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by Ken Sehested
Maundy Thursday 2019

        The week beginning with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter Eve is arguably the most volatile and conflicted period on the liturgical calendar. Even the lectionary suggestions for Scripture readings gives the options of celebrating a coronation or lamenting a crucifixion. Do we give priority to the cross or the crown?

§  §  §

        The Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is filled with obvious references to religious-inspired revolutionary fervor. His choice of riding a donkey (instead of a stallion, the typical transport of royalty and military leaders) is, on the one hand, a form of satire on the nature of power. But it was also a form of theater linking his upside down kingship claim dating back to the sixth century BCE Prophet Zechariah, where God promises a donkey-mounted king who will “cut off the chariot . . . and the war horse from Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea . . . to the ends of the earth” (9:9-10).

            We should remember that it was no coincidence that the Gospel writers chose words like “Lord,” “Savior,” “Son of God” and “Prince of Peace” to account Jesus’ birth narratives. These exact same terms were also used of the great Caesar Augustus, ruler of the Roman Empire during that period. These narratives are evidence of the serious ideological conflict between the contrasting visions pitting the Reign of God with the rulers of this world. [1]

§  §  §

        We know from many sources that Rome’s signature brand was to offer religious “freedom” to its conquered peoples, but only insomuch as these peoples’ piety remained silent on empire’s dominion.

        Many inscriptions describing Caesar’s divine status can still be found. On some of those artifacts you can read about the Caesar’s “gospel”—literally, euaggelia, the same root word in Greek we Christians use when we speak of evangelism.

        Jesus’ highly symbolic entrance into Jerusalem—the theological center of the biblical world—also fulfills the first century prophecy of the Hebrew priest, Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer, who on learning of Mary’s pregnancy, forecast the coming of Messiah and the global peace proclaimed by this humble prince, fulfilling the angels’ song in Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward people!”

        Glory, to God . . . and peace, for the earth, are inextricably bound. Heaven’s righteous insurgency unfolds as earth’s just ordering.

§  §  §

        Clearly, Jesus was linking his mission with the foundational Jewish memory of the Passover, marking their liberation from Pharaoh’s slave labor force centuries before. Passover was Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, Flag Day, and Fourth of July all rolled into one. Rome dramatically increased its security forces during the season.

        The shouts of “Hosanna” from the crowds gathered for this parade were not exclamations of pious sentiment. It wasn’t “hallelujah,” “praise the Lord,” or “amen!” Hosanna means in Hebrew, “Save us, we beseech you!” And the saving was not merely souls for heaven but the nation from colonial rule. “Hosanna” was holiness manifest in righteous governance.

        Not long after Jesus’ crucifixion there arose in Israel a fanatical band of Zealots, the Sicarii, who carried out political assassinations against both Roman officials and Jewish Temple elite who collaborated with the occupiers, using daggers (sicae) which were easily concealed in cloaks, and perpetrators easily blended in with the throngs crowding Jerusalem’s streets.

        The use of palm fronds lining the roadway is likely an intended reference to the second century BCE Israelite priest and rebel commander Judas Maccabeus, namesake of the revolt against the Seleucid (Hellenist) Empire’s control of Jerusalem and, especially, the cleansing of the Jewish Temple of Greek gods and goddesses portrayals. The coup was successful but short-lived.

§  §  §

        Jesus’ militant overturning of the Temple moneychangers’ tables was not an assault on financial transaction but on economic exploitation of the poor, an obvious recollection of the “jubilee” admonitions in Hebrew Scripture regarding sabbath practices that include the cancellation of debt, land redistribution, and freeing of slaves. The Temple porticos, where money changers charged exorbitant rates to exchange the many foreign pilgrims’ currency to Hebrew shekels (for purchasing sacrificial animals), were a form of hawking access to the holy. (Several decades later, in the Jewish Revolt of 66, one of the first acts in the rebellion against Roman occupation was the burning of the debt records stored in the Temple archives.)

        In other words, Jesus wasn’t lynched because he talked about getting right with God. He was executed in the most brutal way of that day, literally nailed to a tree—right alongside the highway, for all to see—a punishment for which the Roman authorities reserved for political subversives. Crucifixion was an important tactic in Rome’s “war on terror,” designed not so much to kill as to intimidate, dominate, and pacify.

