Palm Sunday: Taking it to the Streets

A sermon preached on Palm Sunday at United Presbyterian Church in Lonetree, Iowa on March 29, 2015.

If you ever take a trip to New York City, somewhere out on the street, you might run into Rev. Billy and his "Church of Stop Shopping."

According to the website, Rev. Billy and his troupe:

...are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities all over the world defending community, life and imagination.

We compel action in those who have never been activist, revive exhausted activists, and devise new methods for future activism.

We also put on a great show.

The Rev Billy, acts and speaks like the worst of Tele-evangelists. In fact, he's even got the big poofy, slicked backed hair do...proof again of why I could never become a TV preacher.

The “Rev Billy” was born in 1996 when Bill Talen – a playwright, performer, and producer - moved from San Francisco to New York City where he began his street corner show.

The Rev. Billy takes his message right to the center of his battle against materialism.

In his first performance ever in New York City he stood right in front of the Disney store denouncing the various commercial excesses promoted by the chain-store.

Eventually Rev. Billy did the same in other stores, entering a local Starbucks, with a choir of supporters, who helped him stage "shopping interventions" and perform an "exorcism" on the cash register.

Rev Billy's Church of Stop Shopping is made up of professional musicians, singers, and actors who turn up as they can to his actions and rallies.

Their goal is to help spread Rev Billy's message of free speech, support of local economies, anti-consumerism, and care for the earth.

It is an economic and political message taken right to the center of the marketplace.

It is street theater meant to challenge the very core of our materialistic and consumeristic culture.

Believe it or not, this is precisely the sort of thing that happens in today's story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.

Yes, the message might be different than what Rev. Billy preaches on the streets of New York today, but the method employed by Jesus on the streets of Jerusalem is exactly the same.

It is a bit of street theater choreographed by Jesus.

It is a political message preached against the powers that be.

It is a drama meant to challenge the very core of the culture of his day.

New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write that the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem was an act of political theater. It was an anti-imperial demonstration designed to mock the over the top display of power and authority of ancient Rome.

These two scholars argue that two different processions entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday; They say that Jesus' didn't lead the only Triumphal Entry into the city.

Picture with me the scene in Jerusalem during that week. It is the festival of the Passover which was the Jewish people's biggest celebration. During the passover, the population of the city would swell from 50,000 to 200,000.

The Passover was a Jewish festival that celebrated the liberation – the exodus - of the Jewish people from the land of Egypt.

You may recall the story of how the Egyptian Pharaoh refused to release his Jewish slaves even after suffering numerous plagues inflicted upon the land.

Finally, the Pharaoh relented after the angel of death swept through Egypt taken all the firstborn sons except for the Jewish sons who were passed over because they had been warned by an angel to place a mark of lamb's blood on their doors.

Every year during the celebration of the Passover with all those pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem, the Roman governor of Judea would ride up to the city from his coastal residence in the west.

The governor would come in all of his imperial majesty. He came to remind the Jewish pilgrims that Rome was still in charge.

He came to remind them that they could celebrate their ancient victory against Egypt if they wanted to, but real, present-day resistance against Rome would be futile.

This is the background against which we should see the Triumphal Entry of Jesus.

Jesus planned a counter-procession. He made arrangements to procure a donkey and sent two of his disciples off to bring it to him.

As Pilate moved, in all his pomp and circumstance, from the west toward Jerusalem, Jesus approached the city from the east entering Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

Jesus came to Jerusalem on "the most unthreatening, most un-military mount imaginable: a female nursing donkey with her little colt trotting along beside her."

His parade was about the ridiculous, the powerless, and the explicitly vulnerable.

With this bit of street theater. Jesus turns imperial notions of power and rule on their head.

In his “triumphal entry” Jesus lampoons “the powers that be” and their pretensions to glory and dominion.

Riding on a colt, Jesus comes not as one who lords his authority over others but as one who rejects domination.

He comes not as a mighty warrior but as one who is vulnerable and who refuses to rely on violence.

Do the crowds get it? I'm not sure that they do. But what we do know is that the crowd did get caught up in this alternative parade as Jesus passed by.

They gathered around as he came through town. They waved branches. They threw down their cloaks.

And along with it came their shouts of “Hosanna,” their expectations of “the coming kingdom of David,” and their praises to the “one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

We can't know exactly what they expected.

But we do know what they got...they got a street show which displayed that Jesus' kingdom is different.

It is a kingdom of peace. A kingdom of justice. A kingdom of radical and universal freedom. A kingdom in both form and substance that was dramatically unlike the oppressive empire of Rome which Jesus challenged that day.

And this was just the first act.

As the week proceeds, the week of Christ's passion, Jesus set his face toward the cross, and the ultimate act of laying down his life.

And as he does so, he invites us to join him. He invites us to walk in the way he walk.

He invites us to join in his procession. To do a little street theater, if you will, by demonstrating a radical difference to the world in the way we live.

Jesus calls us...

To take up our cross to follow him, the one who is the way, the truth, and the light.

To join him by participating through the Spirit in the work of the kingdom.

To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

To love our neighbors as ourselves, but not only that, to love even our enemies.

To turn the other cheek if someone offends you.

To extend forgiveness to one another, not just one time, but 70 Xs 7 times.

To give away our extra coat, if we have one already, to someone who needs it.

I could go on. But I think you get the point.

This way of Jesus is full of subversive acts, just like his Triumphal entry was a subversive act. This way of Jesus is a bit of street theater which shows the world that there is and can be another way.

A better way.

The question for us is this?

Will we stay in the crowd, shouting “Hosanna!” as Jesus rides on by?

Or will we dare to join Jesus, will we take up our cross, and will we follow him?

May God give us the strength, the courage, and the power to do just that.

To the praise and glory of God, creator, redeemer, sustainer.

Now and forever Amen.


Some of the textual work surrounding Jesus' parade is attributed to The Clown King by Debbie Thomas.