Palm Sunday, 2007
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
I can remember, at the age of about seven, my mother taking my brother and me to visit Auntie Bertha in the southern suburbs of London. Actually Bertha was my mother's cousin - but that sort of detail was meaningless to us - she was just "Auntie Bertha".
Auntie Bertha Schreiner. Her mother was my grandmother's sister and her father was from southern Germany.
I recall, on one of those visits going with her for a walk. We kept passing vacant lots with piles of bricks in them between rows of Victorian town houses. Not knowing what had caused them I asked her. For a moment she was silent, and then she said, as if to herself, "bombs". Those lots spoke of violence and death.
She was quiet, I'm sure, because she was remembering - her relatives (and mine) could have dropped them. Not intentionally, of course - the target was central London, but the Luftwaffe often dropped its bombs short of the target because of heavy flak.
That evening I asked if we could watch one of our favorite programs: "All our yesterdays". It was a program retelling - using newsreel footage - what had happened 25 years before. "No matter", I thought, "it's repeated later in the week, I'll watch it at home." And I did. 25 years back from that week - June 1965 - was June 1940.
The grainy pictures showed Nazi soldiers of the Third Empire (that's what "Reich" means) in parade formation - thousands and thousands of them - marching into Paris under the sullen eyes of the French population.
For those who watched there was a clear message about power and threat. "Don't mess with us." The on-lookers knew what could happen - they'd seen the coverage of what the Nazis did to Warsaw and its innocent civilians.
I also vividly recall a second "All our yesterdays" program three years later: April of 1968, about April 1943. This program contained footage of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising taken by Nazi film crews, showing the brutal murder of human beings who had fought to prevent being deported to the death camps. One particular image that I can still see was of a German soldier lining up 6 men in a row, one behind the other, facing a wall, and shooting them all with one bullet.
This is how Empires work. The use of fear and intimation - backed up by excessively brutal force, has only one intent: to cow populations into subservience. It is the exercise of naked power to achieve a political goal.
Once you have displayed that force on a massive scale populations know what can happen and will - the Empires believe - be less like to rebel. It usually works.
Welcome to the Roman Empire of the 1st Century. Most of us will have heard of Masada, where Jewish revolutionaries held out against the might of Empire for three years, until 73 A.D. All of the Jews in that palace-fortress killed themselves rather than be taken by the Romans, who would have crucified all of them anyway.
What we don't hear much about is what the Romans generally did to suppress unrest and insurrection. They did what the Germans did in Warsaw: if a city resisted them they killed everyone inside it and leveled the city. Ironically that's what gave Jesus employment from the time he joined his father as a contractor until he began his public ministry. Only four miles from Nazareth is the modern town of Zippori. It's ancient name was Sepphoris and it was a center of regional administration - had been a great city for centuries. When Herod the Great died in 4. B.C. the inhabitants revolted against the Romans.
What do you suppose the Romans did?
They were lenient. In Jerusalem the Romans crucified 2,000 people. At Sepphoris they only destroyed the city and crucified a few of its inhabitants - as a warning. The rest were sold into slavery. "Generous", huh?! Herod Antipas - one of Herod the Great's sons - decided to rebuild the city, which took more than Jesus' lifetime.
Which brings us to Palm Sunday in the City of "the Heritage of Peace" - that's what the name "Jerusalem" meant in Hebrew. For the Passover festival it's population swelled from about 25,000 to as many as 150,000. That many people in one confined space, celebrating a religion that proclaimed freedom from the yoke of a different Empire's oppression - the Egyptian one - meant that at Passover and at the other great festivals, Pentecost, and Tabernacles - Jerusalem was a tinderbox. All it needed was a match.
And so, three times a year, the Romans did what the Germans did in entering Paris - they put on a display of military might. From the Roman provincial capital of Caesarea Maritima on the Coast the Roman Governor and a Cohort - about 500 soldiers - of the legion stationed there marched up to Jerusalem in full battle gear with Imperial cavalry guarding their flanks. They came to reinforce the permanent garrison stationed in the Antonia Fortress that looked down on the Temple mount. They would have entered on the western side of Jerusalem, by Herod's palace with much pomp and circumstance and grim determination, exuding domination, power, and control
To emphasize the point about power the Roman Governor then booted the King out of his palace and took it over for the duration of the festival.
This is the way that Empires act - raw power used against civilians to intimidate so as to control. Anyone give you some trouble? Up on a cross with them! Every Roman Legion had a Torture detachment. Roman soldiers marching into the city of "The Heritage of Peace" in full battle armor sent exactly that message: "Don't mess with us!"
And this display of power sent another message: this was also a display of Roman Imperial theology. The Emperor wasn't just the ruler of Rome and its empire, he was "the Son of God", the "Lord", the "Savior of the people". The Empire wasn't just a rival social order based on extreme violence, it was a rival theology.
On this particular day, however, something happened to challenge that theology. On this day when Eternal War was brought again to the City of "the Heritage of Peace" there was another parade, one echoing an ancient statement of the second King of Israel. Solomon - his name means "Peaceful". On his first visit to a town after becoming king he rode on a donkey into it. Arriving on a warhorse would have meant, of course, "I come in Power". The donkey meant - as it clearly did to Jesus - "I come in peace." That's echoed by St. Mark's clear reference to a passage from the Prophet Zechariah: "Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Here's the rest of Zechariah's quote: "He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations." (Zech 9: 9-10)
War and Peace enter the city of the "heritage of peace" from different sides. Jesus' procession was timed to mirror Pilate's - it was no accident. The Palm Procession of Jesus was a statement about who really rules. It was intended to counter the implied violence of Pilate and his soldiers with the eternal message of God to all of creation: peace.
And the words that day - they, too, had an edge to them: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the.........LORD"! But wait! Isn't Caesar "Lord"?! "No!" Jesus' followers were saying, "Caesar isn't Lord"!
Who really rules? The Empires of this world and their leaders? Or God?
That's the question posed for us today. That's the question for you to think about this week.
Amen.
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