Mark 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11
And so it begins. We’ve been through Lent, our season of prayer, our season of preparation for this very time – this Holy Week we are now entering, the most sacred time of the Christian year, this week that contains the central teaching, the central Mystery of the Christian faith.
And we begin at the heights, as does Jesus. Both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, because Jesus is at the height of his popularity as a teacher and leader. After spending most of his ministry in the hinterlands — outside the Beltway as we might say in this country — he’s about to enter the seat of power: Jerusalem. He’s making plans for his triumphal entry into this “capital city,” where many of his followers expect him to foment revolution, take over, take charge.
And he’s making these plans, literally, in the heights — in the town of Bethany, which is located on the eastern flank of the Mount of Olives. Standing at this spot, you overlook the entire city of Jerusalem. It’s one of those places we have plenty of here in the Bay Area. The East Bay Hills along Skyline Drive, the top of Mt. Tamalpais, Twin Peaks — a place you go to get a sense of the big picture, to look out over your world and imagine you can see it whole. One of those places where you can see clearly and lay good plans.
And so, Jesus does plan. Quite a bit. Of the 11 verses Mark devotes to the story of the procession into Jerusalem, more than half of them are about Jesus’ preparations for the event. There’s plenty of political and spiritual symbolism packed into his plans. First, he’s starting from the Mt. of Olives, the location from which the Jewish people expected the final battle for Jerusalem’s liberation to begin.
Then he sends for his provisions, which are not what any other kingly leader would call for. Instead of asking for a horse — the animal associated with warrior kings — he gets a colt, not even a full-grown donkey! Can you imagine a grown man riding this? His feet probably are dragging on the ground. I think people right away would get that he’s mocking the grand processions of the Roman military as they march into Jerusalem, strutting their stuff — their massive war horses, their leather armor, their gleaming helmets. Here’s Jesus, in his procession, riding a little donkey, with his feet dragging on the ground, unarmed. It’s a grand bit of street theater.
And the crowds are loving it. They treat him just as they would a triumphant national hero. They spread their branches and cloaks before him as a symbol of honor. They shout “Hosanna,” which means “God saves.” “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David.”
It doesn’t get any higher than this. This is Barack Obama at the Democratic convention. The crowds are going wild. They’re hanging on his every word, his every movement. He can’t say a sentence that doesn’t get applause. What a high! Most public figures, most leaders, do everything they can to stay there. To keep their approval ratings as high as possible.
But Jesus doesn’t. Instead, he chooses to descend. Literally, he descends from the heights of the Mt. of Olives into the city of Jerusalem. And he also, symbolically, descends — from the relatively safe hinterlands into the place of power, into Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the place where the authorities levy taxes and create unjust laws that make the poor even poorer, even more hungry and hopeless. And Jerusalem is the place where this inhumanity, this death can be confronted. But this is what also makes it a dangerous place — because here, the powerful people threatened by Jesus’ teaching, can get to him.
I have a picture, which was on my wall the entire time I was growing up. It shows Jesus sitting on the Mt. of Olives, looking over the city of Jerusalem. He’s sitting in a remote spot, surrounded only by trees and rocks and sky, and he’s looking down, down into the valley where Jerusalem lies. Down into the streets crowded with Roman soldiers with hair-trigger nerves and Jewish peasants with revolutionary dreams, down into the palaces of cruel leaders quick to quell any sign of unrest, down into the cross-marked landscape where the Romans regularly execute troublemakers.
I imagine that Jesus is sitting there, wondering if he should do this. Wondering if he should descend. It would be so easy to choose to stay in Bethany, to stay in that simple little village. It would be so easy to choose to return to the Sea of Galilee, 90 miles away from Jerusalem, where he did most of his healing and teaching. He could go back there, be a beloved regional teacher and have a good, long life. But he chooses to descend.
Maybe it was a choice he made even before this. In what is thought to be one of the oldest Christian hymns ever written down, Philippians 2:5-11 says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Jesus descends. He becomes one of us, to experience our bondage, to experience our pain.
We got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs waving our palm branches, we should have been descending them if we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. But most of us avoid this descent, if we can. The crowds singing his praises don’t get this. In fact, some of the same people cheering him during this procession will turn on him later when it becomes clear that he is not going to be the conquering leader. Not even his disciples get it. They’re always trying to talk him out of this descent, no, you won’t need to suffer. You’re our leader! You’re going to save us — that’s why we’re shouting hosanna, right? You’re going to save us, to conquer the oppressor. Right?
No one really gets that the core choice of Jesus’ existence will be to descend, for the sake of love, into the mindless cruelty of the world. There, he will expose himself to the full force of the powers of death. For the sake of his befuddled disciples, for the sake of the fair-weather crowds, for the sake of the diseased, of outcasts, of women, of children, he descends. He descends to confront — with the full force of love — all that is unlovely and unloving.
Of course, we who choose to follow Jesus also must descend. It’s our existential choice, too. The Mennonite poet Julia Kasdorf had an uncle who, following Jesus, also chose to descend into the mindless cruelty of the world and meet it unarmed, with only his love:
UncleYes, we got it wrong this morning. We shouldn’t have been ascending the stairs. If we really want to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, we too need to descend. I don’t know what that means for you, but I have some idea of what it means for me. As much as I would like to stay in the heights, be above it all, to not look into the mindless cruelty of the world, I know that that is where I need to go if I choose to follow Jesus. It means I can’t avoid suffering — my own or yours or the earth’s. I’m not going to be called to Vietnam during a war like Julia’s uncle, but I am called to enter those places of pain when I come across them and be the presence of love as best as I can.
At nine I knew what Jesus would do
if he got C.O. just for being
born Mennonite. He’d go anyway, like you.
In the name of peace, he’d race
an ambulance through the screaming streets
of Saigon. He’d grow a moustache to show
he wasn’t a soldier – a speck
on the camera lens, Grandpa insisted.
He’d take a generator to a village
in the hills where golden children
would run behind him yelling, “Mother
F*****.”
He’d thrust brilliant green blades
of rice into the fields where men’s legs
and the torsos of water buffaloes exploded
when plows struck bombs in the mud.
When the planes returned, he’d
load whomever he could into the only car,
drive to a refugee camp, and
there give up at last, as you gave up bearing that war
on your tall, blond body.
Lost across the continents for months,
you returned to us,
the uncle of someone else,
gaunt as a corpse, pale and haunted.
and when you could barely finish
a child’s portion at Howard Johnson’s,
that was the only miracle I could grasp.
(From Sleeping Preacher)
And it means I can’t avoid this coming week, as much as I want to sometimes. You know, I really don’t like Holy Week. I hate the passion story. Because I can’t hear it, and not think of all the people who have been and are being tortured, who have been and are being betrayed by those they love, who have been and are dying alone and forsaken. But we can’t avoid this suffering if we want to walk through Holy Week.
This week that is coming is holy but not because of suffering, even the suffering of Jesus. Rather, it is holy because of the inexplicable and immeasurable love that prompted that suffering. So, as we make our descent, onto the streets of this city, back to our homes, our workplaces; as we make our descent into the suffering of this time and this place; as we descend with Jesus into this Holy Week, may we carry with us that love — that central teaching, that central Mystery of our faith. Amen.