        Pax Christi, the peace of Christ, was (and sometimes still is) a threat to Pax Romana, the “peace” resulting from Roman tyranny.

§  §  §

        The believing community’s choice between marking Holy Week either as coronation or crucifixion has consistently bedeviled its theological vision and discipling presence. Coronators want to crown Jesus as Sovereign in order to put churchly authorities in charge of social order (directly, in some traditions; indirectly, in others). A focus on Jesus’ “passion” typically sets aside history from meaningful attention, turning the drama into a metaphysical transaction, isolating human affairs from the resurrection’s subversive implications.

        In both cases, God comes out looking like a divine child abuser.

        The import of Christianity’s premier season simply dissipates when stripped of its fleshly, corporeal context. Inasmuch as the church’s proclamation skips from Jesus’ crib to his cross to his crown of glory, the defining content of Jesus’s message—his instruction, his healing, his parables, his choice of companions, his preoccupation with the marginalized—become disposable. Then, what passes for church becomes a near-perpetual capital campaign to extend and adorn its sanctuaries—where nothing that troubles Herod is heard again. [2]

        God is not a sadist requiring blood sacrifice to satisfy divine displeasure. Rather, God’s intention—in the incarnate presence of Jesus—intentionally disavows vengeance. [3] The crucifixion was not a premise in divine logic. Jesus’ execution was the conclusion of his seditious life. And it was an explicit repudiation of bloodlust as the enduring arbiter of creation’s order. The passion of Christ, to endure suffering rather than inflict retaliation, is the secret to the resurrection’s power to breach the seemingly insurmountable walls of hostility that have plagued the world ever since the abandonment of Eden.

        This is God’s unilaterally disarming initiative. The Resurrected One’s emergence from the grip of death broadcasts, even today, God’s invitation to likewise walk this Way. [4] It is precisely the Way of the cross that leads home and empties tombs.    

        The failure to love enemies is to hedge on Jesus. We are, as the Apostle said, “baptized into Christ’s death,” implicated by the sedition of our own faithfulness. Thereby we also share in the resurrection and the promised new heaven and new earth, where every tear will be dried and death itself comes undone. [5]

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ENDNOTES

[1] Remember that John the Revelator’s account of history’s culmination, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (11:15).

[2] “We’ll worship the hind legs off Jesus and never do a thing he says.” —Clarence Jordan

[3] “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” —Matthew 26:53

[4 The earliest disciples were simply called “People of the Way.”

[5] cf. Revelation 21:1-4

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Maundy Thursday, 18 April 2019. For more on the meaning of Maundy Thursday, see “Bless are you if you do them: Maundy Thursday’s mandate.”

All linocut art on the page by Julie Lonneman.

*I am indebted to my friend and colleague Joyce Hollyday for some of the insights in this article, stemming from her 14 April 2019 sermon, “Give Us Jesus,” at Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC.

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
6 April 2016

“I shall wrassle me up a future or die trying.”
—Zora Neale Hurston, African-American novelist and folklorist
(and daughter of a Baptist preacher)

        Dustin Johnson is currently at the top of the Official World Golf Ranking. Talking about his talent, both physical and mental, one of his colleagues commented in an ESPN interview, “He’s fearless. It’s like he doesn’t really care if he wins or loses.”

        Obviously, that’s hyperbole. I’m sure Johnson does in fact enjoy winning. But the comment underscores something very important: Maybe Johnson’s greatest asset is not allowing the fear of losing to dominate his play.

        A similar quality of fearlessness is the driver of spiritual formation. It doesn’t literally mean we’re never afraid. Fear—as in caution, of assessing circumstances with eyes wide open—is an instructive capacity. But we humans have a marked tendency to give fear the Number 1 ranking in our repertoire of motivating factors.

§  §  §

        In my own mind, one of the historical narratives that line up in the shadow of Holy Week’s preface to Easter is the story of the colonial Puritan state church’s opinion of their ana/baptist neighbors in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The dissenters were considered “incendiaries of the Commonwealth, and the infectors of persons in matters of religion,” particularly when it came to denying “the ordinances of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war.”

        Rabble-rousers have always and everywhere been a threat to those assuming their governing order reflects Heaven’s blueprint. As the great suffragette Susan B. Anthony said, “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

        These days, given the national pride we take in the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you would think that no one in their right mind would have opposed the Civil Rights Movement. How easily we forget that for years he was surveilled (mostly illegally) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (which considered him “the most dangerous Negro in the country”), the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.

