It’s not hard to imagine why there might have been a parade when Jesus entered Jerusalem . . .

The country was occupied by a foreign country, whose dominant religion was an offense to the Jewish people.           . . .  they were living with a corrupt and unjust economic system. . .  a huge gap between the rich and the poor and the saddest thing of all --  the reality that this oppressed people had turned on itself, and away from that which gave them their real identity --the teachings of their God through scripture.

            Those were dark days.

There was little to give the people  hope. Little to give joy. Roman soldiers swaggered through the streets of Jerusalem, a city holy to the Jewish people; the soldiers were “keeping the peace” (an interesting term for intimidation.)   ‘Pax Romana’ was not about justice and it was not about contentment and there was no peace within the hearts of most of the Jewish people.  Pax Romana was about ‘peace at any price,’ and not upsetting the apple cart and not disturbing the status quo and those with little or nothing paid the greatest price.  Isn’t that the way it usually is?

            Despair settles in like a dark cloud when problems get so big and so complex and seem so overwhelming. The dark cloud, of despair then blocks out light, energy, enthusiasm, imagination, and creativity. .  life.

            The people had lost all hope in their own ability to change things, to make things better.

             Not that they didn’t want things to be different.

            No, the longing for things to be more just; the longing for real peace is also a part of the despair. If we long for something, and at the same time we believe there is no hope that we can have that for which we long, we end up drained and defeated – we feel stuck. Out of the loop. No choices.  We feel trapped.

            We forget that even imagining life can be different is a kind of power in itself. A beginning of something. A promise of promise.

            There is a snowball effect in despair. If we forget the power of imagination, before the despair there may be anger. Anger is not a bad thing. Anger is actually a reasonable response to injustice.

             Jesus was angry when he turned over the tables in the Temple courtyard. There is energy in anger. An energy that can be tapped, used to move us forward. Get us out of a place of feeling stuck or trapped.

            Anger turned to blame, however, can be paralyzing in  a different way. Anger turned inward – turned into blaming oneself,  leads to depression. Anger turned to blaming others, deciding everything is someone else’s responsibility  leads to a victim mentality. It’s not far from feeling powerlessness to feeling like a victim.

            Here is the recipe for a victim: Powerless. Defeated. Hopeless. And this is important: and’ it is all someone else’s fault.’ Someone else’s responsibility. Someone did this to us. There it is: victim.

            Victims are always looking for a savior. A rescuer. Because just as the situation they are in is not seen as their responsibility, getting  out of it is not seen as their responsibility. Someone should do something.  Someone who will do for them what they believe they cannot do for themselves.

            At some level that was what this parade was about. This parade, such as it was.

            ”Many people spread their cloaks on the road,” Matthew tells us.

How many we do not really know.

How many had lost all hope? I doubt the wealthy and powerful were waving palms in hope of a savior. Money and power are perceived to be savior enough in most cases. An idolatry that continues even in our day.

We know the Roman soldiers and politicians weren’t longing for things to be different, unless it was on a personal level. They may have just wanted to get home to family and more familiar surroundings.  But I doubt they were looking for a savior, a leader . . . a redeemer.

            We know those committed to the organized religion of the day weren’t shouting Hosanna as Jesus rode by. They were too busy protecting the organization, to realize that it was all crumbling around them.

            So the “many” of this parade probably wasn’t a huge throng. By ‘many’ Matthew may want us to know only that the crowd was large enough to get the attention of those in authority. Those who would be troubled by this rabble-rousing spectacle and be determined to put an end to it. People were likely to get the idea that not everything was rosy. And who knew where that might lead.

            So, imagine the ‘many’ gathered along the route of the parade. . as the Jewish people came from the surrounding area to celebrate Pesach in Jerusalem, and then here comes Jesus . . . riding on a donkey!

            We find humor in this story . . . because it doesn’t seem like much of parade to us. But that is what happens when we are not aware of the power of symbols.

            In that day and time, the act of spreading cloaks on the road and the waving of  leafy branches was something the people did to celebrate political leaders. Military heroes. People with power and prestige. 

