Ken Sehested
Parade. Palestinian band escorting the Orthodox Patriarch on Palm Sunday from The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
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Kindred, we stand on the cusp of Jesus’ final, “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem; his rhetorical jousting with religious authorities; culminated by his inevitable confrontation with Rome’s rulers and the Temple’s bouncers.
Would that “getting right with God” were a more civil, reputation-enhancing, and less disruptive affair.
Instead, Lent beckons us to peer into the face of history’s tragedies, including those in our own hearts.
In response to Jesus’ provocative entry into Jerusalem, the crowds lining the street covered the road with cloaks and “branches,” probably palms, objects of public recognition for royalty and often symbols of military victory in Near Eastern cultures.
This clamor was an incendiary challenge to ruling elites and foreign occupation. Hosanna! More than entreaty for blessing and peace in the immortal bye-and-bye. This street theater evoked expectation of both spiritual redemption and national liberation. Hosanna! meant come and liberate from history’s constrictions.
Passover observance in Jerusalem brought extra garrisons of Roman soldiers to town to suppress outbreaks of Jewish nationalist agitation. On what the church has since named “Palm Sunday,” Jesus is riding on a lowly donkey, not something that a military leader would do. (But is, in fact, referenced in the prophet Zechariah (9:9) as a messianic sign.)
We know from other sources, that Judea’s collaborating King Herod also paraded into Jerusalem this same week, from the other side, and he is wearing his elaborate armor, displaying his deadly weapons, and riding a war horse. Jerusalem thus became the stage of paraded and competing claims on the nature of power.
The crowd proclaimed Jesus as “Son of David” or merely “King,” both references to Israel’s King David who personified the golden age of national splendor. These demonstrators did not comprehend the nuance of Jesus’ upside-down intervention.
Nor, as yet, did his disciples.
Nor, as yet, largely, do we.
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Passion. “If it be your will, that I speak no more / And my voice be still, as it was before / I will speak no more, I shall abide until / I am spoken for, if it be your will / If it be your will, that a voice be true / From this broken hill, I will sing to you / From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will, to let me sing.” —“If It Be Your Will,” Leonard Cohen
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In the coming week, we face Maundy’s mandate and Friday’s calamity . . . and, well, Saturday’s betwixt-and-between daze and discomposure of Jesus’ disciples and revelers. Then and now, the dominant culture remained confident in the security of the tomb’s immovable stone and the legionnaires’ vigilance over its irrevocable seal.
Best not bank on resurrection’s circumvention of death’s ascendance and terror’s reign. Few doubt the market’s rule enforced by the sword’s regime.
Be clear about this: There is no bystanding in this drama. There is no skipping Maundy’s directive and Friday’s threat on the way to Sunday’s Uprising. No leap from crib to cross to Crown of Glory.
In prosperous cultures like ours, voyeurism is the great pretender as an agency of spiritual formation. Titillation substitutes for texture and substance. The quest for emotional novelties, intellectual baubles, and experiential souvenirs displacing incarnation’s fleshly ordeal.
In my native West Texas idiom, a pretend rancher would be described as “all hat and no cows.” You can dress the part without engaging the reality. “Spirituality” as levitation from history’s crucifying peril. The luxury of hope’s assurance severed from the context of threat. Singing the blues without paying the dues. The pretense of faith despite no back against any wall.
Holy Week epitomizes the story of history’s brutal affliction upended and overturned by Heaven’s insurgence. Good Friday is good not because of what it displays but because of what it foreshadows.
Easter’s eruption is our hymn of invitation to join this mutiny. There is no “getting right with God,” there’s only getting soaked. Only the passion opens onto the Spirit’s efficacy. In a suffering world, only a suffering God is believable. The Way is enjoined by imitating the One we adore.
Let this be our adoration. Let this be our testimony to Heaven’s insurrection for Earth’s reclamation. In the words of an old proverb, let this be our eulogy: They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.
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Promulgation. “I was there when they crucified my Lord / I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword / I threw the dice when they pierced his side / But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide / When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that train / When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame / Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down / But I did what I did before love came to town.” —“When Love Comes to Town,” U2 and B.B. King
9 April 2025 • On the occasion of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s execution, eight days following Easter’s observance in 1945
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