Palm Sunday : Luke 19:28-43
One of the latest sermons I gave before I went on leave and vacation was about Jesus just starting in his ministry. Having joined the crowds and making the conscious decision to be baptized - to be part of this community, to be part of an ongoing movement - He was then compelled by the Holy Spirit to endure the wilderness where Satan challenged him with invincibility (“jump off this building”), challenged him to turn stones into bread, and offered him authority and rulership over all the world. And Jesus rejected Satan’s offers and challenges. Jesus denied the false power of empire and worldly kingship in order to take up a substantial power of being alongside the poor and the sick and the broken. The kind of power that doesn’t trickle down like a leaky faucet that we all must desperately huddle around, but the kind of power that rises up with conviction, power, and togetherness. The kind of power that is not from outside of ourselves, but is within us because it’s the kind that God created in us and wrote onto our very beings when we came to exist and breathe. To serve God by serving the people.
From being baptized then called into the wilderness to the triumphal entry, this is one of Jesus’ final public acts. In his wilderness time, he turned down invincibility, he turned down bandaid solutions, and turned down elite political rulership to do the work that he does. He opted for revolution - to be among the masses. He opted for solidarity and compassion in which people are empowered, in which people are equipped, where people are allowed to become aware of and to grow their strengths, their passions, and to engage in healing as they themselves are being healed. Jesus denied the role of King, but enters into the city in a protest that both parallels and confronts the triumphal entry of the Roman emperors. By doing this, Jesus is not trying to emulate empire, but shows that their work, our collective work, is bigger and stronger, more loving and full of more wisdom than an empire can ever contain. It transcends notions of politics, it transcends and, therefore, seeks to undo systemic oppression. It is nothing less than the preparation for resurrection - for birth, for wholeness, for life anew - bringing us from stagnance, from death and sorrow, from hopelessness, from brokenness and broken bodies.
Triumphal Entry is Power that Transcends Empire
Jesus’ famous “Triumphal Entry” is like that. Riding into the city of Jerusalem on a colt, was parallel to Roman emperors and their soldiers riding into the city after having plundered, raped, exploited, and subjugated villages and towns in the name of “Pax Romana” or Rome’s definition of so-called “peace” through oppression. Call it colonization, call it Martial Law, call it Oplan Bayanihan, call it the Labor Export Policy, call it Daang Matuwid, call it Making America Great Again. It is a false sense of “peace” that is birthed in fear and insecurity.
Countering Pax Romana, Jesus understood that peace is not subjugation. The work of peace is the work of healing which is the work of presence. To be there for one another, to be able to see each other as our loving God sees us. To practice compassion or to “suffer with.” At the risk of his life. Unattached to what could happen to him, embracing being present and being in the present to embody unconditional love for all people and to do so with integrity and with principle. An unconditional love that isn’t attached to his own self-preservation or fear. An unconditional love that allows all people to own their power and agency in the face of ideologies and systems that seek to injure and exploit the bodies of many for the comfort and ease of the few. An unconditional love that transcends borders and reminds everyone of their worthiness.
Jesus rides in triumphant, not after oppressing people, but after performing healing acts and after speaking liberating yet challenging words and lessons. Jesus rides in to the same place where he was kicked out, confronted, harassed, and persecuted for his ministry. Because his ministry was countercultural, was reminding the masses - the poor, the sick, the peasants - that even their lives were sacred, that even they were created by God, loved by God, cared for by God, and even that God was on their side. This is the triumph and this is the inspiration for the people praising God and proclaiming Jesus as a kind of king, proclaiming a peace that is genuine, a peace that is whole, a peace that was steeped in the values of their ancestors - the peace that we Christians call Shalom. Not a peace absent of conflict, but a peace that is the result of justice and connectedness and liberative love.
Passover is Political, is Remembrance
To add another layer onto all of this, Jesus’ Triumphal Entry takes place, intentionally, during the holiday of Passover. A holiday that was meant to remind the Jewish community of their ancestors, to memorialize when the ancient Hebrews were divinely liberated from the oppression of the Egyptian empire. Not only would the Passover bring to mind the liberation from slavery, it would also bring to mind the entire Exodus, the entire movement of God’s people - from leaving Egypt, to the parting of the Sea, to the struggles in their relationships and the promises made between them and God, to wandering in the wilderness, to finally finding a sense of home. It is a holiday when we remember spiritual ancestors under Egyptian oppression, when the masses under the occupation of Rome remember God - on the side of the poor - rising up the people to defeat superpowers throughout history. And God, still creating with us, will continue to help us defeat superpowers that feed off of us as if we were mere commodities.
The people lay down their cloaks, lay their cloaks on the back of the colt, and lay their cloaks on the road to pave the way for Resurrection. We - as women, as migrants, as church people, people of faith and spirit, as workers, as allies, as queer, as trans - we all are being asked to do the same. To lay down our cloaks, to claim our places in the struggle to pave the way for Revolution, to pave the way for the systems to be overturned, like Jesus’ mother, GABRIELA woman, Mary proclaimed in her Magnificat. For the proud to be scattered and the rich to be sent away empty, that the poor and humble may be filled. We lay down our cloaks, even sacrifice some of our comforts, lose ourselves, that we may find ourselves as part of an empowered collective that will triumph and turn weeping to laughter and that will midwife God’s realm into our reality - not just in the afterlife - but in the here and now. God’s realm is unstoppable and when we make ourselves available and open to being part of this work, it is inevitable that we will be restored, renewed, and resurrected, that some of us will turn into that New Filipina whose place is in the struggle, that some of us will become conscious and own that responsibility in holding up that half of sky.
Jesus saw the city and wept. It’s okay to pause and it’s normal, human even, to be disturbed by oppression, to let it break your heart.. While the state of how things are can make us weep, we will not turn back, because when our hearts break, our spirits rise. Through the fire of our tears and the softness of our hearts and the rising of our fists, we will keep being invited into and engaging in this beautiful Movement, this struggle which is the only other thing better than liberation itself. May God’s realm be made real in each and everyone of us. And may we also enter triumphant over imperialism together, as we serve God by serving the people.
