It won't be long now

Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion
For I am coming, and I will live among you
Many nations will join with me on that day and will become my people!

(The prophet Zachariah’s words are on
the minds and hearts and lips of the people
as Jesus marches into Jerusalem!)
 
The prince of peace enters Jerusalem, from the east,
on a donkey colt,
just as Zechariah said he would.
The Roman governor enters Jerusalem, from the west, 
with an imperial cav-alry,
 to remind the people who has the power.
 
This dramatic contrast is intentional; the stage is set by Passover.
Passover: the weeklong celebration of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.
Passover marks overthrow of oppression,
when they marked their doors with blood
so Yahweh’s angel would pass over their houses
on a murderous rampage,
the last of the ten plagues of Egypt.
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
 
As the Jews enter Jerusalem, preparing for this beloved week
recalling their freedom from hundreds of years of slavery,
they are living under Roman occupation,
they have friends and relatives again in slavery in other parts of the Roman empire,
and the poor peasant class of Jews blames both Rome,
as well as Jewish aristocracy, for their plight.
Pilate, Jesus, and the people in their parades know all of this.
Pilate’s triumphant, militar-ily mighty entrance to the city
            Is a reminder not to try any overthrow this Passover.
 
Jesus’ palm-strewn, colt-ridden entrance is just as intentional:
The prophet Zechariah says, “your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on the colt of a donkey.”
He will banish war from the land. He will be a prince of peace.”
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
Jerusalem must be the stage for this passionate Passover play. It is the center of power in the Jewish world – political, economic and religious power.
And they all live in one house – the Temple.

Jerusalem was the Jewish home during the good old days of King David, 1000 years before.
David: the universal hero of the Israelites – a shepherd boy who takes down a giant.
A king who dances naked in the street.
A ruler who brings unity and prosperity to the people.
David’s son Solomon succeeds him, and concentrates wealth and power in Jerusalem.
            It is Solomon who builds the first and most beautiful, most elaborate Temple for the Israelites.

Solomon’s legacy is mixed – he is the king of wealth and wisdom,
but he turns emperor-like and sows conflict among the people.
When he dies the Twelve Tribes of Israel split in civil war,
and 1000 years later, when Jesus and Pilate are marching into Jerusalem
the Jews are still waiting for a messiah to reunite the two kingdoms.
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
Solomon’s temple is destroyed a few centuries after his death,
but another takes its place, and it is expanded soon before Jesus’ birth by Herod the Great.

But what began as a place for the God of the Israelites to call home
is now the center of Roman rule over the Jews.
 
The Temple may be filled with a corrupt troop of elite priests
who bleed their people dry to appease Rome and their own pockets
            but this is the home of God, and it is the center of Jewish life.
Jerusalem is the home of Roman imperialism and Jewish colluders
            But it is God’s home, too.
We’ve been journeying with Jesus this Lent, toward Jerusalem.
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
Last Sunday we sang and prayed “I want Jesus to walk with me.”

Today we walk with Jesus.

We’re marching into Jerusalem this Passover week,
the drums of rebellion are throbbing in the hearts and streets of Jerusalem
the palms are waving
the people shout Hosanna to the prince of peace!
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long!
Til justice comes rolling like a mighty stream!
Til messiah Jesus unites Israel and Judea – all twelve tribes together again!
Til Jesus overturns the tables and upsets corruption and overthrows Empire!
The messiah enters through the Golden Gate, prophesies Ezekiel.
Jesus rides a donkey through that Golden Gate, on the east side of the city.
Jesus rides into town like the rising sun, from the east, and the people know he is the messiah!
They join his march,
they throw down their coats,
they pick up their branches,
they cheer messiah, here to change the world!

Days later these people watch Jesus stumble through the streets toward death.
No one shouts Hosanna.
No one throws down a coat or waves a branch.
The one they praised with Hosanna they will ridicule with “he said he was king of the Jews.”
            They believe he failed as messiah – did he unite the two kingdoms?
                        Did he overthrow Roman oppression?
 
How many marches end in death? I’ve been part of many marches, I’ve never been injured – I’ve been harassed, I’ve been spit on, but that’s all.
But I lived in India as a child and heard the story of the salt march.

Gandhi studied Jesus’ teachings and learned nonviolence. When British colonizers declared that Indians could no longer produce salt from saltwater and instead had to buy heavily taxed salt to increase the British Empire’s ridiculous wealth, the people suffered.
1900 years after Jesus led a nonviolent march to confront an oppressive Empire’s economic injustice, Gandhi walked 24 days, in prayer, in peace, to honor his people. 79 people marched on day 1, and each day the crowd grew, at one point the crowd was two miles long. They walked to the coast, they gathered saltwater, they produced salt – and this was illegal.
Next they planned a march to a government salt factory, a home of British oppressive rule. In the spirit of nonviolence, which includes transparency and the eternal hope that enemies will become friends, Gandhi wrote to regional British authorities about these plans. He was arrested, they hoped the march wouldn’t happen without Gandhi.
​
But it did – with Gandhi’s wife Kasturba leading the crowd of hundreds. She was arrested next, but the people kept marching. They had trained, prayed, they were committed to non-violence. And then the British police began beating the marchers with steel-tipped lathis. Journalist Webb Miller was there, and wrote:
Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down....Finally the police became enraged by the non-resistance....They commenced savagely kicking the seated men in the abdomen and testicles.The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.
And it took twenty more years, and thousands more people were killed, and finally, India’s independence was restored. India’s history is a lot like the Israelites – India has been ruled by various foreign powers and invaders and elite, just like the Israelites, Indian people have gone centuries at a time without self-determination.

