Well, most parades do this. To be completely honest, there are other kinds of parades, too. These are the parades that are designed to flex the muscles of power, to show who is in charge and who is holding the sword or the gun. The images that pop into my mind of these kind of parades are the parades of Nazi Germany or of Soviet Russia that featured a solitary leader at a balcony with thousands of troops marching past, and tank battalions, or missile launchers. These are a violent sort of parade, designed to keep folks in line and to show anyone who is paying attention that this country or that leader has a great deal of power at his disposal and isn’t afraid to use it.
Today is Palm Sunday, the Sunday where we remember the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem in a kind of parade – we usually call it a procession, which means about the same thing. This is a day where we wave palm branches and sing or shout “Hosanna!” which is Hebrew for “Save us, we pray!” According to Luke, this parade was not made up of just anybody, just bystanders in town for the Passover festival – no, the way Luke tells it, it is the disciples of Jesus, the crowd of his followers, those who have seen and witnessed the great deeds of power performed by Jesus that accompany his arrival in the Holy City with shouts of praise and acclimation. They say “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” This is a parade made up of Jesus, riding on a donkey, and those who have seen the power of God in his words and deeds telling anyone who would listen of the goodness and glory of God.
If you are paying close attention, though, you begin to see that this parade of disciples, this parade of the Christ, is not the only parade in town that day in Jerusalem. Just as Jesus arrived with his disciples for the celebration of the Passover festival, so did just about every other observant Jew from the region, filling the city with thousands of people from all over the world. Now Passover is the celebration of God liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt – you remember the story, don’t you – Moses and Aaron, with God’s guiding, bring down 10 plagues on Pharaoh, the last being the most devastating, the death of every first born male in Egypt. But because the Israelites had been warned by God to place the blood of a lamb over their doors, the angel of death passed over them, thus the name, “Pass-over.” Moses then led the people out of slavery into freedom. So just imagine – thousands of people are in one place to celebrate the victory of God over an oppressive king, and the liberation of God’s people from slavery. It had gotten so that this was the season of the year not just for ritual meals and prayers, but also for riots and revolt against the Romans, who were by all accounts pretty nasty overlords. Jerusalem at the Passover festival was a powder keg of religious and political energy, and every year at this time, Pontius Pilate would process from his comfortable seaside palace in the Roman city of Caesarea Maritima up to Jerusalem with a full contingent of Roman soldiers, with all of the symbols of imperial power, including trumpeters, flags, standards, and banners, and Pilate always rode into Jerusalem on a huge, powerful warhorse. Riding up from the west, up from the coast, Pilate and the Romans had come to Jerusalem to assert their power and control, to let anyone watching know that the Romans were in charge and they were going to stay that way, Passover or no Passover.
But riding up from the east, cresting over the Mount of Olives like the rising sun, is Jesus, riding on a donkey, arriving the way the prophet Zechariah said the Messiah would: “Lo, your king comes to you, triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey.” Note that the disciples are shouting: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” – they are proclaiming that this Jesus, humbly riding on a borrowed donkey, is a king, and not just another brutal king, but a king who comes with divine authority and power, a king who comes in the name of the Lord. This parade of palms and shouts of “hosanna!” is not just another spectacle, but a challenge to the power and might of the Romans, of Herod, of all principalities of the world as we know it. When Jesus rides into Jerusalem, he is riding in not just as a teacher or a prophet, but as King, but a different kind of king that any other – the King of Glory, the King of the Kingdom of God. This king does not come with armies or with warhorses, or with signs of power and strength – no he comes with humility, surrounded by regular, ordinary folks, healed lepers and forgiven sinners, heralded by children, and those in his parade are not proclaiming violence, but instead peace. “Peace in heaven,” they cry, echoing the songs of the angels over Bethlehem all those years before, “Peace on earth.” “Peace” they cry, “peace to all of God’s children, God has come to reign. Peace in heaven, because God’s chosen is on the throne.”