§  §  §

“When asked about the need to complete an overwhelming task, Rabbi Tarfon replied:
‘You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.’”
—Mishnah, Pirkei Avot

§  §  §

        This past week we marked the fiftieth anniversary of King’s watershed speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break the Silence,” where he offered a full-throated objection to the Vietnam War and traced the corrupt triangle of “racism, materialism, and militarism.” His Nobel Peace Prize reputation took a beating. Liberal funding sources dried up. More than a few of his own advisors begged him not to deliver this speech. And mainstream media shushed him.

        •The New York Times, formerly a supporter, ran an editorial, “Dr. King’s Error,” chiding him for linking foreign policy (the US war in Vietnam) with domestic policy.
        •The Washington Post said “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
        •Life magazine called it “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.”
        •Reader’s Digest warned it might provoke an “insurrection.”
        •Even the NAACP, our nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, issued a public statement decrying King’s linkage of the civil rights and anti-war movements.

         Almost never, in our countless King Holiday recitations, do we hear his judgment about "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today—my own government."

§  §  §

        Honoring courage past is forever easier than (and often a substitute for) practicing it presently.

§  §  §

        It has been rightly said that courage is fear that has said its prayers. Disciplined training in faith must not repress fear, which should always have a voice in the heart’s counsel table. But fear shouldn’t be allowed to run the meeting.

        The King James rendition of Paul’s letter to his young associate reads, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The “sound mind” is elsewhere rendered as self-control, discipline, wise discretion.

         There's a difference between being a "fool for Christ" and a garden-variety damn fool. The Gospel is and will always be "foolish" in the eyes of a compromised world; but not all foolishness is Gospel. The work of discernment is never relaxed, bringing reason to work, within the prayerful community of faith, in conversation with Scripture and its interpreted tradition.

         As Jesus instructed the crowd gathered to hear him, “do not fear those who can kill the body (Luke 12:4)—but steer clear of the one who can also snatch the soul as well. In this text, the implied synonym for “soul” is “fearlessness.” The fearful state itself is Gehenna (“hell”).

         Fear is to faith what darkness does when the light comes on.

§  §  §

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
—Kris Kristofferson

§  §  §

        “I’m not fearing any man” Dr. King shouted in his final speech, on the eve of his assassination. I can think of no better way to prepare for Holy Week than listening to King’s “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech in Memphis.* It was an eerily prescient occasion, not unlike Jesus' foresight, in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying while Peter, James and John slept, finally awakening his friends to say "my betrayer is at hand" (Matthew 21:36-46).

        Growing in faith involves bridling fear. The freedom to live fearlessly comes as a result of the conviction that nothing—not even death—can take away anything essential. When Scripture speaks of God’s comfort, the emphasis is not on a pacified emotional condition but on the wellspring of an activated, daring, redemptive presence in a world of threat.

        Indeed, fearing God is the very leverage that allows believers to live fearlessly within all other relations. Such is the prowess of Resurrection’s promise.

§  §  §

"Ain't No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down)"
—"Brother" Claude Ely, performed by Johnny Cash

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*Here are three options for listening to “I Have Been to the Mountaintop”:
        •Complete speech (43:14 audio)
        • Excerpts (22:14) of the speech along with photos, video clips and commentary from some of his colleagues.
        •Brief excerpt of the speech’s key lines. (2:37 video)

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org
Linocut art ©Julie Lonneman

by Ken Sehested
*For more background, see the 11 April 2019 (No. 190) issue of “Signs of the Times.”

        The news was easy to miss. I saw it in several media, but never “above the fold” or in the opening lineup of topics for cable news shows. And there is reason to debate how significant the news is, depending on your level of political optimism or pessimism.

        But the fact that Congress recently voted to exercise its never-before-used War Powers Act to cut off US funding for the Saudi-led  war in Yemen is at least unusual. The face that both the House and the Senate approved the measure is significant; though the margin in the Senate makes it unlikely they can override an anticipated veto by President Trump.

