"When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was
stirred..." Or as the New Revised Standard Version has it, "When
he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil..."
TURMOIL. Great word. It has a feeling about it. Something
is bubbling up and about to boil over. There is tension. There
is danger. The Greek word is seio and means to rock to and fro
or to agitate, to quake or shake. And contrary to the parade and
party atmosphere that we often associate with Jesus' entry into
Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, this is the more descriptive. The Holy
City was a heated cauldron about to boil over. Governor Pilate
was preoccupied with the political intrigues of faraway Rome.
The puppet King Herod was viewed as a clown. The people were
restive, ready for someone to lead a revolution.
Into these seething streets rides Jesus of Nazareth. He is
mounted on a donkey -- the beast that the prophet Zechariah of
old predicted would bear the Messiah. The people are shouting
"Hosanna" -- "save us!" It is the traditional cry of the Jewish
people to their king. This resonates with Matthew to such an
extent that he even reads literally the couplet of Hebrew poetry
from the Old Testament, giving Jesus two animals to ride, rather
than the intended one.(1)
The palm branches and the shouts harked back a century-and-a-half to the triumph of the Maccabees and the overthrow of the
brutal Antiochus Epiphanes, the Saddam Hussein of his day. In
167 B.C. Antiochus had precipitated a full-scale revolt when,
having already forbidden the practice of Judaism on pain of
death, he set up, right smack in the middle of the Jewish temple,
an altar to Zeus and sacrificed a pig on it. Hard to imagine a
greater slap in the religious face to good Jews. Stinging from
this outrage, an old man of priestly stock named Mattathias
rounded up his five sons, all the weapons he could find, and a
guerrilla war was launched. Old Mattathias soon died, but his
son Judas, called Maccabeus (which means "hammer"), kept on and
within three years was able to cleanse and to rededicate the
desecrated temple.
"Mission Accomplished?" Well, it would be a full 20 years
more of fighting, after Judas and a successor brother, Jonathan,
had died in battle, that a third brother, Simon, took over, and
through his diplomacy achieved Judean independence. That would
begin a century of Jewish sovereignty.
Of course, there was great celebration. "On the
twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred and
seventy-first year, the Jews entered Jerusalem with praise and
palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed
instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had
been crushed and removed from Israel."(2) So says the account in I
Maccabees - a story as well known to the crowd in Jerusalem that
day as George Washington and the defeat of the British is known
to us.
Then came the Roman legions and freedom was gone again. It
was not that Judea was such a prize province. It was rather poor
in comparison to many others. It was well-located on the trade
routes both north-south and east-west. And it was more than a
bit unruly, because the people of Israel were not inclined to
suffer in silence. Not too many years before Jesus' arrival
there had been the Zealot revolt inspired by Judas of Galilee and
Zadok the Pharisee. Some 2,000 were taken captive in that
rebellion. Not content to simply win the war, the Romans wanted
to insure the peace. In order to send a message to any others
who might be tempted to rebel, Rome crucified them all. Imagine
Highway 62 from Warren to Jamestown, twenty miles of roadway, and
every 35 yards or so, a cross and a corpse. Every 35 yards for
twenty bloody miles.(3) Would that be enough to get the message to
rebellious Jews about how Rome handles political revolutionaries?
But people have short memories. In the past five years
there had been thirty-two political riots - that equates to more
than one every two months. Every sixty days for five years.(4)
All of which Rome had put down. Now do you see why Matthew would
say the city was in turmoil? Talk about an understatement.
Pandemonium. Chaos. We are told that three to five million
people were jammed into that town for the Passover observance.
"Hosanna to the Son of David!" "Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord!" "Hosanna in the highest!"
There is no way to tell why individuals were in attendance
at the parade that day. Some probably were drawn because of the
appearance of a "celebrity." After all, word had been spreading
about miraculous healings - the blind given sight, the lame made
to walk, even the dead raised. A Houdini of the Holy Land.
Maybe there would be something spectacular to see.
For many, though, I think it was political, and as we have
noted, this was a deeply political city. (Still is, come to
think of it.) For many in Jerusalem, the hope that a freedom
fighter like Judas Maccabeus would arise in their generation was
a potent one. If such a hero were to present himself, this is
exactly how he would begin his bid for power: with a triumphant
procession into the city, palm branches and clothing strewn in
his path.
Perhaps that explains the remarkable turn-around in the
sentiments of crowd from Palm Sunday to Good Friday. In times of
turmoil, people turn to violence.
My friend Carlos Wilton called my attention to a fascinating
article by Walter Wink, an author and Professor of Biblical
Interpretation at Auburn Seminary in New York. The article is
called "The Myth of Redemptive Violence,"(5) and it's contention is
that the world truly believes - wrongly - that violence saves,
that war brings peace, that might makes right.