            Not rabbis or itinerate preachers like Jesus.

            There were some expectations by the people at this point.

 This was going to be their savior. This was the one that would overthrow the Romans and free them from political oppression, and redeem the corrupt financial system. And he would do it by force. By military might.     

            Imagine then, word that the liberator was coming. That the long-awaited messiah was on his way.

            We can get into victim mentality pretty easily. I catch myself there in terms of feeling pretty overwhelmed by so many social problems in our day and time. I am always hoping for a savior. Some leaders can easily impress me, and I am always happy to grant them plenty of power, respect and I long to be impressed by them. So I understand this parade.

            Expectations were high that day. Here he comes!!

Imagine, just imagine, that you and I were looking for someone to fix all that ailed us. Someone that would lift the burdens from our shoulders, someone that had vision, and a plan, and someone in whom we could hope.

            Someone who would conquer our enemies, and destroy all those things that troubled us.

            Now, I want you to imagine that we saw what they saw that day.

            Listen to the cheers of the crowd. The liberator comes. Here comes the savior with clout who could make us great. But, hold on--he comes looking like a fool perched on a donkey.

He doesn’t ride in on a white horse ready to annihilate our enemies.

He doesn’t appear in a modest but solid and well-built American convertible, wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit with a prep school education and an impressive list of accomplishments under his belt, shaking hands and smiling in a way we know will garner votes and win others to our point of view.

He is not waving from the turret of a tank in the midst of a ticker tape parade.

No, he comes weaponless on a farm animal. His feet almost touch the ground. He looks more pathetic and comical than powerful and impressive.

He does not meet our expectations.

Expectations.

You know what they say in twelve-step groups about expectations, don’t you? They call them ‘premeditated disappointments.’

At what point did that disappointment set in? At what point did ‘the many’ decide that this fellow Jesus wasn’t what they wanted, wasn’t what they needed, wasn’t what they expected him to be, and was different than the great mighty liberator they had projected onto him.

            At what point did they actually turn on him.

And they did, you know.

That’s what happens with expectations, with projections, with

unrealistic hopes. When we put people up on pedestals –it only means that have that much further to fall.

We aren’t happy when people don’t live up to our expectations. We blame them. We aren’t even aware that we are trying to create people in our own image. We aren’t even aware that we can’t really see who they really are because our projections are in the way, and we may be missing some amazing things, like who they really are.

            The people felt powerless, and the last thing they wanted to see was someone as powerless as they were.

            That happens, too, of course. We see ourselves in others and we don’t like what we see. Here was Jesus, looking for all the world as powerless and foolish as they may have felt. Humble. No, humiliated. Vulnerable and human and real. Who needs that??

            It could have been different, of course. Jesus could have been influenced by their projections. Jesus could have been a victim of his own ego. It had to be tempting – Jesus was tempted to assume the authority the people would grant him, scripture tell us that. Jesus must have told someone that he had been tempted to try to be other than who he was. Jesus was tempted to live out the demands of others in the way they wanted it to be lived out. Jesus was tempted to be defined by those around him. It’s all there in the biblical texts. It is always tempting for us to think we can be what others think we ought to be, especially when that comes close to worship. Who doesn’t want to be loved, adored? Mighty, and wonderful, the one who saves. ..  rescues, redeems. Who doesn’t want to be admired? Who doesn’t want to be a success by the world’s standards?  Messiah, well, that’s a little much, but sure, I can help you out here. I am the one you need. I can rescue you.

But that wasn’t what Jesus did.             He emptied himself.

Our text from Philippians was probably a hymn sung by early Christians in their liturgy.

Some in the early church knew that Jesus was what humanity was meant to be like. That is why they sang of becoming like Jesus, conforming by adopting the same self-giving attitude in their relations to one another.  The New English Bible actually makes this very difficult concept clearer by saying: “Let your bearing towards one another arise out of your life in Christ Jesus.”

