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            I’d like to begin by reading from a new book by biblical scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, entitled: The Last Week.

Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, the most sacred week of the Jewish year. In the centuries since, Christians have celebrated this day as Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week. With its climax of Good Friday and Easter, it is the most sacred week of the Christian year.

One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers. Jesus was from the peasant village of Nazareth, his message was about the kingdom of God, and his followers came from the peasant class.

On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.. entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. Jesus’ procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.

Though unfamiliar to most people today, the imperial procession was well known in the Jewish homeland in the first century. Mark and the community for which he wrote would have known about it, for it was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble. There often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated the Jewish’s people’s liberation from an earlier empire.

Imagine the imperial procession’s arrival in the city. A visual panoply of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on 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 silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.

Pilate’s procession displayed not only imperial power, but also Roman imperial theology. According to this theology, the emperor was not simply the ruler of Rome, but the Son of God…Inscriptions referred to the emperor as “son of God,” “lord” and “savior,” one who had brought “peace on earth.”

            Holy Week is usually about the spirituality of individual sin and salvation. But, as Mark tells the story, Jesus’ arrival is a kind of planned “counter-procession,” almost like a political demonstration. After Palm Sunday, the temple authorities conspire to turn the crowds from their allegiance to Jesus. By doing this, then the Romans can execute Jesus without fear of rebellion. It is the story of how organized religion and state power collude to dispose of a righteous person and a threatening cause. The story asks: Who do you follow? Jesus or empire? Which procession you will join?

            The whole Bible is one long story of what it means to be people of faith who live in the shadow of empire – empires like that of the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans. What was empire? Three things can be said to characterize an empire of ancient times: 1) Political oppression, in which control is exercised by an elite, and ordinary people had little or no say. 2) Great wealth in the hands of the few, a huge gap between the rich and poor, maintained by land ownership by the rich, unfair taxation, and indenture of labor through debt. 3) Religious legitimation of this whole political and economic set up, seeing it as ordained by God.

            The Bible is harsh on empire. The prophets of the Old Testament railed against exploitation, and religious hypocrisy by the exploiters. And the Bible is also clear in showing that empires don’t last. They always fall. The Bible continually raises the question, in any age: what does it mean to be a follower of God in the midst of empire?

            There are those today who say that the United States, as the only remaining superpower, is the latest world empire. Some would say we are there already. Some would say that we may not be there yet, but we are surely on the way. Kevin Philips, one of the most influential conservative political thinkers of this last generation, the man who engineered Nixon’s Sun Belt strategy to win the south to the Republican Party, now says that he is worried, as a conservative, that our whole system is danger. He says:

Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country’s domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion’s new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.

He says that there are three pillars of this new politics: 1. A petroleum-defined national security complex, in which our “vital interests” are tied to the ready availability of Mideast oil; 2. A debt-driven and reckless credit-feeding national financial complex; and 3. A crusading and simplistic Christianity, with its end times theology of the Holy Lands as the battleground of Christian destiny, and the repeated assertions that we are a Christian nation. I happened to watch a speech on C-Span last week in which Mr. Tom DeLay himself discoursed on the history of the United States as a Christian nation, citing our many Christian presidents as proof of this. At one point he said that Madison must have seen America this way because it was Madison wrote the United States Constitution, and he was a praying Christian.

            In the Bible the idea of empire goes beyond any policy or political doctrine.  Empire is, in biblical terms, a kind of spiritual entity. St. Paul talked about principalities and powers, thrones and dominions – and he used these terms to indicate real, yet somehow invisible forces of domination that must be resisted and transformed by prayer. Empire wants to consume each of us – body and soul. Empire wants to believe in it – to trust it, to have faith in it. It is said that President William Howard Taft fell to his knees in prayer and asked God whether we should annex the Philippines. Was it God or the spirit of empire that answered “Yes.” Since empires are about domination, we are asked to trust in the power of force - whether it be the collective force of invasion, or the individual force of coercion bordering even on torture. People of faith have opposed this in the face of many empires. Lord Acton famously said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is noteworthy that John Acton was a nineteenth century Catholic lay person who leveled fierce criticism at both the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the supporters of the British Empire.

            At a recent talk given at the National Cathedral, scholar and catholic layman, Garry Wills, stressed that in the strictest sense Jesus cannot be seen as political. No party or cause can claim the teachings of Jesus as the basis of a party platform – conservative or liberal, or for any particular policy or piece of legislation. To do so is simply an attempt to co-opt religion for our own preconceived ideologies. How then do the words of Jesus speak to our time? Wills says that it is only Jesus’ prophetic words that apply:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me…Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these my sisters and brothers, you did it to me. (Matthew 25)

            I believe that Christians are always called, in the face of empire’s agenda of domination and force, to be with these least among us. In a sense that is where our Christian “politics” - if we even use the word – begins and ends. For example, in the ferocious and complex debate on immigration, Christians must look beyond the presenting problems. In a world of huge gaps between the rich and the poor, when power and resources are controlled by the few, when rich nations sit right next to poor nations, of course, there will be border problems. Those who tolerate extremes of wealth and poverty and ignore the human consequences, make border problems inevitable. Just as those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.

            Holy Week means that Christians must choose which procession we participate in. The procession led by the representatives of power and control, or the rag-tag procession led by a man whose kingdom is one of peace. One procession embodying self-justifying self-interest, or the other celebrating God’s interest of non-violence, peace, inclusion, and the conscious rejection of worldly power. One is about the kingdom of this world, and the other about a kingdom not of this world. The Kingdom of the hard of heart, or the Kingdom of the broken-hearted.

            Scholar of world religions, Karen Armstrong said this recently:

 “Being spiritual means allowing your heart to break…allow(ing) the pain to break you open. Then you can begin your quest. Because that’s when you can learn compassion. If you shield yourself from suffering as a lot of our society is set up to, then it’s hard to relate to suffering in others. Once you discover what it is that gives you pain, then you must refuse under any circumstances to inflict that pain on others...Christianity is about looking at other people’s point of view. It’s ‘kenosis,’ or emptying of the self. It means you have to dethrone yourself from the center of your world and put others there.”

            What kind of king led that counter-procession, and what does it mean to follow him? St. Paul said it best:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. (Philippians 2).

            Holy Week begins in the triumph of Palm Sunday. It comes to its climax on Good Friday, when empire acts decisively to have the last word and end the story. But, this is God’s story, there is much more to come. 

AMEN

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