When we are dissatisfied with things as they are, the status quo, the injustice, the oppression we see in the world, we begin to imagine what the world would be like if things were different--if there were no hunger or thirst and all tears were wiped away (Rev. 7:14). Creative redemptive imagination reaches toward God, and glimpses a new heaven and new earth are realized as potentially real...the kingdom. The new reality has nothing to do with the present order. In fact, the one who responds to this new imagination seeks to put something more beautiful in the place of what she sees. This is where the friction and fight begin.
Martin Luther King was not killed because he had a dream. Dreamers are easily dismissed. He was killed because he sought to introduce into the political arena what he saw with his heart and mind...I have a dream. The same was true of Gandhi. The same was true for Jesus, who dreamed what the prophets dreamed, he reimagined the world a new...and lived in the reality now. On earth, as in heaven...a cosmic collision of redemption in which the kingdom comes.
As Jesus made clear his solidarity with the poor and his vocation to engage them in a liberating process of the Kingdom, he came into confrontation with entrenched political and religious powers. As suspicion of him turned to resistance and then to hatred and fury, he began to prepare his disciples for what he would have to suffer. Peter immediately took Jesus aside to protest his continuing on what was surely a collision course....
Where is the church today...in this process of liberation, proclaiming, revealing and building the Kingdom of God...on earth as in heaven? If it is nothing more than the forgiveness of sin we haven't even scratched the surface of the redemptive imagination of the parabolic kingdom.
I wonder if we really fathom the profound mysterious reality of what was happening on Palm Sunday. It's as if the earth was starting to wobble, and any precieved stability was suddenly an illusion. The power of the kingdom confronting the principalities and powers of darkness...the king of a kingdom, meeting the ruler of an earthly empire. Where is our allegiance today in this meeting? Who have we allinged ourlives with?
From the east, amid whispers of revolt, Jesus rides in on a donkey, proclaiming the empire of God. He called it the “kingdom of God.” Hearts pounding with fear, his companions follow in disorderly formation. Hopeful peasants, spoiling for a fight with “the man,” cheer them on.
From the west, amid rising dust and the thunder of cavalry hoofs, soldiers march in, visible and audible even from a distance. This shock and awe battalion is led by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, who is rolling into town to assert the authority of the Roman Empire. He will answer any insurrection with an iron fist. Pilate, and by extension Caesar, is greeted by the upper crust of Jerusalem. If this were a Hollywood movie, ominous music would swell and dark clouds would rumble on the horizon.
Jesus’ “triumphant” entry into the city is a planned, orchestrated political and religious statement. It is dangerous street theatre. Code words are exchanged between disciples and clandestine followers of Jesus. A donkey is turned over to the disciples. The action begins.
Jesus rides into town on the donkey, a brazen nod to the prophet Zechariah and his well-known prediction that a king would come, humble and riding on a donkey, to liberate the city. But there is already a governor: Pilate. And there is already a “King of the Jews,” a title given to Herod. And there is Caesar, known far and wide as the “Son of God.” The palm parade is the counterpoint, parabolic reality,a non-violent mockery of the Roman military parade, and pious religiosity on the other side of the city.
We’ve kind of let the air out of that about-to-burst tension that is Palm Sunday. We’ve made it soft, safe and fun. Or put it on a string for the boys and girls like something that floats above a summer midway. Robbed it of insurrection, as though it were not something that was about to explode. We’ve done our best to domesticate this revolutionary gauntlet thrown down to the Roman Empire. Who knew the sanctuary parade was, in fact, practice for non-violent civil disobedience?
Does the church understand this tension in which it should be living...confronting the powers of the day, there role in the injustice...revealing the flip-side...the kingdom Jesus imagined ?
Maybe our church has done too much mixing of the empire of God with the empire of Rome since then. Maybe it is less clear to us than it was to our earliest ancestors in the Way which parade we are marching in. Christendom has cut a lot of deals with “Rome” since that first Palm Sunday. We’ve accommodated the Caesars and compromised with the Herods of the world.
The church needs to renew its concsiouness to redemptive imagination of Jesus and his kingdom. We can continue to forgive sins until the final curtain falls on the stage humanity lives out life...and there will have been no new creation, no liberation...having done nothing on our part to bring heaven to earth. Perhaps, in the end, our greatest sin will have been to do nothing.