        Created in 1973, after the disclosure of a mountain of governmental lies deployed to sustain the war in Vietnam, the Act was supposed to return to Congress the constitutional mandate for declaring war. The Act has gathered dust ever since, despite the fact that the US has undertaken military action in at least 14 countries since then, including the war in Afghanistan, which has now lasted nearly as long as all our other wars combined.

§  §  §

         The devastation in Yemen is hard to conceive: It is too far away (for us in the West), geographically and emotionally; there are multiple actors involved and a longer history to be accounted; and the US role in the war is largely hidden under layers subcontractors (which is the way empires prefer to exert their power, to maintain plausible deniability when espoused human rights values collide with acts of naked aggression).

        The most immediate cause of the war goes back to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings that changed political landscapes in multiple Arab countries.

        In this case, the minority Houthi people, devotees of the Zaydi branch of Shi’a Islam who live mostly in the country’s northern region (along its border with Saudi Arabia), began an uprising against the country’s repressive government. The rebellion was so successful—in part because of support from Iran’s Shi’a government—that in 2015 Saudi Arabia, Iran’s principal rival in the region, organized a coalition of other Arab governments to fight the Houthi-led anti-government forces.

§  §  §

        One of the supreme ironies in this bloody mess is the fact that, indirectly, the US is funding al-Qaeda, against whom we started the War On Terror following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That organization’s branch on the Saudi Peninsula is also fighting the anti-government forces in Yemen.

        “‘Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen is aiding al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and there is much angst about that,’ said Michael Horton, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation.”

        All parties to the conflict have likely committed war crimes, though in proportion to the very unequal size of their forces.

§  §  §

        The war in Yemen, which multiple international authorities describe as currently the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, has caused untold suffering.

        The war is directly responsible for the deaths of somewhere between 15,000-60,000 people since 2015. It’s hard to get reliable information in an active war zone, in one of the poorest nations on the earth.

        An estimate 85,000 children have died from starvation and easily preventable diseases; another 1.8 million under the age of five suffering acute malnutrition. A cholera outbreak has affected over a million people. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, if the population of Yemen was represented as 100 individuals, 80 need aid to survive, 60 have little to eat, 58 have no access to clean water, 52 have no health care provision, 11 are severely malnourished. To get a sense of the scale of this disaster, project those percentages on to a country of 28 million.

§  §  §

        The US role in the war has been substantial and includes accelerated sale of weapons, intelligence, logistical support, aerial refueling of Saudi (and their allies’) aircraft, and assistance with targeting.

        The most tangible link between US arms and civilian deaths in Yemen came when a CNN photographer found a piece of debris with US markings following the 9 August 2018 bombing of a school bus which killed 40 children, 11 adults, and injured scores more. It was a 500 pound MK 82 laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin. Note: It was laser-guided bomb, acclaimed for its precision, not an unfortunate act of “collateral damage.”

Right above: Remains of the school bus hit by a US bomb; below, bomb fragment.)

        “The US is completely complicit,” said Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. “It’s like a drive-by. You know, if a drive-by shooter has obtained the car and the fuel and the bullets and the map and the surveillance and funding from another entity, then isn’t that other entity pretty complicit? And if the United States cut all that off, it would bring the war to an end within a day.”

            “When a Saudi F-15 warplane takes off from King Khalid air base in southern Saudi Arabia for a bombing run over Yemen, it is not just the plane and the bombs that are American. American mechanics service the jet and carry out repairs on the ground. American technicians upgrade the targeting software and other classified technology, which Saudis are not allowed to touch. The pilot has likely been trained by the United States Air Force.

            “And at a flight operations room in the capital, Riyadh, Saudi commanders sit near American military officials who provide intelligence and tactical advice.

            “‘In the end, we concluded that [the Saudis] were just not willing to listen,’ said Tom Malinowski, a former assistant secretary of state and an incoming member of Congress from New Jersey. ‘They were given specific coordinates of targets that should not be struck and they continued to strike them. That struck me as a willful disregard of advice they were getting.’”

§  §  §

        The US did stop aerial refueling last November, due in large part to the public relations embarrassment in the aftermath of the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. President Trump, who publicly celebrated the jobs created in the US by Saudi Arabia’s arms purchases, has contradicted his own intelligence services who confirm that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman directly ordered Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.

