The Stones Would Cry Out!

Psalm 118: 19 - 29

Luke 19: 28 - 40

Palm Sunday

April 13, 2025

When I grew up, Palm Sunday had a warm and fuzzy feel to it. To be fair, I don’t remember how our pastor addressed it in sermons. As children, we were always gone to Sunday School before we got to that part of the service. But the opening to Palm Sunday worship always had a party feel to it.

We had a big, spectacular processional opening. All of the children in Sunday School would be at the head of the processional entrance. The opening hymn that was sung as we all came in was often about the children – as ours just was. We all waved palm branches. We were often given crosses made from woven branches that usually didn’t survive Sunday School.

Palm Sunday was just this great, warm, exciting beginning to Holy Week. Special parts. Special music. Special palms – everything was just warm and loving and certainly anticipated the lilies, brass, tympany drums and grandeur of Easter.

I wonder if Jesus would recognize the Palm Sunday of my youth.

It is the first day of the week leading up to Passover. Jerusalem, home of the Temple, the destination for the three great, mandatory Pilgrim Feasts of Judaism, Jerusalem had swelled from its more typical population of 60 to 100,000 to well over 250,000. The hillsides surrounding Jerusalem, including to the west, would have been dotted with encampments of pilgrims who had been unable to find lodging within the city.

Passover was a time when emotions ran high with revolutionary zeal. It was unavoidable. As a worship feast celebrating Israel’s freedom from Egyptian slavery and oppression, it was a natural religious leap to desire a similar freedom in their day from Roman occupation. What better time to start the revolution than Passover? It was a perfect context for overthrow….. and the Romans knew it!

Judea had long been a troublesome province. Originally governed by the nominally Jewish and appointed Herod the Great; after his death, his son Archelaus was appointed governor. The governorship of Archelaus was so oppressive that Emperor Augustus deposed Archelaus to avoid a Jewish revolt and instead opted for direct Roman rule of Judea as a province.

Judea was considered a third-class imperial province that, while deemed to be unimportant for size, location, or revenue it was viewed as problematic to rule. Judea merited, in the eyes of the Romans, only a mid-level official with mid-level capabilities to ensure continued monies directed to Rome. As governor, Pilate had five infantry cohorts and one calvary regiment under his command to maintain the peace. Judea was under the administrative oversight of the governor of Syria. From Syria, Pilate could seek additional Roman troops if necessary.

Jesus was coming from the east, as Jewish tradition suggested the Messiah would. He has spent the night at the home of his friend Lazarus in Bethphage and now, on this first day of the week leading to Passover, Jesus has come, in fulfillment of prophecy from Zechariah 9, riding a donkey.

Over the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley, passed thousands of Passover pilgrims – and Roman soldiers – Jesus has come in a grand entrance. Jesus, the miracle worker, the performer of wonders and signs, a constant thorn in the side of the professionally religious, one who has just raised Lazarus – and others – from the dead, this Jesus is here.

Entering this cauldron of religious and political fervor, it is not hard to view the entrance of Jesus as the beginning of the end. The end of foreign occupation. The end of burdensome taxes. The end of the blasphemy of the Roman religious cult. The end…… and the beginning, the restoration of Israel as the covenant people.

The crowds get it. Look at what they are saying. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna, save us!” Cloaks are laid on the ground, palm branches are waived in anticipation of an incoming king. A king, a Messiah, the Christ!

The crowd is not simply welcoming another pilgrim to Jerusalem, even a well-known pilgrim. They are not simply welcoming a foreign dignitary or an esteemed big-wig from up north. No, Jesus comes in from the east in accordance to Jewish messianic expectations, astride a donkey in accordance with Old Testament prophecy, having completed signs and wonders, and as a descendant of the royal household of David.

Not everyone in the crowd is happy. Religious officials, seeing the messianic overtones, hearing the royal chants, sensing the passion of those welcoming Jesus, are afraid. And with good reason. Soldiers are worried about maintaining peace.

Jewish pilgrims and not the only ones on the scene. While not mentioned in scripture, we know from Romans texts of the day that the first day of the week before Passover was not only a time when a messiah from Galilee might enter; it was also when Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, would arrive from his home in Caesarea Maritima and take up residence for Passover in the Antonia Fortress adjacent to the Temple.

On this first day, the same day as Jesus comes from the east, Pontius Pilate is coming from the west.

If the only picture we had of Pilate was from the Bible, we might think that Pilate was simply overwhelmed by the persuasive power of the professionally religious, a noble – even thoughtful man - who was truly distressed by the choice put in front of him: life or death for Jesus.

Unfortunately for Pilate, we also have the record of history. There are those who regard Pilate as the bloodiest, most antisemitic ruler of all the Roman governors of the province of Judea. Pilate was the only governor who continually and intentionally violated the Roman policy of treating the Jewish religion with respect as a means to keep the peace. Pilate was a passionate member of the Emperor Cult which held that the Roman emperor himself was the son of god. The Jewish refusal to bow to statues of Caesar was blasphemous in the eyes of Pilate. Pilate’s reign was so brutish and murderous that finally even Tiberius Caesar had heard enough.

Just a few years after the death of Jesus, Pilate would be recalled by Rome. Tiberius was upset and Pilate was lost to the unknown pages of history. To quote Dr. Fritz Ritsch from Texas, “The Pontius Pilate of history is not the noble, conflicted, sympathetic bureaucrat of the Bible. The Pilate of history was a bully, pure and simple. He was an Emperor Cult fundamentalist, and antisemite, and apparently not bright enough to learn from his own mistakes.” I would simply add to that description that Pilate was casually murderous of hundreds under his charge.

From the west, over the hills and across the valleys of the west, through hundreds if not thousands of pilgrims camping there comes Pontius Pilate from Caesarea Maritima in all of his Imperial glory. Listen to how Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, in their book The Last Week, describe the triumphal entry of Pilate very differently than the Gospel writers describe that of Jesus.

“A visual panoply of imperial power: calvary on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles 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 the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.”

Imperial Rome in all of its power has arrived. Pilate, a brutal and bloody ruler is at its symbolic head. Two entries. Two leaders. One crowd silent. One crowd shouting wildly. One side is committed to maintaining the status quo by any means necessary. The other side – some shouting for a conquering Messiah, but others more interested in bringing in the Kingdom of God. One coming in through the front gate in all its imperial power and the other coming in from a back gate with a new vision for kingdom dwellers.

The contrast could not have been sharper. The choice between the two……. has eternal significance. Do you see why I wonder if Jesus would recognize the warm, fuzzy, loving, and safe Palm Sunday of our day?

Friends, I wonder if it isn’t time to recapture the counter-intuitive, earthly kingdom and power challenging of the real, biblical Jesus? I wonder if it isn’t time to allow Jesus to speak with his own powerful, life changing and culturally radical voice instead of the politically co-opted Jesus of our day? I wonder if this week we shouldn’t be wondering about which triumphal entry we would have honestly wanted to participate in – that of Jesus or Pilate?

Dear Ones, this is also part of the reason why I so strongly encourage you to go on the full ride of Holy Week. It is far too easy to keep Palm Sunday warm and fuzzy if we forget that there was a competing parade. It is far too easy to jump from palm branches to lilies if we choose to forget the differences between the Roman kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God.

Palm Sunday gives us choices….. oh, such very, very important choices. May we come to Friday and the Empty Tomb of Sunday having made the right ones. Amen.