Imagine, if you will, a presidential motorcade coming into town. People line the streets, waving American flags. Secret service agents and police officers surround the limousine on all sides, ready to jump into action if there is a problem.
Now, imagine that, on the other side of town, another kind of parade is happening. In this procession, the leader is riding in a little clown car. People still line the streets, cheering. They are playing Hail to the Chief on kazoos. If we saw this silly demonstration, we could easily understand that it was meant to be a parody of the bigger and more serious motorcade happening elsewhere. This was exactly what was happening on Palm Sunday, as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.
In Jerusalem, during the time of Jesus, it was customary for the Roman governor to make a military parade through the city during the week before the holiday of Passover. The Roman province of Judea was known for being a troubled place that frequently experienced violent insurrections. The risk of uprising was especially high during the Passover season, when the Jewish people celebrated their deliverance by God from slavery, tyranny, and genocide in Egypt. Governor Pilate’s annual show of force at that time was intended to nip those thoughts in the bud, before people got any bright ideas about acting on them.
Jesus’ triumphal entry, on the other hand, was a deliberate lampoon of the governor’s bravado. He based his demonstration on the words of the prophet Zechariah from the Hebrew Scriptures:
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).
By comparison, Jesus’ gathering was quite small, filled with the most obnoxious riffraff in town, and was obviously poking fun at the powers-that-be. It’s no wonder then that the authorities were anxious that this little demonstration might attract the wrong kind attention from Pontius Pilate and his soldiers. I can hear fear in their voices as they say, perhaps while glancing nervously over their shoulders, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Jesus responds, rather poetically, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40). Paraphrasing Jesus’ words, I imagine Jesus shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Yeah, sure… Good luck with that!”
The serious point that Jesus was making with this little demonstration of political theater is that the so-called powers-that-be in this world are not so powerful as they think. They show their strength through competition and violence, but Jesus shows us another way to live.
Our Epistle reading this morning tells us something about how that other way looks. St. Paul tells us that Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself” (Philippians 2:6-7a).
This “emptying” that Paul talks about is the self-giving love that Jesus radiates from every cell of his body. It stands in stark contrast to the competitive systems of domination that tend to rule the world, both in Jesus’ time and ours.
The “way of the world,” as we are socially trained to accept it, is the way of the zero-sum game, where there are winners and losers, us and them, insiders and outsiders. We see it everywhere: in military conflicts, sporting events, political elections, and business deals. We get so accustomed to this way of thinking, it even finds its way into our families, neighborhoods, and churches. But this way of thinking comes with a downside: When left unchecked, it destroys the very communities that it depends on.
Consider, for example, the “Super Chicken” experiment conducted by evolutionary biologist William Muir at Purdue University. Dr. Muir was interested in improving the egg-laying potential of chickens, so he took the top-producing chickens from each coop and put them together in a “super coop,” expecting this coop to out-perform all the others. What he discovered, though, was surprising. The “super coop” did not perform better than the other coops, but worse… much worse, in fact, because the super chickens all killed each other. Dr. Muir did what he did in the name of improving efficiency, but ended up creating an environment full of aggressive and territorial over-achievers.
This doesn’t just happen with chickens, either. Back in the 1990s, there was a very successful company called Enron. This company had a “rank and yank” practice where they would evaluate their employees and fire the bottom 10% of performers each quarter. Like Dr. Muir, they were trying to increase productivity, but created a company culture where competition led to dishonesty. Eventually, the whole company collapsed under the weight of its own cut-throat practices. The Enron company went bankrupt, thousands of people lost their jobs, and the leaders went to jail.
When we make an unholy idol of winning, we end up losing our souls.
When Jesus, the Son of God, came into this world, he didn’t come to win; he came to love. He didn’t come to seize power, but to give his life for others. The paradox is that this is what true power looks like: Not the power to control, but the power to love without limits.
There is a scene in one of my favorite TV shows where the hero is trying to convince his nemesis to join the hero in a worthy cause. The nemesis complains, “But you can’t win!”
And the hero replies:
“Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works—because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right. Because it’s decent. And above all—it’s kind. Maybe there’s no point to any of this at all. But it’s the best I can do. So I’m going to do it. And I will stand here doing it until it kills me. Who I am is where I stand. Where I stand is where I fall. Stand with me.”
I can’t help but hear Jesus in those words. Not trying to win, but just doing what is right, decent, and kind, standing in love until it kills him, and inviting us to stand with him. That’s who Jesus is; as Christians, that’s who we believe God is.
Christians imagine God, not as an “old man in the sky,” but as a flowing river of love. The mystery of the Trinity envisions the one God as three persons (i.e. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), a community, a network of relationships, bound together in perfect love.
Whenever someone is baptized in the name of the Trinity, we are proclaiming our faith that this person, and every person, is caught up in that never-ending flow of love. The Trinity is why we, as Christians, are happy to say, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16). We don’t just attach the adjective “love” to the noun “God,” we go all the way to saying that God is love itself. And love, as we remember from English class, is a verb.
And if love is a verb, and God is love, then God is a verb. God doesn’t just exist; God happens wherever love is happening. If a river were ever to stop flowing, it would cease to be a river and become a lake. In the same way, if God’s love were ever to stop flowing outward in greater and greater circles of community, God would cease to be God.
This is the alternate way of living that Jesus presents to us on Palm Sunday: The way of self-giving love. Jesus does this because that’s who Jesus is, that’s who God is, and that’s who we are called to be.
Jesus didn’t come to win; he came to love. He didn’t ride a war horse; he rode a donkey. He didn’t exploit his power; he emptied himself.
Today, Jesus invites us to stand with him.
So, as we enter Holy Week, let us stand with him, not because we want to beat someone, but because it’s right, because it’s decent, and above all—It’s kind. Maybe it won’t lead to us winning the competitions that the world values so much, but it’s the best that Jesus can do, and he will stand here doing it until it kills him. It’s who Jesus is, and who he is is where he stands, and where he stands is where he falls. We already know from experience that the cut-throat way of the world is doomed to failure, so let us try this other way instead. Let us stand with him in love, through Holy Week and every week, until it kills us. Until that Easter morning when the tomb is opened and even death itself is swallowed up in victory, powerless against the relentless flow of God’s love.
Hopping Hadrian's Wall 