            It is painful to admit that the death of one well-known individual has a greater affect on public policy than the death and suffering of millions. This admission underscores the cruel observation of Joseph Stalin, former mass murdering premier of the Soviet Union, who quipped, “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”

§  §  §

            To be sure, to fully explore the causation of the war in Yemen requires a longer historical lens. Support for the Saudi-led war was originally supported by President Obama, though Trump has knocked over a number of the guard rails previously in place to reduce the carnage. And remember, Obama’s authorization of 500+ drone strikes, some in Yemen, far and away exceeded those authorized by his predecessor, George W. Bush.

            Drone strikes stretch the distance between predator and prey, making it more palatable for the former to act without regret. The increasingly sophisticated technology of war creates a new moral compass: the further from the actual blood, the easier to sustain unburdened by ethical qualms.

            An even longer view of the war in Yemen goes back more than a century, when in 1916 Britain and France literally drew the current boundaries in the Middle East, abruptly severing historical kinships based on tribal, religious, and familial ties. It was a World War I military tactic, whereby Arab leaders were promised independence if they would revolt against their Ottoman Empire rulers.

            Moreover, to understand much of the conflict in the Middle East, including Yemen, requires attention to the repressive rule of Arab monarchs themselves, who often made self-interested deals with colonial powers for the extraction of natural resources, oil in particular. It is this corruption that provides a key motivating factor to the rise of revolutionary groups like al-Qaeda (whose jihadist heirs were financed by the US in places like Soviet-occupied Afghanistan) and the Islamic State (which spawned out of the bloodletting and chaos caused by the US invasion of Iraq).

§  §  §

            Though it likely wasn’t intended, a recent “Garfield” the cat cartoon by Jim Davis brilliantly summarizes the history of Western nations’ colonial foreign policy in three frames.

            Garfield, thinking to himself, first says “I’ve decided to give back to the world.” Then, “But first . . . I’m going to take a bunch of stuff.”

§  §  §

        “Since 1980,” writes Jeff Faux, “we have invaded, occupied and/or bombed at least 14 different Muslim countries. After the sacrifice of thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars, the region is now a cauldron of death and destruction. Yet, we persist, with no end in sight. As former Air Force General Charles F. Wald told the Washington Post, ‘We're not going to see an end to this in our lifetime. . . .’

        “The rationale here is embarrassingly circular—we must remain in the Middle East to protect against terrorists who hate America because we are in the Middle East.”

        When it comes to foreign affairs (in particular), most do not realize that, more often than not, our nation’s economic interests eclipse our humane political values. It’s not that there are no charitable impulses to be recognized and applauded. They are surely there. But typically these are preceded or displaced or overruled by errant, even vicious self-interest.

§  §  §

            I am aware of how frustrating it is to call attention to such tragedies while offering little that can be done in response (e.g., charitable giving to relief organizations, contacting legislators, etc.). It is at least as bad for writers to pile on guilt as it is for readers to remain indifferent.

Right: "Peaceable Kingdom" painting by John August Swanson.

            Guilt is not the issue; in fact, it is a dodge. At least in the common meaning of that word, guilt merely assuages responsibility; it does not unleash the freedom needed to make alternate choices and demand different public policies.

            Odd as it may sound, the incitement to such freedom is the intention of Lenten observance now underway in the Christian community. Lent’s invitation is to pay close attention, even when it’s discomforting; to strip away the accretions of self-possessed living; to encourage penitential denouncement of miserly habits to make space for regenerate, neighborly response in the midst of history’s degenerate affairs.

            Lent reminds us that sometimes a no must be said before yes can be uttered. A kind of dying must occur before the living—for which we were made—can be undertaken.

            Before Easter’s resurrectionary profession can be made, a certain insurrectionary practice must be launched. To be enlisted in such a movement is not the achievement of valiant willfulness or moral heroism. Such virtues are noteworthy; but first we must fall in love, to be captivated by what Dr. King referred to as the Beloved Community, enrapture by a beatific vision, to the dream of Creation’s purpose and Recreation’s promise.

            These can be accessed only by paying close, risky attention to the underside of history: to the forgotten places, to the overlooked tragedies, to the frail, the frightened, the vulnerable, which call us to compassionate proximity.

            That’s why Yemen matters. It is a mirror reflecting who we are; but also a reminder of whom, and by Whom, we are invited to accompany.

