In The Last Week, scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg describe Palm Sunday as a moment of confrontation. They write: “Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. It was the beginning of the week of Passover, the most sacred week of the Jewish year… From the east, Jesus road a donkey down the Mount of Olives, cheered by his followers. On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor … entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and soldiers. […] It was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble…” Crossan and Borg conclude: “Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire. The two processions embody the central conflict of the week that led to Jesus’ crucifixion…” ¹

In our text from Matthew this morning, there’s one particular line that is grabbing me. “When [Jesus] entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil.” The word turmoil is the same word that is used to described an earthquake. I would guess the turmoil in the city was unsettling and uncomfortable, and yet it was also intriguing and generative. Jerusalem was quaking with the power of a different kind of leader. Roman power was rooted in fear; it was a force of domination that sought to subdue and silence. Jesus’ power arose from among the crowds chanting “save us!”; it was power held with and for the people. His planned demonstration astride two donkeys—one grown and one small—mocked the emperor’s war horses, chariots, and gleaming swords. The passage from Zechariah (9:10), which Matthew quotes, goes on to say that this humble donkey-riding King “will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations.” So Jerusalem was in a turmoil because peaceful resistance was shaking the foundations of tyranny.

It strikes me that our experience in these days of ICE occupation has been kind of like an earthquake—a clashing of opposing values and powers. The intensity of this confrontation has completely upended our daily lives; we’ve been in a continual state of alertness, responsiveness, and creative adaptation. And, like an earthquake, this time has opened cracks in the way things are, fissures that give us new glimpses of what is possible, rifts that could be permanent, that may well serve as portals into alternative futures.

The breadth and strength of our hyper-local connections have expanded exponentially. I’ve joined 15 new signal groups with more than 6,000 of my neighbors. While standing watch on morning school patrol, I observe my little neighbor (3 or 4 years old) be walked to preschool each day by a teacher because her dad is in detention and her mom is in hiding. And I’ve slowly realized that this one family is surrounded by an entire network of care—people delivering groceries, helping them fix a leaking gas pipe, keeping watch day and night over their home.

An immigrant neighbor of the church asked if we could bring church folks together with neighbors under threat and foster a conversation about what we need and how we can support each other. We’ve done that once and plan to do it some more. Now we’ve begun talking about some sort of vigil that would gather our community at the sites of the four known abductions in the immediate neighborhood of the church, a ritual we want to make inclusive of a variety of faiths and cultures. Another organic network loosely connected to the community kitchen has gathered 100 volunteers to support 200 families with groceries and rent funds. Last month alone they raised $90,000. They’ve asked us serve as their non-profit fiscal agent going forward.

And, we’ve been outside—together, visible, vocal. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve put on my winter clergy uniform—stole over coat, toe warmers in boots. The church, the synagogue, the mosque, the temple, the walking meditation—it’s in the streets. And then there’s the uprising of non-violent non-cooperation. The thousands who have faced insults, guns, beatings, and arrests without retaliating but also without retreating. And of course, there’s the beauty and the boldness of the “singing resistance.”

My friends, in this Lenten season, may we walk with Jesus, who teaches us to confront tyranny with humility, fear with love, community with isolation, individualism and greed with the gifts of mutual care. Let us welcome the tumult, welcome the cracks, the fissures, the portals, he shows us, laying down our branches, our cloaks and our lives to usher in the new world that is possible. Amen.

¹ The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, Page 2