Focus: Christ marches toward the cross and resurrection.
One of my favorite hymns is ELW 866 “We Are Marching in the Light of God” perhaps you’ve heard it:
We are marching in the light of God.
We are marching in the light of God.
And so it continues. The whole verse is just singing those words “We are marching in the light of God” 8 times. So easy a child could sing it. Simple, right?
Well, it was a children’s song, but it was anything but simple. The song was sung in the 20th century by Zulu children’s choirs in South Africa, and its name there is Siyahamba, in English “Freedom is Coming.” The song was easy enough that children and adults of all ages could learn it, memorize it, and march to the beat—and brave enough that it inspired people to take up the freedom work of ending the racist system of Apartheid and challenging the white powers-that-be to see everyone “in the light of God”—the way God sees each human being.
Marches may be for children, but they aren’t childish. They may be easy to learn, but they are not simple. They may be fun to watch, but it takes courage to put one foot in front of the other.
Jesus’s march today is the Palm Sunday procession. Marches in Jesus’s time were not simple Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades. No, they were a statement of power. Amy-Jill Levine wrote in our bible study “A triumphal entry is a military parade. It’s a sign of a conquering commander coming into the city and celebrating his victory.” 1
But the Palm Sunday march of Jesus turns everything we knew about marches on its head. Jesus is not a military commander. He is a Rabbi. He is not riding in on a white horse, but on a colt or a donkey—depending which version you read. Most important to the story: he is not really a king! That is the Roman emperor Caesar! This is the rub. By calling him “Son of David”—ancestor of the great king, this march is putting the powers-that-be on notice that Jesus is challenging them. Challenging their power, challenging their authority, challenging the entire basis for their rule. Notice where the march ends? The Temple, the most powerful place in Jerusalem where all the elites gathered. Please don’t let the fun of our children’s palm parades fool you. This is not a simple childish, or fun thing: Jesus is risking quite a bit with this march—his very life.
Shouting “Hosanna”—“Save us, we pray!” would have taken courage because it would have meant saying to the Romans, to the chief priests, to all the authorities that, “you are not our savior.” But how much more courage to get behind Jesus. To take your place in the march and follow him. To follow him to the Temple to preach, teach, even overturn tables, to follow him to the upper room and the garden of Gethsemane, to the judgment hall and to the cross, to the tomb on Easter morning.
We did not live in those times. We will never know if we would have joined the march, or if we would have stayed on the sidelines, if we would have prayed with Jesus in the garden or fallen asleep, if we would have followed him to Calvary or fled in despair. But Palm Sunday reminds us that every day in this world, we still have choices to make.
Who is your king? They say people vote with their feet. Well, who are you going to follow? Which march are you going to join?
Are you going to join the march of the modern-day Caesars who promise you wealth at the price of justice, success at the price of oppression, personal prosperity at the price of others’ poverty, comfort at the price of conscience, respectability at the price of righteousness, or are you going to march behind Jesus, knowing that means the cross: risking everything for the one who promises resurrection, new life, a renewed world, and a new creation?
“All glory, laud, and honor, to you redeemer king, to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.” Jesus once called for a childlike faith. I don’t think he meant it was easy. Those children on Palm Sunday, like the ones in South Africa, have something to teach us. Can we learn their songs, put one foot in front of another, walk the walk? Can we join the march?
Amen.
1 Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 36-7.