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©ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

by Ken Sehested
A 2018 Maundy Thursday sermon

        Last Friday several of the youth in our congregation joined several others from another congregation in our city, making the long drive to Washington, DC, to take part in Saturday’s “March For Our Lives” rally against gun violence.

        My wife Nancy, Circle of Mercy’s co-pastor, met them at the rendezvous point to offer a blessing on their journey. She said two things.

Right: Rev. David McNair, rector of Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, making a sign for use in the “March For Our Lives” march against gun violence, Washington, DC, which included youth from his church and from Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC

        First, she urged these young ones to understand this journey as a protest against existing public policy. This is part of what disciples do: Saying no to current arrangements where benefits flow to some while costs are borne by others. Getting in the way of such mayhem is part of our vocation.

        One of the ironies of faith-based servanthood is it sometimes requires us to be a nuisance, to disturb the peace when maintaining “peace” is a cover for injustice.

        Servanthood is not servility. (This is among our greatest confusions.) Wielding the towel and basin, as Jesus did in John’s account of the last supper, does not mean becoming a doormat for use by others to wipe their feet.

        Second, Nancy reminded them that on the night before his trial, where he was arrested while praying in the Mount of Olives, one of Jesus’ disciples grabbed a sword and cut off the ear of the chief priest’s slave. Jesus, restoring the man’s ear, said to his disciples, “No more of this!” (cf. Luke 22:51), which became our youth’s chant during the march.

        “You are going to our nation’s center of power to say ‘no more of this!’ Nancy told these pilgrims.

        Under the sway of Easter bunnies, chocolate binges, and spring fashion sales, Holy Week and Resurrection Morning observances have shed almost all connections to the volatile political events in Jerusalem leading up to Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into the city.

Left: Circle of Mercy members Kenzie Bell and Beth Maczka washing the feet of Rev. Angela Hernández, pastor of Iglesia Getsemani, Camagüey, Cuba. For more about this story see Kiran Sigmon's “While washing my daughter’s feet.”

        The season of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem was the fevered occasion of Passover. Passover was the story of the Hebrews’ miraculous escape from Egyptian bondage. Passover’s observance in first century Palestine was like President’s Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day all rolled up into one. The Jews were again in bondage, this time subjugated by Roman occupation. Jews from around the countryside streamed into Jerusalem for reasons of piety mixed with nationalist fervor. Rome ramped up its troop level every year at this time.

        Acts of terrorist assassination escalated during the Passover observance. Some Jewish Zealots—known as the Sicarii, armed with sicae, small daggers that could be hidden in their cloaks—attacked both Roman leaders and members of the Jewish Temple elite who collaborated with their Roman overlords.

        Remember what the people shouted as Jesus, mounted on a donkey—an intentional act of satire against the assumptions of military prowess conveyed by the war horse—paraded into the city to be met by cheering crowds who laid palm branches in the street, a common symbol of victory, peace, and triumph among ancient Near East populations.

        “Hosanna,” cried the people lining the parade route. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our Lord! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna.”

        These shouts were thinly-veiled expressions of political subversion, with the memory of the mighty King David brought to bear against the Roman Caesar Augustus’ chokehold on the nation.

Right: Pope Francis washes the foot of a woman during the foot-washing ritual at the Castelnuovo di Porto refugees centre (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP). In previous years, Francis has observed Maundy Thursday by washing the feet of prisoners, the elderly and people with disabilities. Shortly after his election as pope in 2013, the pontiff made waves by including women in his foot washing ceremony at a juvenile detention center. Prior to Francis, the long standing papal tradition was that the Pope only washes the feet of priests. —for more see Antonia Blumberg, “Pope Francis Washes Refugees’ Feet in Catholic Ritual,” huffingtonpost

        The word “hosanna” isn’t merely a pious expression. It’s not like saying “Amen,” “Hallelujah,” or “Thank-you-Jesus!” The word “hosanna” means “come and liberate us!” It expresses the hope for martial intervention, for achieving political independence, authored by none other than the Creator of heaven and earth, the One who sponsored Abram and Sarai’s trek to the Promised Land, the One who empowered Moses to organize the Hebrews’ flight from Pharaoh’s slavery, the One who ransomed Judah from Babylonian bondage, the One invoked by the Prophets to indict Israel’s failure to practice justice in the marketplace, righteousness in the judiciary, faithfulness in the legislature.

