True Names

Rev. JT Smiedendorf

April 13, 2025

Text: Mark 11:1-10

²⁴

¹As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, ² saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³ If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”

⁴ They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, ⁵ some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” ⁶ They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. ⁷ When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. ⁸ Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. ⁹ Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

¹⁰ “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

 

Prayer

Thank you, Spirit, for the Living Word in Scripture. May it become now the Living Word among us, the Living Word within us, and the Living Word that goes beyond us into the world for peace and justice. AMEN

Those who have been around the church tend to like this Sunday, Palm Sunday, and the Palm Sunday parade story. It’s happy. Who doesn’t like parades? Who doesn’t like the happy scene of Jesus coming into town with cheers and a kind of poor man’s red-carpet welcome? It’s a nice story. Who doesn’t like nice? Nice is pleasant. It’s easy. Jesus is coming into town and being heralded as “One who comes in the name of the Lord.” If you were Jesus’ campaign manager you would say, “This is going well. They love him! Hey, we’re going to make this happen! Maybe these things are not so hard.”

But something, I sense, tells us that it will not be so easy, that there will be more to the story.

That sense of impending challenge and struggle is related, I think, to the likely fact that there were two parades that spring day in Palestine. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, early church scholars, talk of this in their book The Last Week. While many of us may not know about the other parade not mentioned in our Scripture story, this second parade was no surprise to those living in Jerusalem at the time, the parade entering Jerusalem from the west.

It was the custom of Roman governors to be in attendance for all major Jewish festivals, and it was Passover, a holiday to commemorate the Hebrew liberation from Egypt. So they came, marching 60 miles from Pilate’s base at Caesarea on the Sea; grand horses, armored troops, colorful banners, swift chariots. Governor Pontius Pilate came inland from his coastal home to watch over this gathering and to remind Jews that the Pax Romana was present in full military force. Even as Jews celebrated their ancient liberation from an empire, the Roman governor was there to remind them that there would be no such liberation from this empire.

So, there were two parades that day heading into Jerusalem, one entering from the east and one from the west.

The surprising parade came from the east; crowds waving palms and laying down cloaks for a man riding a donkey with his followers, a bit of a rag tag bunch, walking nearby. No war horses or chariots or banners or troops. While the procession of Pilate presented the Roman Empire of Caesar, the procession of Jesus proclaimed the Rule of God. The procession of the west displayed imperial theology: The Emperor was Son of God, Lord, and Savior who had brought peace on earth. But the shouts for the procession from the east said, “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the kingdom of our ancestor, David!” This parade from the east was saying in effect that God was the Sovereign and this was his Anointed One.

Make no mistake. These two parades are rivals.

They represent two differing worldviews, two different theologies, and two different sets of values.

Now some of this language of Lord, Savior, Sovereign might feel uncomfortable to some of us here. There are good reasons for that. Those reasons relate to the two parades and the church’s relationship to those parades.

In the time of the early Christian communities, the Followers of the Way knew that their parade was the one with Jesus on a donkey, the one that came from the other direction as that of the empire that thrived on domination and stratification, power over and status above. “Might makes right” was the theme of the imperial parade.

The followers of the Way of Jesus knew their Sovereign not as an emperor, but as one who saw power in terms of humility and service, one who saw relationships in terms of compassion and justice-making, one who had faith that God was the only true Sovereign and that God’s rule led to Shalom not to the conquering “devastation that is called peace” as the Pax Romana was described. In those early years the church was not in the center of culture or power, it was a small network of alternative communities practicing hospitality, equality, service to others, and a life of the Spirit.

And so it was until that fateful time in the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine interpreted a dream of the cross as a reason for a military victory and began his journey toward Christianity. Eventually, Christianity was brought into the empire. The power of the state and the power of the church merged. Councils were called by the emperor and creeds and doctrines written to unify the empire in one understanding of faith, one institutional church.

And so the church entered a centuries-long period of Christendom where faith was identified with the state and with culture. With this new relationship came state sponsored religious discrimination and patronage, the Inquisition and religious wars, the Crusades and the Conquistadors, missionary work that denigrated and demonized other cultures and their spiritual understandings. The confession of the early church that Jesus is Lord, in effect, became Jesus is Caesar, as if Christ were King like Caesar was emperor, enforcing faith and conversion with the sword, seeking secular power for the church. This is a church with imperial theology, a theology of prerogative and superiority. This is a church in the wrong parade.

With the advent of the 21st century, the church finds itself in a multicultural world of pluralism, many cultures and many faiths. Not all, but many parts of the institutional church are in decline, particularly in North America. In significant ways, the church has lost its place of privilege in culture. I have one thing to say to that. HALLELUJAH! Praise God! We have always done and been our best working from the underside.

And we have yet another example unfolding before our eyes of a nation and of many Christians who seem to believe that Jesus is Caesar and that the parade of Pilate is a sign of greatness and one to be joined. We know now that Mr. Musk’s grandfather was one who believed that technocrats should run the world, that democracy was a failure, and that not all people were created equal. After he got into trouble in Canada, Musk’s grandfather moved to South Africa because he was actually encouraged by the adoption of apartheid there. And Mr. Trump, whose father was active in the KKK, most recently spoke of the unfortunate 1913 adoption of the income tax, which taxed the rich, instead preferring the Gilded Age where a few were fabulously rich and the rest labored under the harshest conditions of the new industrial age as the United States established itself as an emerging empire.

All that is emerging in the current regime in this country deserves a place in Pilate’s parade, in the story of Empire. It is anti-Christ. The Jesus that we proclaim this Palm Sunday is the one who comes in the name of the Lord riding on a donkey,

not because he is weak and nice,

but because he comes in God’s name and trusts in God’s power,

not because he is not leading,

but because he is a servant leader, leading by the example of following something and pointing to something beyond himself.

According to our story, the people of Jerusalem responded to Jesus. They threw down leafy branches and even their clothes to provide a special welcome and affirmation to this Jesus who must have represented to them, a hopeful vision for something better than empire, occupation, and domination. What do you think they saw in Jesus? What inspired them about Jesus?

We, too, at this time, require a strong vision of what is not yet, but for which we will faithfully work and create and act, no matter what comes. As a faith and as a church, if we have a vision that strong, not only will we feel the Palm Sunday joy of what is, what can be, and what is already becoming, but we will have an anchor and focus sufficient enough to see us through what comes after Palm Sunday as the forces of the other Palm Sunday parade come to call. For we know those forces of fear and domination and greed, whether inside of us or outside, will come to call. They will say “join our parade or else!”

Imagine yourself on the street near the Palm Sunday crowd, only the street is Franklin or Nicollet or Hennepin, and the time is now. Jesus is coming into town and the people are responding, “Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of God.”

What are they responding to and recognizing?

What is giving them joy and hope and enthusiasm?

What hope is in our hearts that would call us forth to wave branches of welcome and celebration, and call us to move into God’s parade of Love?

This is our call to faith and faithful witness and action.

May we hear the call and choose the parade of Jesus.