Years ago, when I was just a wee lad forced to sit still and be quiet in church, my mother's glare ready at a moment's notice to warn me when I had strayed over the boundary of correct behavior, the minister of my home church, First UMC, Sayre, PA, preached a Palm Sunday I have never forgotten, with a lesson whose meaning has only deepened over time as I consider its implications. The Rev. Richard H. Schuster (d) preached a sermon with the disquieting theme that all those folks gathered on Sunday to cheer the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem were also in the mobs on Friday morning shouting "Crucify him!", when Pilate, seeking a way out of the dilemma within which he was caught, tried to fob Jesus off onto the mob. The mob, it would seem, preferred the successful revolutionary Barabbas (a name that is a play on words; in Hebrew and Aramaic, "Barabbas" means "Son of the father" - the crowd wanted the fake son of the father rather than the Son of the Heavenly Father) rather than the unsuccessful revolutionary.
He drew our attention to this fact recalling how all of us waved our palm branches during the opening procession. We are the crowd that welcomes Jesus into Jerusalem. We are the ones who stand in the mob and demand his death five days later.
Why would he want to do this, go and spoil all that triumphal Palm Sunday fun? For me, over the years as I have continued to think on Rev. Schuster's words, I have become convinced that he was serving us a warning. We must not separate ourselves from that mob - most especially not call them "Jews" and blame them for Jesus' death - but demand we participate with them, and ask ourselves what would prompt us to act in such a despicable way. We can call it all sorts of things, original sin, human depravity, mob psychology, but the truth is the same regardless of how we describe it. We are always disappointed when our heroes turn out to be different from the way we imagine them or picture them. Jesus was revolutionary, make no mistake about that. He was not revolutionary in the way people wanted him to be, however. He had no desire to tear the Roman eagle from the top of the Temple, or remove the statues of the Caesars from the inner court. He did not wish to replace the current group of High Priests with those, like the Maccabaeans, who would be more pure. His revolution was about a community that lived the Law, not demanded that others do so. The Law, for Jesus, was love - loving God and loving our neighbors - and in the end, that's what he asked of us.
The tragedy of Holy Week is not Jesus' death, because, for what it's worth, while little else is clear from the Gospel narratives, it seems pretty certain that the Jesus portrayed within them understood that a journey to Jerusalem was a death sentence (whether the historical Jesus understood this I neither know nor am particularly interested in). The tragedy of Holy Week is not the betrayal by Judas Iscariot (every story needs a villain, right?). The tragedy of Holy Week is not the cowardice of the Apostles, fleeing and lying and hiding; I dare anyone to show how they would react differently.
The real tragedy of Holy Week is our contemporary blindness to the depths of evil within us, our willingness to demand death for Others in the name of whatever abstraction is the catchphrase of the day, while preserving life for ourselves. The real tragedy of Holy Week is the blindness to our capacity to destroy that which does not meet our abstract expectations of what is true and real and good. When we call our failed heroes flip-floppers, the implication is that they are weak. In truth, it is we who are weak, flipping and flopping around in search for a deliverer from whatever troubles us, rather than grasping the truth that the power is within us, if only we recognize that power as a capacity for both evil and good.
This Friday, as we remember the death of Jesus, do not go and stand at the foot of the cross. Stand in the mob, the last sliver of the palm branches still embedded in your hands that now are curled into fists as you shout "Crucify him!" That would be more honest.
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