Having the same mind, by the way, is not conformity of thoughts and ideas. It is about following the example of Christ. Or, to put it another way, the character of Jesus’ life provides content for the obedience to which Jesus’ followers are called. It is about attitude, not doctrines. The early Christians understood that their entire identity – their intuitions, sensitivities, imaginations, were to be shaped by the self-giving activity of Christ.

So how can Christ’s humiliation be a model for Christian acting and thinking?  Walter Brueggeman notes that “Humility is often misinterpreted in our culture, leaving people with he notion that meekness equals weakness. Yet, in this context, humility differs radically from both self-deprecation and false modesty. Either putting oneself down or playing a charade that one is really not so gifted as others mocks the intent of the text. Readers are not invited to think ill of themselves or to engage in some self degrading practice.”

“The model is Christ, whose self-emptying was in fact a fulfilling of his true vocation. He attended to the needs of an enslaved humanity. He ‘humbled himself’ by resisting temptation to follow an easier calling, which would have denied his authentic self. There is no hint at all of self-deprecation. In fact the implication of Christ’s self-giving, drawn prior to the citing of the human does not forbid taking an interest in one’s own affairs. It simply condemns a selfish preoccupation that ignores or prevents interest in the life of others.”

            Jesus was interested in the good of others. And Jesus wants us to rejoice in the good of others. Jesus also wants us to be aware of our own goodness. Our own beloved humanity.

Jesus understood both responsibility and consequences. He accepted both. According to scripture, Jesus stands in stark contrast to those who evade consequences. He moves to the cross, without arguing with his accusers; or blaming anyone. He claims his truth and his actions. I think he was able to do this because he had accepted his own death.

I have seen it in those who are dying and know there is often amazing courage and honesty and grace. I have known it in some who were executed by the state. One, a man who admitted his crime and another (who I still believe was innocent.)  Both found amazing strength as they moved toward their last days and minutes.

The Hosannas were still ringing in Jesus ears, as he knelt in the garden at Gethsemane, and faced the consequences of living the life he had been called to live. There was a period of agony over what was sure to come: the arrest, the execution – but then, he accepted his own death.

In accepting what was inevitable at this point, rather than fighting it, or denying it, he was able to be fearless and to acknowledge his own identity and his history.

He could have avoided death by being less than who he was. By caring less for the people he sought to free from bondage.

I don’t always want to accept responsibility. I want to blame others, or weasel my way out, and I know that by doing so I can cause pain to others, but mostly, I know when it happens I am less than I could be. Less than God created me to be.  

Jesus did not exalt himself. Jesus  didn’t say to those fisher folk, “Come and watch me save people.” This fellow, Jesus, said, “Come and I will teach you how to be fishers of people.” Come and I will teach you how to rescue, redeem, heal, liberate. (He doesn’t say, but it is not a leap to imagine, that he also meant, ‘starting with yourselves.’) His was an invitation to leave victim mentality behind. To assume responsibility. When we read of Jesus’ teachings with the disciples, it seems clear to me that he was trying to get them to be more fully who they could be. To be responsible.

He keeps trying to teach others to be a part of the solution. He refuses to buy their victim mentality. He seeks to liberate them from that. Over and over.

            Jesus understood both responsibility and consequences. He accepted both.

            Jesus came in on a donkey. And he went to a cross to die.  Pretty humiliating. Pretty human.

            I think he wanted us to be human. Fully human. I think that was what all his teaching and healing was about. He wanted us to be fully human. Not less than human. Not a shadow of being human. But fully human. And to be human is to be responsible. To be loved by God and able to respond to God and to one another out of that love. To be wholly --with a w-- human – and holy  --with an h --humans.

            Holy Week gives us the opportunity to see how important that was to Jesus, to see how he was dying for us to get it—to get what being human is all about.  

Of course, his entry into Jerusalem is not as humbling when compared to the cross.  He dies without force or fury, clinging to faith and forgiving his killers. Maybe he is, after all, a different kind of liberator. Power in our world waves death and tramples the powerless. He gives peace, and yes, life.

 Look, we are called to follow the fool “king” on a donkey, and to hail his coming, so that someday the whole world might follow him into a life of peace.