Palm Sunday, 2007
“Crowd Communion and Holy Communion”
I got to college just in time to still take part in a few anti-war demonstrations towards the end of the Vietnam war. I was a country girl, raised on the Bible, and contrary to the people who raised me, I had come to the conclusion that Jesus was the Peace of God for all. In my part of the country, that perspective was at best, idealistic, and at worst suspect of being communist. So with the gospels in tow, I got to UCSD campus, and found out that I didn’t quite fit with the Jesus groups, nor did I really fit with the political groups. But I was passionately against war, and so I headed off for my first anti-war rally in downtown San Diego. Now some of you might remember those days. Big marches. Lots of signs. Crowds of people marching for miles and miles. Crowds. It was exciting. It seemed a little dangerous. You could see what we thought were marksmen up on the tops of the buildings with their rifles trained on the crowds below. Uncertain as to what the crowd might do … and with good reason, because crowds are uncertain. Like tinderboxes – open to contagion. I remember a message sweeping through the crowd that day. A portion of the group was going to split off and do something. What that something was I never really found out – except it was mayhem of one kind or another. Mostly I remember a couple of things – the feeling of comraderie, of being a part of something much larger than myself, and of how good that felt. And secondly, the shift in perspective. What had felt impossible – stopping the war – felt entirely possible in the midst of the crowd. There was a kind of giving over of independent thinking to the sway and movement of this mass body of people.
Crowds surrounded Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem as a king of the people. Hosanna! Hosanna! Save us! Save us! This wasn’t the cry of praise so much as the cry of a people who were trampled upon by systematic oppression. At least a three way oppression:
Economic – shaped like an inverted triangle, the goods were held by a very small few at the top with masses of people at the bottom living in abject poverty.
Political –At the same time that Jesus was entering the city as a king of the people, regiments of Roman soldiers were also entering the city, with all the trappings of Roman power. Rome controlled this territory and ruthlessly crushed any opposition.
And Religious – the religious authorities legitimated the economics and the politics that kept the vast majority of the people in poverty and despair.
These were the crowds who laid down palm branches and garments and shouted Save us! Save us! as Jesus rode into the capital city of Jerusalem. Jesus had healed their children. Fed them. Taught them about God’s love for them. He was their friend. Their king. Their savior.
Jesus knew that crowds were unpredictable, unstable, and untrustworthy. The gospels repeatedly tell of the crowds that surrounded Jesus for most of his active ministry. But Jesus almost always picked out individuals from among the crowd to speak to, to heal, to forgive. When he taught the people, he sat down. He got the crowd to sit down. He broke through the crowd mentality and connected with large groups of people as people, not as a crowd organism. As he rode into Jerusalem however, he did not do so. “If the crowds were silent, even the stones would break out in praise and pleading.” Jesus arrived at the city in which he would be arrested, convicted and executed. It was the time for the will of the crowds to be done.
But which crowd?
The crowd who called for his crucifixion was not the same crowd that shouted Hosanna along the roads of Jerusalem. The crowd that yelled for Jesus’ blood in the courtyard of Pilate’s palace were the elite who had standing invitations to the palace. This palace crowd, who called for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified, were the temple rulers, the economic powerhouses, the ones who stood the most to lose if the rabble rousing street crowds had their way.
Christians have a sordid history in fixing blame for Jesus’ death. For far far too long, that blame was fixed on Jews – crowds of ordinary Jews who must have been the ones to yell Crucify him, crucify him. My guess is that you are familiar with some of the utter ugliness that has been spawned over the centuries from the desire to crucify others on behalf of the crucified Jesus. Recently Christians have become much more sensitive to blaming Jews – so the focus is now more on blaming the Romans. I have been guilty of that. Even my analysis of the difference in the “crowds” could lead to finding someone to blame. “Ok it wasn’t the ordinary people who turned so quickly from Hosanna to Crucify. It was the elite – the people at the top. The people with all the money and the power. They’re the ones to blame.”
But Jesus came that we might stop pointing fingers altogether. At ourselves. At each other. At God. The truth is that blaming anyone -- Jews, Romans, the Jewish Sanhedrin, Pilate -- that blaming anyone is completely beside the point of this whole story. In fact, when we try to blame anyone, we are exactly missing the point. For the Christian Gospel isn't about this group or that group needing forgiveness. It's not about this person or that person needing forgiveness. It's about all of us needing forgiveness -- not just the persons there that fateful Good Friday, but about every crowd of persons through the ages who have needed scapegoats to come together.*
Scapegoats are the glue that holds crowds together. In the Vietnam marches, it was Nixon – or whoever was the President then. For the crowds that carried signs like “My country. Love it or leave it” the scapegoat was anyone with long hair or a peace sign. In Luke's Gospel, Pilate sends Jesus to the Jewish king Herod, and Herod sends him back, to which Luke observes, "That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies (Luke 23:12)." Jesus’ passion begins with his becoming the scapegoat that unites former enemies. He becomes the enemy.
We have witnessed this kind of thing happening in our own country. After the presidential elections, our country was estranged from one another – bitterly so – and yet for awhile, after 9/11, all Americans became united against a common enemy. Having someone to blame unites a crowd, at least for awhile, and it has been that way for virtually all of human history. Scapegoats is what ritual blood sacrifice was about for thousands of years of human community. That’s what war is still about today.
And truth be told, this doesn’t just happen in nations and crowds. It happens personally as well. If you’re like me, it’s easy to think you’ll feel better if you can just find someone to blame when things aren’t going well. And the worse things are, the more you want to find where to put the blame.
But Jesus’ passion shows us another way. Jesus’ passion gives us an alternative to communion with each other that doesn’t rely on blaming anyone. Jesus, the Lamb of God gave himself up to our sacrificial slaughters. The Lamb of God took away the Sin of the world, that song we sing after the bread is broken - because our Risen Lord is our means of Holy Communion. In other words, our way of communion, our way of having peace since the beginning of human societies, doesn't have to be our way of communion any longer. In the Lamb of God and his forgiveness we have a new source of peace for a Holy Communion, a new way of coming together as human beings which doesn't have to be over against anyone else.” *
Yesterday, the church doors were open from 9 in the morning to 9 at night for an interfaith peace prayer vigil. Sometimes there were as few as three people here. Sometimes there were as many as twelve here. Neighbors came. One young man stayed for four hours, and whispered do you think there will ever be peace in the world? Some cried as they came to the microphone to speak poignantly of their longing for peace. Many lit a candle. No crowds. No bullhorns. No blame. Just the longings of parishioners, of neighbors, of friends, of people we didn’t know, for God’s peace to blossom in hearts and homes and nations around the world.
This is the peace that Jesus brought. The peace of a Holy Communion that reaches out in love and forgiveness without blame or revenge. You and I have been baptized into that Holy Communion – and we are fed and nourished in this new way of peace. But not simply for our own comfort. We are fed and nourished so that we can serve the Lamb of God as witnesses to this new way of peace in the world. This Holy Communion. This holy way of coming together as God's children, as all of God's children.*
Resources:
The Last Week, by John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, published by Harper San Francisco, 2006
*paraphrases and quotes from Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Palms/Passion C, by Paul Nuechterlein & Friends http://girardianlectionary.net/year_c/passion_c.htm
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