“Jesus
Trends”
Mark
11:1-11
April 5, 2009
This
morning’s New Testament reading represents a fulcrum upon which the gospel of Mark
pivots. Highlighting Jesus’ identity and relationship to the coming kingdom of God
and “our ancestor David” (11:10), Mark points back to the beginning of the
gospel, where Jesus is heralded as God’s Son, the “Lord” (cf. 1:11; 1:3),
and forward, to Jesus’ death, where Jesus’ sonship is again pronounced (15:39)
and the reality of his lordship takes the shape of a Roman cross. The transitional nature
of Palm Sunday finds its roots in Scripture, as the story is full of paradoxes and
promises.
Please
listen for how the Spirit is addressing us through God’s word found on pages 44-45 of
your pew Bibles from the Gospel of Mark chapter eleven verses one through eleven….
11When
they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he
sent two of his disciples 2and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and
immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden;
untie it and bring it. 3If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just
say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’”
4They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were
untying it, 5some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the
colt?” 6They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then
they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8Many
people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut
in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”11Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple;
and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany
with the twelve.
This is God’s Word to us…
It’s
Palm Sunday, and on Palm Sunday …
Jesus was a huge hit with the crowds. Compare his popularity on that day with that of
other prominent leaders, and Jesus wins hands down.
A
generation ago, John Lennon of the Beatles thought Jesus was a popular fellow. But then in
1966, he infamously proclaimed that he and his Beatle mates were even “more popular
than Jesus.”
That
claim, of course, set off a storm of protest in a then more conservative post-war United
States. One of the problems was that whether you were looking at things from Lennon’s
perspective or from that of, say, the average churchgoer, there really weren’t any
ways to emperically check the facts of the claim. After all, Lennon was looking at packs
of screaming fans every day, while churches were not exactly being overrun by hordes of
teenagers rabidly wanting to be close to Jesus.
These
days, no rocker or celebrity could sound off with such a statement without a host of
bloggers and pundits running the actual numbers. In point of fact, Internet search-engine
giant Google offers a quick way for anyone to compare the relative popularity (or at least
the number of Internet searches and news stories) between two or more persons, place or
thing called “Google Trends.”
For
example, if you typed “Jesus” and the “Beatles” into the Google Trends
search engine it produces a graph that compares the search history of both. While we
don’t know what the graph might have looked like in 1966, today the Beatles garner
only half as many searches as Jesus does. This may be because the Beatles haven’t cut
an album in decades and half its members have passed on, while Jesus is still the main
subject of the world’s number one best-selling book and, according to Christians, is
still alive and at work.
It’s
not that Jesus trumps every other subject, though. God, for example, still beats out Jesus
on the popularity scale, but that might have more to do with peoples’ definition of
God as being more Oprah-fied and ambiguous than the synonymous nature of which Christians
speak of God and Jesus. Of course, this being the Internet, we always have to keep in mind
that religion and rock ’n’ roll both take a back seat to other human interests.
Nevertheless,
on the original Palm Sunday there was no doubt about where Jesus was trending, at least
among his followers. Coming up to Jerusalem from Jericho, Jesus and his disciples would
have likely fallen in with hundreds of other pilgrims who would swell the population of
the Holy City from about 40,000 to more than 200,000 for the celebration of the Passover
feast. The festival was a time of celebration, but it was also a time of high tension in Jerusalem.
While
Passover celebrated liberation from the tyranny of Egypt generations before, first-century
Israel was still under foreign domination. The Roman occupation of their homeland chafed
at many Jews, tempering the joy that was supposed to be part of the festival. Riots and
uprisings were fairly common during the Passover, so Rome made sure that there was a
military presence during that week, garrisoning more troops at the Antonia Fortress, which
overlooked the temple complex.
If
residents and visitors to Jerusalem had been online in those days they may have run some
comparisons of their own. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their book The Last
Week, say that on that particular Sunday people in Jerusalem would have witnessed two
processions, not one — the Pilate Procession and the Jesus Procession.
Pontius
Pilate and his accompanying military force coming into the city from the west provided a
compelling military deterrent to the gathering crowds. Listen to how Borg & Crossan
describe the Pilate Procession: “A visual panoply of imperial power: cavalry on
horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on
poles, sun glinting off metal and gold. Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking
of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums. The swirling of dust; the
eyes of the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.