Despite all of the cries of peace, despite the evidence that here, after centuries of waiting, is the Promised One, the Messiah, the King, riding to Jerusalem, all of this does not bring immediate acceptance. Instead, some Pharisees approach Jesus as he enters the city and plead with him to silence his disciples: “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” They are afraid, afraid of a clash between the two processions, afraid that the arrival of the King of Heaven will provoke the wrath of the Romans, bringing down death and destruction not just on the people, but on the Temple as well. They desire peace as well, not peace from God, but peace from the status quo, peace from avoiding conflict, even the conflict that comes when good challenges evil. These Pharisees, and so many others after them, are content with the way things are, and are afraid when God’s peace comes to challenge their comfortable lives.
But Jesus will not order his disciples to be quiet. He replies: “I tell you, if they were to be silent, even these stones would shout out.” There is so much more at stake here than making too much noise, so much more happening than a man riding a donkey, and Jesus declares that all creation, even the stones would cry out in celebration of the arrival of God’s Messiah if the disciples did not. It has always been the disciple’s joy and delight to proclaim the Kingdom of God and the power of Christ to reign. Because for those who follow Christ, for those in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, for those today, we recognize a different kind of king. Our king is not like other kings, brutal and petty, violent and oppressive – our king is a Lord of love, a king of mercy, a prince of peace. We have seen him at work, and know of his goodness and grace, and can’t keep quiet about all the things he has done! The old gospel song “Ain’t no rock” captures this attitude perfectly: “Ain’t no rock gonna cry in my place, as long as I’m alive I’ll glorify His holy name.”
We are the people who have experienced Life and Love in Jesus Christ and who join the long and noisy parade of people singing praises to our King as we go through life. But this doesn’t mean that our path goes unchallenged, that our voices don’t “disturb the peace” of the world. Quite the opposite - if we are being faithful, our parade does present something of a problem for the powers of the world, because when Christ is our king, we live life differently, under the rules of a different kingdom. Christians since the very beginning have lived in a different way, a way in which Christ is Lord, and this has both brought them praise and persecution.
In the Epistle to Diognetus (written around 130 AD), the writer tells how Christians of that day occupied a strange in-between place in their society:
"For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity... As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners… They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring… They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all people, and are persecuted by all… When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life…"
When we join into this Christ parade, when we raise our voices wherever we are to bless the name of Jesus and declare God’s peace to the world, we will also face resistance and persecution. But our strength and grace and patience comes from God, and we have chosen to follow God and to live a new way, even if we are challenged. We remember the story of what happened to Jesus in the last week of his life, of how quickly the joyful shouts of “Hosanna” turned into murderous cries of “Crucify him!” Jesus, at the head of this Kingdom parade, rides on despite the challenges, and we follow him to difficult, trying places, but also beyond them, to mercy, to love, to life everlasting.
One of the best small town parades I can remember was in the town of Oxford, GA. I went to school there, but so did my parents, and one year we went over to Oxford for a Fourth of July parade they were having. It was the kind of parade that had Shriners on go-karts, homemade floats, clowns on the back of trucks, that sort of thing. And then as the parade finished, people stopped just watching the parade, and began to join in it, walking behind the floats and trucks and go-karts, becoming a part of the parade themselves. The Kingdom parade led by Jesus Christ is this kind of parade – an inviting parade, that reaches out to draw in all of those who are paying attention, welcoming all who will come to join into the celebration of the goodness of God and the power of Christ. This parade was not stopped by those Pharisees long ago, and will not be stopped by even the horror of the cross, Christ keeps going, and so do we. This parade is still moving, still processing out into the world, proclaiming Christ as Lord and King of Heaven. The parade is drawing close, my brothers and sisters, can you hear the shouts of “Hosanna!” Listen, it is inviting you, me, all of us: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace, Peace, Peace, in heaven, peace on earth.” You are invited, my friends, to join into this holy praise parade, invited to raise your voice in praise of Christ not matter what, because Christ loved us no matter what. Won’t you join in the parade?
