Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, staggered out of his tent into the cold dawn. It was the Sunday before Passover, and the second day in a row that he’d been up with the sun, and he didn’t like it one little bit. It made him irritable—more than usual, anyway—and he snapped at the attendant who was trying to hold his horse still so he could mount. It was a big brute, 16 hands tall, and pure white—a fitting mount for such a powerful man. Of course, he would have preferred to ride in a cart, or a palanquin carried by slaves, sheltered from the fierce sun, but one must keep up appearances, one must put on a show of power for the peasants along the way.
Pilate had left his villa at the shiny new city on the Mediterranean a couple of days before, and that didn’t help his mood any. Caesarea Maritima—Caesarea by the Sea—was all carved, Corinthian marble; his villa was lavishly appointed and almost obscenely comfortable, as befitted the biggest fish in that small Palestinian pond. And Pilate hated to leave it behind, especially since his destination was that poxy, backwater town called Jerusalem, home of a people so backwards they only worshiped one god. But it had to be done, Pilate had to go to that pestilent place, because it was Passover week, and the locals—always unfriendly—could get downright belligerentat festival time. Many was the time anti-government violence had sprung up during those times, and Passover—the celebration of Jewish delivery from an earlierset of oppressors—could be one of the roughest.
So it was the custom of the Romans to beef up their presence in Jerusalem at Passover, to make an imperial show—one reason for the column of imperial cavalry and soldiers that rode along—and that meant that the governor himself needed to be there, along with all his assorted courtiers and toadies, and didn’t they make a grand sight, livery jangling, pennants snapping in the sun, impassive faces of the troops . . . it said to all they passed: “You can’t stand in the face of the glorious might of the Roman Empire.”
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town, the east side, another procession was getting underway. The star of thatparade was an itinerant Jewish teacher named Jesus, who was a powerful preacher and a compassionate crusader for social justice and—in the eyes of the Jewish religious establishment, at least—a dangerous subversive. He’d been running around Palestine, preaching about the kingdom of God which, to hear him tell it, was a place where all were welcome, nobody was hungry, and, best of all, nobody oppressed anybody. A place where the first were last and the last first, where God's good gifts were not amassed by a minority of wealthy landowners in their cities and palaces and villas. A place, in short, the exact opposite of the Roman Empire, and—critically—the exact opposite of the scribes and priests of the Temple hierarchy who, through creative interpretation of Hebrew law, were able to become wealthy landowners themselves.
So it’s appropriate that this secondprocession came from exactly the oppositeside of town as Pilate’s. It’s staging area was the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the city, and Jesus—born in the nothing town of Nazareth and definitely notof the ruling class—gathered his followers and laid out the plan: “Go into that village over there, and you’ll find a colt—a young donkey, to be exact—tied there that’s never been ridden.” And how did he know it would be there? I have no idea. Maybe he sent somebody ahead and planted it, maybe he “saw” it with that otherworldly insight he seemed to possess. However it happened, it’s clear that Jesus planned it, and what’s more, he planned it with prophecy in mind: listen to this passage from the Old Testament prophet Zechariah: “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.” It’s clear from all the stage-management that he wants both his disciples and Jerusalem onlookers to see the fulfillment of that prophecy.
And if he isthe symbol of that prophecy, if he is indeedthe humble king riding on a donkey, what kind of monarch would he be? The rest of the Zechariah passage tellsus: “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.” This king, riding on a donkey, will banish war from the land—no more chariots, war-horses, or bows. He will be command peace to the nations; in fact, he will be a kingof peace. Not exactly the play-book of the Roman Emperor.
And did Jesus plan hisentry into the city to coincide with that of Pilate? Biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan think so—in their book The Last Week,they write that it was a “prearranged ‘counter-procession,’” designed in deliberate contrast to the one on the other side of town. Whatever the case, it certainly did the trick: Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embodied the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’s crucifixion.
You often hear this dichotomy referred to as the “ways of the world” versus the “ways of the kingdom,” but I think that’s didactic and over-simplified. It’s dualistic, and displays one of the major problems with that kind of thinking: it encourages us in the impression that the world is “evil” and the kingdom “good.” Paul’s habit of referring to it as the “ways of the flesh” versus the “ways of the Spirit” doesn’t help—a lot of folks read “flesh” as “sex,” and it gets conflated with the human body, once again encourages us to think that the body is inferior and sinful as opposed to some spirit that is pure and separate from the flesh. Dualism at its finest, pf course: God made the world and all that is in it and how can it be bad? As the old saying goes, “God don’t make no trash,” and I believe that to be true.
What Pilate’s procession symbolized—and what Jesus’ countered—was not “the world” or humanity or even Pilate himself. It was what social scientists call a “domination system” and Paul—who knew all about such things—called the “powers and principalities.” Borg and Crossan write that a domination system is the most common form of social system and is marked by three major features: first, political oppression, where the many are ruled by the few, the powerful and wealthy elites. The second characteristic is economic exploitation, where a high percentage of the society’s wealth goes into the coffers of the wealthy and powerful. The third characteristic is religious legitimation—the systems are justified with religious language. The rulers are there by divine right, because God ordains it, and the social system or order is the will of God.
In Jerusalem, you actually got two domination systems in one: the local one, legitimized by the religious establishment and ruled by wealthy landowners—some of whom were the religious authorities themselves—and the Roman one, with the emperor—Tiberius, at the moment—as the divinely-ordained ruler. And Tiberius was sodivinely ordained that he was called Son of God—God, of course, being his predecessor, Caesar Augustus.
And so that’s what Jesus and Pilate rode into on that fine spring day, one in a procession that was the embodimentof the domination system, and one in a procession that was almost a parodyof it. I mean, pictureit in your mind: here’s Jesus, on an untrained donkey—though the word colt can mean either a young horse or a young donkey, Mark makes it clear it was a donkey—here he is on an untrained donkey, probably shying away from the onlookers . . . cloaks being thrown in front of it would have sent it over the edge—here he is, on an young animal that was all over the road, his feet practically dragging the ground, and his disciples—notice that Luke doesn’tsay the crowds—his disciples,were hollering and carrying on: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
And so the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, so often portrayed as a triumphal entry, can be viewed in an entirely different way: his followers shouting “Blessed is the king” and that kingon a runaway donkey, feet dragging the ground, looking about as much like an earthly monarch as Ido. Which, as y’all know, is not very much. And Jesus’ appearanceis contrapuntal to the message of his followers—and could that have been the point?—and especiallyso to what was happening on the other side of town, where the very kingly Pilate was riding in on a very kingly horse.
And so you can see that it was a very political scene on that first Palm Sunday, it couldn’t helpbut be that. But one of the marvelous things about
Scripture is that it works on so many levels. And of course, one of those levels theological one, and it’s the same point PauI would make twenty-some-odd years later: the wisdom of God is foolishnessto the powers that be. What Jesus was s doingthat day was demonstrating that principle in graphic, no-uncertain-terms, that the last will be first and the first last, and he was playing the last and you-know-who across town was playing the first.
And at the start of Holy Week, the time we observe the passion of Christ—his trial, degradation and crucifixion—it’s good to remember that this is only the beginning of Jesus’ demonstration of that theological fact. On Maundy Thursday, at the last Supper, he washes the disciples’ feet like slave, like the servant that he was, and on Friday, which Christians call “good” he is nailed to a tree in the ultimate demonstration, the ultimate statement of God’s true nature. Amen.
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