I’m not sure what it is about how we do Palm Sunday here at St. Paul’s, but it always strikes me as having an intensely political feel to it. Maybe it’s because like Episcopal churches everywhere, on Palm Sunday we begin with the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, an entry that was sure to attract the notice of the local religious and political authorities in that it parodied the emperor’s entrance into Jerusalem. Maybe it’s because on Palm Sunday we show ourselves to the neighborhood in our walk together around the block. Maybe it’s because Gary plays what I call that “storm-clouds-on-the-horizon” music as we walk into the nave, music that sounds to me like the opening of a documentary on Gandhi or Martin Luther King. Or maybe this Sunday, at least, it has to do with the fact that the Gospel we hear is Mark’s Gospel: what one Biblical commentator has called “an intensely political dram filled with conspiratorial back-room deals and covert actions, judicial manipulation and prisoner exchanges, torture and summary execution.”

Whatever it is, I feel the weight of the political dimension this morning here on Palm Sunday at St. Paul’s and am reminded of the first time I walked in procession here on Palm Sunday and what was going through my mind. It was something like this: “Oh my God, I’m leading a non-violent, political revolutionary movement—and we—you and I—are completely unprepared for where it might lead.

Which, of course, is exactly what happens in our Passion Gospel from Mark: for we, in the voices of most every character in our Gospel are completely unprepared for the highly political and politicized drama that will unfold. We as the disciples, as Judas, as Peter, as Pilate, as the High Priest, as the Crowd, all play our part in delivering our Jesus, the one who embodies authentic human dignity and the thirst for justice and peace, into the hands of the normal religious and political domination system of the time, delivering him into their hands for crucifixion.

And so whether we think of ourselves as interested in or involved with politics, in this story we find ourselves part of a political drama.

For some of us, this may feel repugnant—we’re not political or we’re not that bad, we tell ourselves, and so we would never play any of these roles, would never be complicit in delivering the one who was authentic human dignity, the one who was the thirst for justice and peace, into the hands of those who would eliminate him. For others of us who have gone up against dignity-denying, unjust, even violent domination systems in our family lives, in the workplace, in the Church or in society, the issue is the opposite. We do identify—but the identification is with Jesus, not with any who have been complicit in his betrayal and crucifixion.

As I think about the narrative we’re presented with, it seems to me that neither of these perspectives on their own is what Passion Sunday is about. Rather we’re invited into a complexity, a comprehensiveness of identification. We’re invited into a recognition that we are political creatures who, in living political lives, inevitably fall short of how we might wish we would operate and we’re invited to stand in the place of the Christ, the Holy and Human one who in the face of every betrayer, every detractor and every persecutor is authentic to his vision of the dignity of every person and the non-violent thirst for justice and for peace as the way God would put the dignity of every person into practice.

And so let me say this about both of these things:

You and I are political creatures—what this means is that we, all of us, are a part of social relations that involve authority and power. Every day we do things that attempt to influence the way that power and authority works in all the little societies of our lives—families, workplaces, the Church, the city, the state or the nation. In some cases, we work to exert influence on those who have the power and authority; in some cases we are the people who have the authority and power. We cannot and should not try to avoid politics. There is no human society without it. There is no Church without it. To say yes to political life is to say yes to being a player and to risk becoming a betrayer of our own authenticity and values. To say yes to political life is to risk knuckling under to what we most opposed, to find ourselves with blood on our hands, so to speak. And yet, we must do this. We must do this, we must enter into the politics of life.

And secondly, you and I stand in the place of Christ, the authentic human being in our lives, for we carry within us the innate (or is it conferred?) recognition that all are created in the image of God, all are entitled to human dignity, to justice and to a non-violent and peaceful way of life. This means that to articulate this, to advocate for this, to act on this will mean that at times we will be on an inevitable and crucifying path, will feel God-forsaken and doomed to failure, will in fact risk being eaten up by those in power who will always have something to lose in the face of one standing for human dignity, justice and a non-violent and peaceful way of life. And yet we must do this.

Today, the beginning of Holy Week is about both of these moments—the need to live the human life of politics with all of its inevitable pitfalls, and the call to be the Christ, the authentic human being who stands for human dignity and risks his own destruction.

While this second moment, as I am calling it, can sound so hard, so much like a duty one might perform in a difficult circumstance, I want to suggest that it often comes to us more organically, as result of having internalized connections to others, as a result of having much to our surprise become an authentic human being in the image of Christ—the one we were meant to be.

Poet William Stafford knew all about this.  A pacifist who was formed in a non-violent, pacifist family and through his experience of being a CO during WW II he brought this same authenticity of spirit to his vocation as a poet. What he discovered was that being an authentic human being is both about being true to oneself and about entering into something bigger that brings dignifying energy into the world. In his poem entitled “Introduction to Some Poems,” Stafford invited us into this authenticity—an authenticity that moans as well as sings, and eschewing revenge, profit of fame, finds its way in the world organically, one step at a time.

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don’t understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won’t believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

Where are you being drawn into the politics of life—into the human enterprise of power and authority that comes with the risk of getting blood on our hands? And where are you being asked to stand with the dignity of all human beings, with justice and peace, though standing with these things may cost you dearly?

Works Cited or Consulted

Ched Myers’ Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus

William Stafford’sThe Way It Is: New and Selected Poems

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