I grew up with Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday “Hosannas” were followed a week later by Easter morning “Alleluias,” with nothing in between. If my childhood Presbyterian churches held Holy Week services, I didn’t know about them. Sometime after I quit going to church in college, Presbyterians switched to Palm/Passion Sunday. The “passion” comes from “the Passion of Christ,” the phrase used to describe Jesus’ arrest, trial, conviction, and execution. One theory I’ve heard is that churches started telling the Passion story on Palm Sunday because so few people show up to hear it on Good Friday.

So, Palm or Passion? The lectionary for this coming Sunday offers two sets of texts. The Palm Sunday gospel lesson, Mark 11:1-11, describes the spontaneous parade that erupted when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. This was powerful street theater. A donkey sounds like a humble steed but it’s meant to echo Hebrew Scripture passages describing returning kings: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” [1 Kings 1:32-40; 2 Kings 9:13; Zechariah 9:9].

The crowds greeted Jesus as the Messiah; “hosanna” means “save now.” These crowds expect Jesus to overthrow the Romans, and the Romans take note. This was just before the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, and Passover was a tricky problem for the Romans. The Passover festival is all about deliverance from slavery and freedom from oppression. Passover wasn’t good for the Empire.

These events help explain why Jesus was arrested and crucified. Jesus didn’t merely offend the religious authorities of the day. He proclaimed another kingdom – the kingdom not of Caesar but of God – and called people to give their allegiance to God’s kingdom first. He was, in other words, a real threat.

The people are half right. He did come as God’s Messiah, but they misunderstood what that meant. It didn’t mean “regime change” by violence, but rather the love of God poured out upon the world in a way that dissolved all the things we use to differentiate ourselves. But that means the religious and political authorities are also half right. Jesus was a threat to the way they led and lived. For that matter, he still is. He threatens our obsession with defining ourselves over and against others. He threatens the way in which we seek to secure our future by hoarding wealth and power. He threatens our habit of drawing lines and making rules about who is acceptable and who is not. He threatens all these things and more. But the authorities are wrong in thinking that they can eliminate this threat by violence. The words of Dr. King come to mind: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. … Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

The Passion gospel lesson is Mark 14:1-15:47, and it includes the anointing of Jesus with costly ointment by an unnamed woman, the last supper, the betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the arrest in Gethsemane, Peter’s denial, the trial before Pilate, and Jesus’ conviction, torture, crucifixion, and death. We know the story. Why hear it again, either on Palm/Passion Sunday or during Holy Week?

I know people who grew up in traditions in which they were taught that we should listen to the Passion story because we, ourselves, are somehow guilty of Jesus’ crucifixion, and once a year we should be reminded and feel horrible about that. I do not fall into that camp. I don’t buy that those who shouted “Hosanna” are necessarily the same people who shouted, “Crucify him!” And I don’t believe listening to the gory details of Jesus’ death every year somehow makes us better disciples. Sensationalizing the brutality of crucifixion feels as though it has more to do with morbid curiosity than with the point of the story.

The point of the story is why I believe, nevertheless, that there is a good reason to hear the whole Passion narrative, whether on Palm/Passion Sunday or during Holy Week: As Jesus’ followers, we need to remember the consequences of challenging the powers that be. And we need to remember the consequences to all of us, to the whole world, of continuing to live by the politics of Rome. Whether we are Republicans or Democrats; American, Russian, or Ukrainian; Israeli, Palestinian, or Haitian; whether we are corporations or governments, parents or siblings, husbands or wives, whenever we seek to influence others through coercion and violence, we are following the politics of Rome. It is so easy to fall into thinking that violence is normal, that coercion is justified, that it’s just the way the world is. And it’s especially easy to turn our backs on drones, secret prisons, terrorism, counterterrorism, occupations, politically caused famine, mass incarceration, and all the other heartbreaking costs of the politics of Rome when we are relatively insulated from them by one form of privilege or another.

Brian D. McLaren imagines an alternative Palm Sunday in which a heavily armed Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a white war horse. “’Hosanna!” the people shout. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord to execute vengeance on our enemies! … Crush the Romans! Kill the collaborators!’” Jesus calls the people to fight to the death to avenge the blood of their ancestors. He shouts, “’Those who live by restraint will die by restraint. Now is the time. Now is the day of annihilation for our enemies.’ And so, the battle for Jerusalem begins.”

Then McLaren concludes, “No. That is not what happened. And the differences are at the heart of the story of Holy Week.”

So, Palm, or Passion? Either: if the Palm Sunday texts are read in a way that celebrates all that makes for peace; if the Passion narrative is read in a way that deeply laments the politics of coercion and violence; if, in either case, we are invited to remember that the end is always Easter, the peaceful power of death-defying love.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love (Harper and Row, 1963; reprinted as a gift edition by Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).
Brian D. McLaren, http://brianmclaren.net/palm-sunday-2011-end-of-violence/
Brian D. McLaren, http://brianmclaren.net/palm-sunday/