A holy week/Passover story: a tale of two parades

It really had become something of an annual ritual for me. On the first day of the week of Passover, I would get up dark and early, pack a lunch with a good amount of wine to sustain me for the day, and walk through the Temple precincts, out the Golden Gate, down into the Kidron Valley and start the climb up the paths on the side of the Mount of Olives.

And, as usual, the guards by the gate would give me a bit of a look over, but I always knew that it wasn't folks leaving Jerusalem that concerned them so much, as it was folks entering later in the day.

You know there was never really just one reason why I took this annual hike up the Mount of Olives at the beginning of Passover week. On the face of it, I just wanted to get out of the hustle, bustle and dust of the city for a clay. Smell the moist soil; enjoy a little green instead of the drab browns and grays of the city. Listen to the birds sing. And just be quiet for a while.

Maybe that is it. I wanted to be quiet. It was Passover week, and I wanted to prepare myself. As I climbed I would sing one of the great psalms of our people, "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!" And I believed Psalm 118 as I sang, even though most of the evidence all around me brought into question whether it was true. It's hard to believe in God's steadfast love when everywhere you look there is evidence of the power of imperial hatred and cruelty. Somehow I've always had a hard time putting together God's steadfast love with Roman rule over the holy land.

Of course this tension was especially heightened for me, and for all of my people during Passover. And that is why Passover was a dangerous time in Jerusalem. Here we celebrated a feast of liberating memories in the face of an oppressive reality. In the face of Roman imperial rule we remembered that first empire that had oppressed us, our earliest memories of imperial brutality, our first experience of slavery. And we remembered our God who confounded and destroyed our oppressors. We remembered our exodus, the blood on our doorposts, the Passover lamb.

So Passover was a dangerous time. These kinds of memories only served to deepen our disappointment and pain, and make more acute our longing for liberation. It's quite the thing to remember God setting you free from one house of bondage when you are living in another house of bondage. And the Romans knew that Passover was a time ripe for revolution, so the tensions in the city were high. Perhaps so high that I just needed to get away, climb the Mount of Olives and calm myself for the week ahead.

But as I climbed and sang my psalm, I remembered that there was always another good reason to be up here at the beginning of Passover week. From the top of the Mount of Olives I could not only see the holy city, I could look down the road to my left and see the pilgrims come up the Jericho road to the city and the Temple for Passover. And they would be singing the same psalm that I was singing, and I would know that in solidarity with my brothers and sisters, maybe I could believe that refrain about God's steadfast love a little longer.

This particular morning, however, was different. I was at the top of the mountain shortly after the sun had risen and the Jericho road was still deserted. But off in the distance to the west, the road that came in from the coast, I could see a cloud of dust off in the distance. And my heart began to beat with anxiety. I stopped singing my psalm and stared down that road trying to catch a glimpse of what was coming. As the procession came closer and closer it was becoming clear what it meant. But then I began to hear noises coming from the other side--sounds echoing up the valley from the Jericho road. Familiar sounds of singing. The pilgrims were coming to Jerusalem. I looked down to my left for a few minutes, straining to hear snippets of the same psalm, "O give thanks to the Lord. for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!"

Joy was beginning to overcome my anxiety, but then I turned and looked again down the road from the West, and there they were. A fresh regiment of Roman troops marching down the road to Jerusalem. A little show of force to remind the locals about who was in control around here. A strong arm to keep an oppressed people down and to confront their memories and hopes with the hard reality of Roman boots, swords, and ... if necessary ... crosses. The Romans knew what week it was, and they knew that Jerusalem posed a security threat to the empire during Passover, so they reinforced the security personnel in the city.

A king on a donkey?

But the noise from my left was getting louder. I looked back down the Jericho road and listened again for the song of the pilgrims. And I then first heard, and then saw something that could only mean trouble this week. What I heard was the crowd singing the end Psalm 118, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord," but it seemed like they were singing "blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." That in itself was a dangerous thing to sing in a land that already had a puppet king in the north, Herod, and a Roman appointed governor here in the south, Pilate. But what made this crowd recklessly seditious and a threat to us all, was that it appeared that they actually had someone who they were heralding as a king!

