The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
March 16, 2008
Vol. 11 no. 11

Everything But...
           I think parades are on their way out. Sure, there are a few, usually spontaneous after your beloved sports team has won the Big One. Of course, I missed that one on November 27, standing at the appointed time at Victoria & Albert in -30 weather with wonderful winds caressing my face. Looking up Albert Street, there was no sign of a parade, largely because it had already paraded, early, because it was so cold. Missed the parade again.
           So I am not going to miss this one. But is Palm Sunday a typical parade, or even an event we want to classify as a parade? Parades come in several flavours: celebrations, demonstrations of power and pride, and funerals. We celebrate the Riders winning the Grey Cup; the old Soviet Bloc military parades of tanks, missile launchers and infantry; the somber, then joyous New Orleans funeral marches as well as the frenzied processions in the Near East burying yet another victim of the eternal strife - and all the gradations in between.
           It was an odd parade beginning at the Mount of Olives. It didn’t just happen, for Jesus apparently had carefully arranged for most of the details, donkeys and all. Even the adoring cheering crowds must have been arranged, for Jesus had walked into town before without all this fuss. Palm Sunday was an event with a message, yet as soon as Jesus reached the bottom of the road, everyone dispersed and went back to business as usual.
           On the other hand, as Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version translates the mood in Jerusalem, “they were all shook up.” Jesus had arrived and there would be more parades, especially that last one out to the hill nicknamed Golgotha.