        There is of course profound spiritual significance in Good Friday’s brutal arrest, torture, and trial—resulting in Jesus’ execution by crucifixion, an explicitly political form of state-sponsored terrorism designed to repress revolutionary violence—along with the seditious drama of Sunday’s rolled-away stone. But it is a spirituality which informs and reforms social, political, and economic norms. Throughout Scripture, the indwelling of the Spirit traffics in fleshly affairs.

        The starting point for this drama, though, occurs on Maundy Thursday, setting the stage for everything else.

        In some parts of the church, Holy Week’s Maundy Thursday service is one where the Jesus’ initiative in washing his disciples’ feet is replicated. “Maundy” (mandatum in Latin) means mandate, commission, injunction.

        The story is unique to John’s Gospel (13:1-17), the Eucharistic account that has no ritual eating and drinking. We are only told that “during supper” Jesus abruptly takes up a towel and basin of water and begins to wash his friends’ feet. Such washing was a common act of hospitality for hosts in a dusty land trod by sandaled feet. We don’t know why this hadn’t happened before the meal. If I were guessing, I’d say no one wanted to do this because none of the disciples wanted to be in Jerusalem in the first place. They knew the danger to Jesus implicated them as well.

        When he finished, Jesus used the occasion for his final instruction: “If I, your Teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one anothers' feet.” This is Maundy Thursday’s mandate. It was a form of anointing his disciples to enact a reversal of the world’s understanding of power. The righteousness of Heaven’s purpose involves caring for neighbors, particularly the vulnerable, not lording over them. Indeed, naming Jesus as “Lord” disrupts and undermines all forms of lording.

        But how is this annulment to be accomplished? By moral heroism? By accentuating the positive? By saintly disposition? By extraordinary feat of willpower?

        Notice the odd question Jesus asks his friends in the middle of his teaching. “Do you know what I have done to you?”

        In his presence, we have been acted upon. By his power we are no longer autonomous, belonging only to ourselves, putting our own welfare before all others. We do not become (as the marketing gods insist) consumers for whom “freedom” means the choice between cable or satellite, Mac or PC, window or aisle.

        Servanthood in the manner of Jesus involves relinquishing private interests in favor of covenant ties to the welfare of the community. St. Augustine famously said, “We imitate whom we adore.” At the core of our faith, the privilege-abandoning Jesus is the cipher for the self-abandoning character of God’s love, inviting and empowering us to participate in that self-giving nature.

Left: Art by Steve Erspamer.

        Short of Maundy’s mandate, Friday’s agony is little more than divine ransom (as if God was in the bartering business); the joy of Sunday’s empty tomb, little more than the reassertion of divine gloating.

        Capacity for living beyond rancorous human competition has been bestowed. We are freed to wash because we have been washed; to forgive because we have been forgiven; to live graciously because grace is loosening the knots of self-absorbed greed in our own souls. The process of conversion, which is a lifetime appointment, is a form of divine photosynthesis: receiving the light of the Beloved’s delight to regenerate the verdant fields of creation’s intention for shared bounty and extravagant endowment.

        In the Jesus story, there is no behavioral gap between believing and doing. “If you know these things,” Jesus says, “blessed are you if you do them.”

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©ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org

• “Realm of earth, rule of Heaven: Bodified faith and environmental activism," an essay

• "Earth Day: The link between Easter and Pentecost," a meditation

• “All People That On Earth Do Dwell,” old hymn, new lyrics

• “Earth’s habitus: A meditation on creation,” a poem

• “Heaven’s Delight and Earth’s Repose,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 145

• “Satisfy the earth,” a litany for worship on Earth Day

• “The earth is satisfied,” a litany for worship on Earth Day

• "Go out in joy," a litany for worship adapted from St. Francis' "Canticle of the Sun" and related Scripture texts

• “Covenant-making on Earth Day”

• “The earth is the Lord’s," a collection of biblical texts which reveal the non-human parts of creation responding to God’s presence, promise and purpose

• “The earth is the Lord’s,” a litany for use in worship on Earth Day

• “Pacem in terris,” a poem for Earth Day

• “Set our hearts on fire,” a litany for worship inspired by Psalm 65

•  “Life began in a garden,” a collection of quotes on gardents

• “Holy Great Smokies,” a call to worship recalling the mountain sites of covenant and confrontation in Scripture

©ken sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org