Now
look to the east of Jerusalem where another parade was being planned and the Bethany
bloggers would have no doubt been burning up the bandwidth in reporting the arrival of one
who would hopefully be a different kind of ruler. Mark tells us that Jesus sent his
disciples to get a colt, which we assume was a small donkey.
When
the animal had been secured, Jesus rode it with his toes nearly dragging on the road, down
from the Mount of Olives to the Golden Gate of the city, with a crowd of his supporters
shouting “Hosanna!” — a Hebrew word that mixes praise to God with a prayer
that God will save his people and soon. This peasant procession spread their cloaks on the
colt and cut branches from the surrounding fields — actions usually reserved only for
royalty. You can be sure the crowds weren’t going to such lengths on the western side
of the city for the Pilate Procession.
So
what are we to make of these two processions? One thing we should keep in mind is
that Jesus was intentionally setting up a comparison between the violent and powerful
trend of the empire and the peaceful and grace-filled trend of the kingdom of God. Borg
& Crossan see the Palm Sunday parade as a kind of pre-planned political protest. Just
think about it, the symbolism of a ruler riding on a diminutive donkey would not have been
lost on those putting branches on the road, for they would have remembered the words of
the vision of Zechariah’s messiah.
The
prophet Zechariah envisioned a king who is “triumphant” and
“victorious” — words that Romans and other imperial leaders would have
embraced — but he is “humble” and rides on a donkey instead of a war horse
(Zechariah 9:9). In fact, continues the prophet, “He will cut off the chariot from
Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem.” This king is not a conquering hero who
uses weapons of mass destruction, but one who will break the power of military might with
humility, justice and a “peace” for all the nations (Zechariah 9:10).
Jesus’
parade is thus an intentional parable and statement of contrast. If Pilate’s
procession embodied power, violence and the glory of empire that ruled the world,
Jesus’ procession embodied the kind of kingdom that God was ushering in through
Jesus’ ministry of healing, his message of good news and, ultimately, his sacrificial
death on a Roman cross.
Pilate
and the empire he represented were the most powerful force in the world on that first Palm
Sunday, but fire-up Google Trends today and enter “Jesus” and “Roman Empire”
and it’s not even close. Jesus wins in a landslide.
The
rest of Holy Week really comes down to a continued struggle for popularity. Jesus has it
on Sunday but, in Mark’s time line, on Monday he turns over the tables in the temple
and takes a serious dip, at least among the religious elite. His verbal sparring with the
Pharisees and temple officials had him charting well with the people and led the religious
leaders to look for a covert way to bring him down (Mark 11:18; 12:12). “Jesus”
vs. “Pharisees” is, again, no contest when it comes to trends. It’s no
wonder they were bent on getting rid of him.
The
bigger contrast, though, is the clash of worldviews represented in the text —
worldviews that are still at odds. The empire’s worldview of status, power, military
might and coercion is as present and dominant in today’s world as it was in the first
century. So is the desire for comfort, security, self-interest and wealth, especially in
our culture. If you were to look at “Kingdom of God” versus “American
Dream” at Google Trends, can you guess which one wins out?
We may
admire Jesus, but we’re not necessarily ready to follow him down that road of
suffering, sacrifice and servanthood that ultimately leads to the redemption of the world.
As if to underscore the point, the traditional route Jesus took down the Mount of Olives
went through an ancient cemetery, as it still does today — a stark reminder of where
this particular parade will lead.
Some
of those same folks who were waving branches on Sunday were gone by Friday, having
abandoned Jesus to the powers of the Temple and the Roman Empire. They read the trends and
chose self-preservation over the way of Jesus. The question we have to ask on Palm Sunday
is whether we do the same thing when following Christ becomes inconvenient at best or, at
worst, seemingly impossible. Following Jesus often means sharing his unpopularity, be it
at school, in the workplace or even at home.
What
we have to remember, though, is that Jesus was looking to trend the whole world upward,
bringing hope and wholeness through his obedience and submission to God. Or as Paul tells
us, in the end everyone will acknowledge him as the ultimate chart-topper (Philippians
2:10-11). So why not join and stay with the parade!
Sources:
Borg, Marcus, and John Dominic Crossan. The Last Week. San Francisco: Harper
Collins, 2006.
Cleave, Maureen. “How does a Beatle live? John Lennon lives like this.” The
London Evening Standard, March 4, 1966.
Reprinted on About.com Web Site. Viewed
October 6, 2008.
Google Trends, google.com/trends.
Singing
Our Response “Lift Up Your
Heads, Ye Mighty Gates”
#8