Listen to what he says:
"This Myth of Redemptive Violence is the real myth of the
modern world. It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam, is
the dominant religion in our society today. When my children
were small, we let them log an unconscionable amount of
television, and I became fascinated with the mythic structure of
cartoons...I began to examine [their] structure, and found the
same pattern repeated endlessly: an indestructible hero is
doggedly opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible
villain. Nothing can kill the hero, though for the first three
quarters of the comic strip or TV show he (rarely she) suffers
grievously and appears hopelessly doomed, until miraculously, the
hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain, and restores order
until the next episode. Nothing finally destroys the villain or
prevents his or her reappearance, whether the villain is soundly
trounced, jailed, drowned, or shot into outer space.
"Thankfully, not all children's programmes feature explicit
violence. But the vast majority perpetuate the mythic pattern of
redemptive violence in all its brutality.
"Few cartoons have run longer or been more influential than
Popeye and Bluto. In a typical segment, Bluto abducts a
screaming and kicking Olive Oyl, Popeye's girlfriend. When
Popeye attempts to rescue her, the massive Bluto beats his
diminutive opponent to a pulp, while Olive Oyl helplessly wrings
her hands. At the last moment, as our hero oozes to the floor,
and Bluto is trying, in effect, to rape Olive Oyl, a can of
spinach pops from Popeye's pocket and spills into his mouth.
Transformed by this gracious infusion of power, he easily
demolishes the villain and rescues his beloved. The format never
varies. Neither party ever gains any insight or learns from
these encounters. They never sit down and discuss their
differences. Repeated defeats do not teach Bluto to honour Olive
Oyl's humanity, and repeated pummellings do not teach Popeye to
swallow his spinach before the fight."
Dr. Wink goes on to note that this violent underpinning to
society has its roots in religious traditions that are thousands
of years old, and there is no question that a brief trip through
world history can easily demonstrate the phenomenon.
Listen further. "The myth of redemptive violence is the
simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and
primitive depiction of evil the world has even known.
Furthermore, its orientation toward evil is one into which
virtually all modern children (boys especially) are socialised in
the process of maturation. Children select this mythic structure
because they have already been led, by culturally reinforced cues
and role models, to resonate with its simplistic view of reality.
Its presence everywhere is not the result of a conspiracy of
Babylonian priests secretly buying up the mass media with Iraqi
oil money, but a function of values endlessly reinforced...By
making violence pleasurable, fascinating, and entertaining,
people are deluded into compliance with a system that is cheating
them of their very lives..."
"In a period when attendance at Christian Sunday schools is
dwindling, the myth of redemptive violence has won children's
voluntary acquiescence to a regimen of religious indoctrination
more extensive and effective than any in the history of
religions. Estimates vary widely, but the average child is
reported to log roughly 36,000 hours of television by age 18,
viewing some 15,000 murders. What church or synagogue can even
remotely keep pace with the myth of redemptive violence in hours
spent teaching children or the quality of presentation? (Think
of the typical "children's sermon" - how bland by comparison!)"
With that kind of insight as a background, perhaps we should
EXPECT what happened to Jesus. If things were not working out as
the powers that be might want, STAMP IT OUT. And since people
then and now are socialized to find that acceptable (even if
ancient Israel never heard of Popeye and Bluto), chants of
Crucify, Crucify, Crucify are probably par for the course.
We live in a violent world, a world in turmoil. Everyday
the news is filled with the stories of murder and mayhem. This
weekend, we have been reminded that exactly two years ago we were
told that the only way to peace was war, and now thousands upon
thousands are dead, exponentially more have been grievously
wounded. The myth of redemptive violence writ large. And we are
told there is no way anyone can predict how long it will
continue.
And into that world this week again steps someone who would
offer another way. He rode into Jerusalem, not on a chariot with
arms upward and outward and his fingers spiking a "V" sign for
victory. Not waving and grinning at all those people in their
second story windows as they showered him with confetti. There
was no oratory to get the revolution moving. No. Here in this
turmoil, Jesus said nothing. Silence. Not on a war horse, but a
donkey. And by the end of the week he quietly gives himself into
the hands of vicious men. He allows himself to be bloodied and
beaten, then finally crucified to hang helplessly and die. As
Paul would write to the Philippian church, "he humbled himself
and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! The myth
of redemptive violence in a world of turmoil.
But Paul continued: "Therefore God exalted him to the
highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on
earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
So I leave you with one question then. Who won?
Amen!
1. Luke Bouman, http://www.predigten.uni-goettingen.de/archiv-7/050320-4-e.html
2. I Maccabees 13:51
3. Edward F. Marquardt, "Hey Sanna, Ho Sanna,"
http://www.sermonsfromseattle.com/palm_passion_heysanna.htm
4. ibid.
5. http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/exploratory/articles/wink99.doc
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