With all that passion and desperation, Jewish peasants look to Jesus marching through Jerusalem’s Golden Gate on a donkey and cry “Hosanna! Deliver us!” They aren’t saved that day.
On that march the people take two steps forward, but then they take one step back. Jesus is betrayed. Jesus is arrested. The disciples flee in fear.
The people have been waiting so long for deliverance, for reunification, for peace.
            They don’t want to wait any longer.
They turn their backs on Jesus, he let them down.
We might have thought the same thing if we’d been there, but we know what comes next.
We read Holy Week stories without much sympathy for the people – we think of them as fickle.
But how much patience do you have for leaders? Why can’t they pass the “right” health care bill? Why can’t they fix the potholes? Why can’t they solve the opioid crisis in this county?
We’re not patient – and we’re not even living under occupation!
I don’t want to weigh one kind of suffering against another – we all face true struggles and some of us do experience oppression.
But we have basic self-determination. We are citizens. We have the freedom to march and protest and advocate. We have the obligation to do so!

When he walked arm in arm with John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr across the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, Abraham Joshua Heschel said “My feet were praying.”
How many times has passionate faith planted us in holy ground?
How many times has our faith put our bodies on the line?
How many times has your faith convicted you to work alongside your sisters and brothers to welcome God’s kingdom on earth?
Peace pilgrims and sojourners and marchers we may be, in the tradition of Jesus’ Palm Sunday parade – and still, is it working? Jesus didn’t overthrow the Roman Empire with his humble donkey procession.

When pastors and schoolkids and cleaning ladies and factory workers marched across the Edmond Pettus Bridge in 1965 they were headed for Montgomery to register to vote. And they were beaten by police, dozens were hospitalized. It took three tries to get to Montgomery.

Juniata students and faculty and some local clergy were there. More billy clubs, men on horses beat these marchers. If you were here January 15 you heard this story in depth.
Two steps forward and one step back. Many African-Americans were finally allowed to vote because the civil rights marchers put their bodies on the line.
And in the past decade voting access is eroding. So maybe it’s one step forward and two steps back!

Did Jesus fail as a political revolutionary?
Jesus makes his own prophecies about Jerusalem
            The city he watches and weeps, crying,
“if only you had recognized the things that make for peace!
The days will come upon you when your enemies will surround you and hem you in on every side!
They will not leave one stone upon another!” (Luke 19:41-44)
            The city Jesus says “kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matt 23:37 and Luke 13:34)
Jesus prophesies about himself, declaring his own torture and death
will take place when he reaches Jerusalem.
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
And what else does he say?
What does he say to us?
            “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)
A cross to carry isn’t just any burden to bear.
            Dying on the cross is a punishment only for insurrection, for rebellion, against Rome.
Jesus doesn’t say, follow me and suffer. Jesus says, follow me and die a revolutionary.
            Unlike Jesus’ friends and followers in year 30, we are not living under occupation. What does it mean to follow Jesus as citizens of the US empire?

Will you wave your palm and shout Hosanna as Jesus marches into Jerusalem?
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long.
Til Jesus reaches the Temple,
Til Jesus reaches the cross.

Are you marching with him?

Where is your cross?
What table does it upset?
  What gap does it bridge?
     What wall does it topple?

The table of economic exploitation?
  The gap between pure and impure?
    The wall between peasant and priest?

Does your cross upset the tables where billionaires sit to divvy up what they pilfer from this planet?
  Does your cross bridge the gap between the ones who eat supper at the Soup Kitchen and the ones who eat supper at Mimi’s?
     Does your cross topple a wall between the US and Mexico?

Who are you marching with?
            Do you stand with the power of Pilate and Rome, safe in Empire?
            Do you drop your coat in the dirt and wave a palm for a peasant on a colt?
What revolutions do you bear on your back,
hold in your heart,
praise in your prayers?
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long

Jesus, messiah, doesn’t overthrow the Roman Empire by riding a donkey through the Golden Gate.
He overthrows the Roman Empire’s soul when he suffers even unto death, when he proclaims love and forgiveness from the cross.
He liberates our souls and teaches us that the Good News of radical love and self-sacrifice cannot be sold, will not be walled, shall never die.

Jesus’ liberation is in our hearts regardless of our citizenship. Jesus’ liberation is in our souls regardless of our bank balance. Jesus’ liberation is in our bodies regardless of our social status.

But Jesus’ Gospel is not indifferent to our physical, political, economic circumstances.
Not even for a moment does Jesus’ liberation exist separately from the realities of our lives. Jesus says feed the people, give the thirsty water, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, tend to the sick. Jesus cares about our bodies and our whole beings.

Jesus, messiah, overthrows the Roman Empire’s soul but the Roman Empire oppresses people for hundreds more years. The messiah’s mission is already and not yet complete.

And Jesus, messiah, confronts not just the Roman Empire on his march into Jerusalem – he confronts the Temple. He confronts the place both beloved and broken, his own people’s creation that has been corrupted. This isn’t just about speaking truth to foreign occupiers, but calling out what is corrupt within our own communities.

Jesus calls us to live abundantly with the Gospel good news. We are already and not yet there. We don’t choose to march with Jesus just one time – we choose again and again, day by day.

We have so much work to do. So many walls to topple, so much bread to break with our neighbors and our enemies, so much forgiveness to ask and to offer.

Today we march with Jesus
The peasant king
Hosanna to the prince of peace!
We are already and not yet liberated
We are already and not yet citizens of God’s Kingdom
                        And marching with Jesus we sing,
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long
‘Til justice comes rolling like a mighty stream
It won’t be long now, it won’t be long