Sermon – We Stand Between Two Processions

(I preached this sermon on March 29, 2025 for Palm Sunday at Christ Lutheran Church in Harrisburg. The sermon is based on John 18-19, the Passion Narrative. You can also listen to the sermon via this link.)

At the beginning of this week, there were two processions entering Jerusalem.

One came from the west.

The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, rode in with imperial authority. Soldiers. Armor. War horses. The golden eagle standard held up high for all to see – it was the empire’s honor, identity, and power on display designed to intimidate the crowds and assert Roman authority.  This was a visible force of the empire. Pilate came every year during Passover because this was a dangerous time. The city swelled with people. National memory and pride ran high. Rome expected trouble, so Pilate came prepared to crush it before it began.

This was what Rome called peace.

Peace through domination.
Peace through control.
Peace through the threat of violence.

The Pax Romana.

At the same time, from the east, another procession entered.

Jesus.

No war horse. Only a donkey.
No soldiers. Just ordinary people.
No weapons. Only palm branches and hope.

Scholars like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan describe this as a kind of parable acted out in real time.

Two entrances.
Two visions of peace.
Two completely different understandings of power.

Pilate embodies the so-called peace of the empire.
Jesus embodies the peace of God.

And everything that follows in John 18 and 19 is what happens when those two ways collide.

Once we enter the Passion story, one thing becomes impossible to ignore.

Violence is everywhere.

The soldiers arrive with weapons to arrest Jesus.
Peter responds the only way he knows how. He draws a sword.
Jesus is struck during his trial.
He is mocked, beaten, humiliated.
The crowd demands crucifixion.
They choose Barabbas, a man shaped by violence, over Jesus.
And then there is the cross itself, designed by Rome not just to kill, but to terrorize.

Violence is not an accident in this story.
It is the default language of the world on display.

It always has been.

Empires have always relied on it.
Leaders have always justified it.
Crowds have always been swept up in it.

You can even hear it in our own time.

Just this past week, an administration official offered a public prayer asking for overwhelming force, for victory through strength, for the defeat of enemies without restraint.

Now to be clear, that is not unusual. That is not new.

That is the same prayer that has been prayed for thousands of years. It is the prayer of Rome. It is the prayer of Egypt and Babylon. It is the prayer of every empire that has ever believed peace can be secured through domination.

It is the Pax Romana, still echoing.

It is the belief that if we can just be strong enough, strike hard enough, control enough, then finally we will be safe.

And it is the same instinct that leads nations to pour unimaginable resources into weapons while neighbors go without basic care. It is the same instinct that shows up when a community decides that fear is safer than truth, and chooses to look the other way rather than deal with reality. It is the same instinct that reduces people to labels so they can be dismissed, controlled, or pushed aside.

Violence is not just physical.
It is a way of seeing.
A way of arranging the world.

And into all of this steps Jesus.

What is striking is not just what happens to him.
It is how he responds.

Peter swings the sword. Jesus tells him to put it away.

He is struck, and instead of retaliating, he asks a question. Why do you strike me?

He stands before power, before Pilate, and he refuses to play the role expected of him. He does not defend himself in the way power understands. He does not grasp for control.

It is as if Jesus is the only one in the story who is fully awake and paying attention.  

He sees what is actually happening.

He sees the fear beneath the violence.
He sees the anxiety that drives the need for control.
He sees the illusion that if you can just dominate enough, secure enough, silence enough, then everything will finally be okay.

Everyone else is caught in something like a dream.  Or maybe more of a nightmare.  

A shared illusion that says violence will save us.
That control will bring peace.
That if we just manage things tightly enough, we can hold the world together.

This is what Walter Wink called the myth of redemptive violence.

The belief that violence is what makes things right.

Jesus will not participate in that illusion.

And that is precisely why he becomes dangerous.

Because when someone tells the truth about the way things actually are, when someone refuses to go along with fear, when someone exposes the arrangements that keep abusive power in place, the response is rarely gratitude.

The response is removal.

Silence him.
Discredit him.
Get rid of him.

That is what the cross is.

It is not only execution.
It is exposure.

It exposes the truth about us.

It shows what humanity is willing to do in order to maintain control. Even to the point of killing God.

And yet at the very same time, the cross reveals the truth about God.

God does not respond with more violence.

There is no retaliation.
No divine counterattack.
No crushing of enemies.

There is only love.

Love that remains.
Love that refuses to leave.
Love that does not bend to the logic of fear.

This is what Martin Luther saw so clearly when he spoke of the theology of the cross.

If you want to know who God is, you do not look to displays of domination. You look here.

At a cross.

At a God who would rather suffer violence than inflict it.

At a God who refuses to become what we expect power to be.

This brings us all the way back to the beginning.

To a garden.

In Genesis, humanity is placed in a garden of peace. A place of trust. A place of right relationship.

But it is not enough.

We reach for control.
We reach to define reality on our own terms.
We reach to be like God, even though we are already made in God’s image.

And the result is exile.

We leave the garden.

Now listen carefully to how John tells the end of this story.

After Jesus dies, Joseph and Nicodemus comes to take his body.

And where does he lay him?

In a garden.

A tomb in a garden.

It is almost too much to miss.

The story begins in a garden where humanity turns from God.
And now, at the cross, God enters a garden again.

This time not in the act of creation, but in death.

And in the next chapter, John 20, Mary Magdalene will stand in that garden, weeping, and she will mistake Jesus for the gardener.

It is not a mistake.

It is the truth.

God is tending creation again.

Restoring what was lost.

Undoing what violence and fear have done.

Death entered the story in a garden.

And now death will be defeated in a garden.

So where does that leave us?

We are still living between those two processions.

The way of Pilate still marches on.
The way of Jesus is still entering humbly.

And if we are honest, we are pulled in both directions at the same time with equal force.  

We long for peace, but we trust control.
We speak of love, but we are shaped by fear.
We want Jesus, but we keep reaching for Barabbas.

The invitation of this day is not simply to admire Jesus.

It is to wake up. To see clearly.

To step out of the illusion that violence will save us.
To name the ways fear shapes our choices.
To tell the truth about the arrangements we participate in every day.

And then to follow.  Not perfectly.  

To follow a king who rides a donkey.
To follow a God who refuses the sword.
To follow a love that cannot be killed.

Because even here, even at the cross, even in the garden of death,

God is already at work, bringing life out of it.

Tending the world. Restoring creation.

And inviting us to live in that reality.  

Thanks be to God.