade. Humble and riding low to the ground upon a colt is Jesus, not high and majestic on a mighty white steed fit for a conquering royal general. One is not rewarded in this world by the worldly powers for humble acts. In humility, we back into Jerusalem dirges on our breath, then the beat picks up at the least likely moment and Hosannas shout and saints go marching in, and the powerful harrumph, “How dare you to be happy?” and we reply, “Because we are meant to be.”

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan