Blog

Matthew 21:5

Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Matthew 21:5)

Procession

Some of the earliest acts of Christian worship are processions, processions and Eucharist. Considering the words of Jesus, you might guess it would become Foot Washing, Table Fellowship, and maybe Baptism. We get processions because early in the practice of the church, Christians traced the final walk of Jesus from his betrayal to his crucifixion to his burial. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, travels to Muslim controlled Jerusalem and finds there buildings marking a pilgrims’ way, and practices of procession from place to place.

I love a procession for one reason. The Palm Sunday procession is a commemoration of a turning upside down, a carnival like mocking of the Imperial Roman procession that John Dominic Crossan writes would have been entering Jerusalem from the other side of the city at exactly the same time as Jesus’s shamble of a tiny horse ride. Rome’s procession of military might to keep Jerusalem calm during their festival would have been designed to intimidate. Jesus’s procession was designed to liberate, to fulfill the prophecy that God would return to God’s people and free them. How is a man on a little animal supposed to do that? Maybe the prophecy that the new Moses would ride in on a colt meant for after the battles were over, after the peace had been negotiated.

But, Jesus had been a miracle worker, a healer. He had inspired us with his promises. We saw ourselves in his parable. He has changed us, maybe his gentle, revolutionary provocation would be miraculous as well, some might have thought? Like a choice to go out on the street today, some came and dropped their cloaks, and reached up to tear down palm leaves and throw them in his path, fulfilling the prophecy with their actions. Claiming the dreams of generations, for freedom and peace for their people. We remember in our processions. May we enter this most holy week with dreams of freedom in our eyes, improbable as they are. God has promised.