(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Big Parade”, originally shared on March 29, 2023. It was the 259th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Do you like parades? There are two parades
that have shaped our lives forever. And one that will. Today, we’re going to
find out what they are.
We’ve had a lot of rain this season, and a
lot of snow in the mountains, and more is coming! We should see a clear day for
Palm Sunday this weekend, just in time for the processions and parades.
I’m sure you
seen parades. Have you ever been in a parade? Have you ever seen a parade that
started because people were so excited that the whole community was in a
turmoil? Today, you will.
I love a parade! Especially one
with marching bands. They are why I started playing drums.
I remember watching the
Memorial Day Parade in my hometown, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, as a child. I
remember standing at the curb, hearing the rumble of the percussion coming closer
and closer, and my excitement growing.
I remember the thumps on my
chest as it drew nearer, the staccato pulse of the snare drums, the crash of
the cymbals and the massive thud of the big bass drums.
I wanted to do that!
I tapped out rhythms on every
surface I found in front of me for years. Actually, I still do. 😊
I made my own drums out of
empty cardboard boxes, Quaker Oats containers, my legs, whatever I could find.
I destroyed the child’s drum set my parents bought me for Christmas when I was
in 5th Grade playing “Rock Around the Clock”.
I played a violin for a year
because our school system started its orchestra program a year before its band
program, and I thought it would help me learn to read music. When I couldn’t
play drums because I didn’t own a concert snare drum, I played mellophone (a French
horn with trumpet valves) for a summer until my dad talked with the high school
band director, who sold him a surplus used drum from the high school band.
I started practicing on a
practice pad and played that snare drum. I moved immediately into first chair
and staying there for four years, all the way through high school. I still have
that drum.
I became that guy who
played the drums, marching down the street in the parade.
When I chipped my left wrist
vaulting over a “horse” in gym class, I wore a groove into the cast and played
in the parade anyway.
I saved up and bought a Ludwig
“Super Classic” drum set with the silver sparkle finish, just like Joe
Morello’s, the drummer with The Dave Brubeck quartet.
I took it to college and played
in jazz bands through college and seminary and beyond.
And it all started with a
parade.
Parades bring people together,
whether they are in the parade or watching it. They create a sense of focus and
a common experience, even a common cause.
That brings us to the first
parade: Jesus entered Jerusalem, once, at the head of a parade. He would be
dead in a few days, but for that shining moment he brought people together, at
least some of the people anyway. He knew he would die there, but he rode into
town like a champ.
Here’s what happened, in Matthew
21:1-11
1When they had come
near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent
two disciples, 2saying to them, “Go
into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and
a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3If anyone says
anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them
immediately.” 4This took place to
fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, 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.” 6The disciples went
and did as Jesus had directed them; 7they brought the
donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8A very large crowd
spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and
spread them on the road. 9The crowds that went
ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest
heaven!” 10When he entered
Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11The crowds were
saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
I don’t know that there were
any bands in that parade, but I imagine small children watching, running along
with it on the sides. Caught up in the excitement, finding branches to throw in
his donkey’s path. Asking their parents if they could throw their outer
clothing onto the path for Jesus’s donkey, like some of the adults were doing,
and hearing a firm, “No”.
I imagine that
it was exciting, but that it was also kind of scary. Who were these people?
Crowds can become mobs, and mobs can go out of control, they can get
destructive.
But here he
came, Jesus. The Messiah? The one they had been awaiting for 1,000 years? A
deliverer, but from what? Deliverance from the Roman empire’s army of
occupation (the empire threw palm branches to greet successful military
leaders)? Something else?
Was the
excitement contagious, or did many look on with horror, or indifference?
How did Jesus
feel, riding into Jerusalem like that? What did he think about the cheers of
the crowds?
We are only a
little more than two months away from the mass shooting at the Star Dance
Ballroom in Monterey Park on the night before the Lunar New Year. Two months
and fewer than two weeks. Doesn’t it seem like a lot more time has gone by?
It’s hard to
put a finger on what has changed. I have attended vigils. I have lit candles
out in the memorials. Sally and I and the congregation that I am currently
serving there have contributed money to a fund for all those whose lives were
utterly changed that night, as have the lives of many of the members of the
Monterey Park community.