There in the middle of the crowd sat a man on a young colt, or perhaps a donkey (I couldn't tell from that distance), and the crowd was shouting to him as the arriving king! Laying down their cloaks and various kinds vegetation on the road in order to keep the dust out of this king's eyes, they kept singing, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!"

And all I could think was, thank God there is this mountain between those crazy pilgrims and the soldiers coming down the road from the other side of the city. Because if there was one thing that was clear to me that morning, it was that the pilgrims' enthusiasm notwithstanding, if this so-called king was going to bring peace in heaven, it sure wasn't too likely that any peace was going to come from this display of civil disobedience along the Jericho road. And my hunch was that this week would not see any heavenly peace in Jerusalem, rather, all hell was about to break loose!

I'm sorry, I know that I'm sounding cynical and jaded. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, if it is Passover, and if God is the God who sets his people free from the oppression of empire, then why not embrace this display of revolutionary piety down the Jericho road as a sign of God's coming liberation? Well, I have two reasons for my cynicism. First, I've been there and done that. You see, this isn't the first rabbi to show up out of the wilderness proclaiming the day of the Lord. These guys are a dime a dozen, and I've actually embraced a few of them myself, only to be disappointed time and again. No, that is not a path I am willing to go down again. I'd rather just try to make peace with the Romans and get along as best I can.

But there is another reason why I am so jaded. You see, I lived in Jerusalem during that week and I know what happened. In the first place, when I got back to the city it didn't take too much effort to find the band of messiah-welcoming pilgrims that I had seen. I wanted to get to them and try to talk some sense into them, tell them how dangerous this little display was. But I first saw one of my Pharisee friends and he told me that he and other Pharisees were out on the road that morning to welcome the pilgrims and they actually had tried to tell this rabbi to cool it and tell his supporters to quiet down. And you know what he said in reply? "I tell you, if these people were silent, the stones on the side of the road would shout out!" The stones on the side of the road? Right! This guy thinks that all of creation will somehow recognize that he is the returning king! Ludicrous.

The crazy ravings of a back woods rabbi, however, weren't my biggest worry. I was worried about the Romans and about this guy trying to pull off an insurrection, and that would spell disaster for everyone. Blood would be flowing in the streets.

Finally I caught up to the crowd following him. And where do you think he was going? You got it, straight to the Temple. Why? Was he going to rally the people for action? To get priestly sanction for his revolution? To collect the weapons that had been hidden there? To pray that God would bless this revolution and drive out the Romans as he had vanquished the Egyptians so long ago?

No. He did none of these things. Rather, he walked into the Temple, looked around at the daily business of selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging Roman currency for Temple money, and went berserk! He starts yelling and screaming about his Father's house becoming a den of insurrectionists and proceeds to kick over tables and drive people out! If the little bit of street theatre on the road from Jericho was provocative in the face of the empire, then this outrageous behaviour in the Temple could only be designed to incense and anger the leaders of the covenant people.

Well, it worked. I don't need to rehearse the stow, it is fairly well known. As the week progressed, this rabbi had the people spellbound by his teaching and managed to criticize just about everyone--Sadducees, Pharisees, the emperor, the scribes. And, worse of all, he demonstrated nothing but contempt for the Temple--even said that it would be destroyed. Well, the leaders didn't really need any more than that, did they? I mean, if anyone had any lingering hope that this might actually be the Messiah, then that hope was now dashed. How could the Messiah of the God of Israel, the God who dwells in the Temple, ever believe that the restoration of Israel could be established without that God and his Temple?

By Thursday, things had pretty much come to a head. I don't know all the details, but I hear that it happened at night, there was a betrayal from within the rabbi's own group of disciples, the civic and religious authorities somehow got into collusion and, well, then the crosses came out on Friday. That's how the Romans kept peace you know, by using crosses. The peace of the cross, they called it.

I heard that the high priest had said something about it being better that one man should die than a whole people should perish. He was a wise man that high priest. So the rabbi died and they put above his head on the cross a sign that said, "King of the Jews." The irony was a bit much, eh? A king hanging on a cross. As if the kingdom could ever come that way.

Well that was about a year ago now. There are some folks who believe that this rabbi rose from the dead, and now they are saying that the kingdom is actually here. Yea, and so' are the Romans.

I don't sing Psalm 118 anymore. And I think I'll take a pass on my annual hike up the Mount of Olives this year.

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