Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14 – 23:56, Luke 19:28-40; Psalm 22
April 10, 2022
Tatiana Friesen
Craig talked to us last month about different theories of atonement, or ways that people have understood the mechanism by which Jesus offers salvation to humanity. I remember the first time I really became aware of the variety of differing opinions on this. I was so excited that I started texting one of my good friends in Montreal, a staunch atheist with whom I've had many excellent conversations around theology. One of his responses to my sharing was "so, Jesus wasn't born just to die? What was the point then?" That started me off on a rabbit trail of questioning the finer details of the Incarnation, and it feels very close now as I attempt to say something about this moment in the story of the Passion.
The thought that I developed around the time of that conversation was that Jesus' saving humans consisted mostly of his presence, conversations, parables, and acts of healing. He saved us by offering his earthly life to us (not just his death). I conceded that his violent and untimely death was inevitable because he was speaking truth to political power (that is, to Rome), and I comforted myself by the logic that at least it wasn't a direct consequence of the sinfulness of humanity; he didn't have to die in order to rise such that we would be forgiven of sin and therefore "saved." We were saved when he came to be with us and teach us, and he only died because what he was teaching was a challenge to the imperial state he was living under.
So, that's where my personal theory of atonement sort of sat, starting about three or four years ago. Let's just let that sit and marinade.
I looked up a couple of Palm Sunday symbols as part of my writing this homily, specifically the colt and the palms. The symbolic language of the triumphal entry for Rome was of a military leader on a horse, and some scholars point out that this was probably happening at more or less the same time across town; Pilate riding into Jerusalem as the Roman governor of the area in a show to remind people who is in charge here. (Remember, the city was crowded with Jewish visitors who were there for the Passover celebrations. It would have been an important time for the Empire to issue such a reminder.) Meanwhile, Jewish prophecies spoke of the Messiah riding on a donkey. So when Jesus seeks out a donkey and rides it into the city, he is using street theatre to speak to those who would know those Messianic prophecies: his own people, in their status as oppressed subjects. Not necessarily Romans. The palms, meanwhile, symbolized victory, fruition, or the end of an athletic competition. Not a rallying cry to war, but a celebration that war is already won.
I see Jesus just trying to lead his people authentically, speaking their language. But humans are kind of bad at being led in this way. Part of the problem is that we don't really want to do things as a group. It's a lot more work to do something collaboratively, to take the time to have real conversations with people, to pause (as Paul mentioned in his homily last Sunday) and resist reacting out of whatever habit or fear has hold of us sometimes. Consensus is hard!
Another part of the problem, though, is that we need help imagining other ways of doing things. For all kinds of reasons, from chemical biology to trauma to fatigue, we just aren't always great at dreaming up a new way of living and going ahead and doing it. I recently read a tidy little history of financial systems and it was a good illustration of how we get so stuck in our current reality to the point of not being able to believe that we used to do things differently, and could do them differently again. One of the most important reasons to support arts education in schools is not to turn out professional artists, but to teach everyone how to imagine. It's a vital skill set to have. When imagination is lacking, leadership is harder, and resistance to positive change is stronger.
And I think that, when we lack imagination, we tend to think we're alone. We think that nobody else cares about us, or about the thing we care about. We think that change is up to each of us individually. (We put all our effort into reusing plastic bags.) And we look for heroes: other individuals who are smarter or stronger or better-placed than we are, or who are at least bold enough to step up and do a new thing. We get excited about a new character who we believe will change the situation. And even as they do so, we judge them and their actions according to our personal, limited, unimaginative view of what could or should happen. Sometimes this story ends in our shock and even betrayal when we learn that our hero has done something abhorrent. Sometimes the story ends with our doing something abhorrent to the hero because they haven't done what we expected them to do.
This year the reading of the Palm Sunday passages have changed for me. The excitement, drama, and betrayal still seem inevitable in their context and understanding how political movements operate, but now it reads to me as the inevitable result of a group of normal people not getting what they think they want, in the way they want to get it.
Jesus is not directly challenging the state, and neither Herod nor Pilate are threatened by him. In other parts of this chapter of Luke, Herod is merely curious about Jesus' rumoured miracle-working abilities and unconcerned about any threat Jesus poses to his power. He returns him to Pilate, who only agrees to crucify him because the people insist upon it. Jesus doesn't threaten the oppressors so much as he threatens our conceptions of how we will become free of oppression.