And yet, life
goes on. The TV station crews don’t come out as much; there’s not much news.
The memorials and the candles are gone. Unless you were immediately affected,
it is starting to become an abstraction.
I remember
standing at one of the vigils and hearing a young woman say to her friend, with
perhaps a bit too much cynicism, “We were once the model minority. So much for
that.”
The shootings at
the Christian school near Nashville this past week was the 127th
mass shooting in the United States, this year! The same things were
said, and the same things don’t seem to get done.
Jesus knew
what was about to happen. He knew about the deadly violence that he was about
to experience.
I wonder if Jesus felt a momentary urge to just end the chain of events
that he knew was coming, right there. To just stop with the cheers and spend
the rest of his life as a popular rabbi, a miracle worker.
But he didn’t.
Someone posted a poem on a Facebook page for Lutheran pastors the other
day that began,
“We want the war horse
Jesus rides a donkey”
In Jesus’
physical time on earth kings rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, not a war horse, to
show that they came in peace. Palm branches were waved as a sign of goodness and
victory.
Why did Jesus
ride into town on a donkey? Was it a conscious reference to the Old Testament
prophecy, as we read in Zechariah 9:9?,
9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I think that
he had a particular kind of triumph and victory in mind.
He chose to
ride a donkey as a symbol of humble service: death on the cross, because he
resisted the temptation to take the easy way.
He got that
donkey when the disciples just went and untied it and, when the owners asked
them to explain, they said “The Lord needs it”. And they said, “OK”!
Either I’m
missing something here, or it was another world back then.
Did they know
about Jesus? Was he that respected, that popular?
The Bible says that a “multitude” of his
disciples began to loudly praise God. Right there. In broad daylight. In
public. It says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole
city was in turmoil. What would it take to put in turmoil a whole city with an
estimated population of 55,000 under normal circumstances, and 180,000 (some
estimates go much higher) during major festivals like Passover, which was going
on when Jesus was crucified?
It’s easy to
follow Jesus when he’s there at the head of the parade. Top of the charts.
It’s harder
when he’s headed to the top of the cross.
That brings
us to the second parade, the parade of Jesus to the cross. The governor’s
soldiers humiliated and tortured Jesus. Then this happens in Matthew 27:31-37,
31 After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe
and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
32 As they went out, they came upon a man from
Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross. 33 And when they came to a place called
Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34 they offered
him wine to drink, mixed with gall; but when he tasted it, he would not drink
it. 35 And when they had crucified him, they divided
his clothes among themselves by casting lots; 36 then
they sat down there and kept watch over him. 37 Over
his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King
of the Jews.”
Do you know
how many of the “multitude” who were in or who watched the Palm Sunday parade
followed Jesus all the way to the cross?
Zero. The
power of that parade, the one we celebrate as “Palm Sunday”, was very
temporary. Jesus knew that.
His humble
service would change everything. It would lead to the salvation of all who put
their trust in Jesus to save them and live for others in response to the
sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ. But that’s a story for next week, a
week of love and shame. Holy Week.
It’s also a
story that doesn’t end with Holy Week. In fact, it comes not to its end but to
its beginning, much later.
That brings
us to the third parade, the parade of those who are in the end being saved
through faith by Jesus Christ for all eternity. The parade of the multitudes
who do not desert Jesus at the end, but who are received into his perfect
presence forever.
We get a
glimpse, in Revelation 7:9-10,
9 After this I looked, and there
was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all
tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the
Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice,
saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to
the Lamb!”
Salvation
belongs to God and God gives it to all who receive it in faith, in a living relationship
with the one true living God that transforms lives.
Earlier I said
that no one does anything about mass shootings, but that is not quite accurate.
We do.
We provide the
communities we serve with the sense of connection and transcendence that our
culture so desperately needs. We live by it, we offer it, we communicate it,
and we grow by invitation to it. We serve others in response to it.
That is the gift
of God in Jesus Christ shown to us in three parades, the one where Jesus
triumphally enters Jerusalem, the one where Jesus goes to be the only
acceptable sacrifice for the sins of humanity, and the big one, the big parade,
the one where we receive the gift of God in faith and in trust in Jesus as our
only savior, and are drawn to him forever.
Share that
good news.
