Palm Sunday 2025: Jesus Moves from Pedagogy to Protest Against an Economic System of Theft
Palm Sunday closes out Lent. Though I don’t explore Luke’s account of the march on Jerusalem in HARP (which was long enough!), I’ve written and spoken on it elsewhere. Here is a link to a video of a sermon I did on Jesus’ Palm Sunday demonstration as “public liturgy.”
But here’s the big picture. The second half Luke’s narrative traces Jesus’ journey from Galilee south to the capital city for his final showdown with the Powers, moving steadily from the margins of Palestinian society to its center.
This plot illustrates how and why Jesus’ ministry was perceived as so subversive by the local and imperial authorities of occupied Palestine that they felt compelled to execute him. This narrative arc begins with a dramatic turn in chapter 9, in which Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem,” and culminates in chapter 19 on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where Jesus offers a dark parable about the cost of discipleship for those who resist an oppressive system.
The parable begins a sequence that continues with Jesus’ march on the capitol, his poignant lament over that City, and culminates in his entry into the Temple for a dramatic direct action against profiteering banking interests.
Each of these episodes deepens Luke’s overall plot regarding resisting plutocracy. I really hope you will use this book for study and proclamation through the rest of this lectionary Year C. (You can still order HARP at 20% off using discount code SOJO20 at my page on Bookshop.org.)
Hanging prominently in our office at BCM is a poster of Belgian artist James Ensor’s “The entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889” (right). The 1888 painting imagined an imminent anarcho-socialist
uprising, portrayed in a scene so chaotic and carnivalesque that it’s hard to spot the Christ figure. The piece was so controversial at the time that it wasn’t exhibited until 30 years later!!
I like it because it captures the energy of our gospel story, which expresses prophetic hopes for justice amidst the militarized repression and circus politics of first century Jerusalem. Luke’s Palm Sunday story makes clear why Jesus was such a threat to the status quo of occupied Palestine. Palm Sunday is the one Sunday when congregants actually get up out of their pews, and sometimes even march around outside the church. Alsa, the distance between sanctuary and streets is vast, which is why our churches are so politically domesticated and timid today.
I am grateful for the various ways that diverse colleagues in the U.S. have reclaimed Palm Sunday and Holy Week as a time for public liturgies of justice and peace. One is the Nevada Desert Experience’s
Sacred Peace Walk, a 65-mile annual pilgrimage during Holy Week to the Nevada National Security Site where nuclear weapons are tested, which I helped get started when I was in seminary back in the early 1980s with the late, legendary Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale.
Another is a Palm Sunday Peace parade tradition that Elaine and I helped get going almost 20 years ago with Pasadena Mennonite Church in response to the second Gulf War. It still continues as a procession through the city and public worship service in the business district.
Catholic Worker communities have been taking to the streets on Good Friday for decades. We often participate with our friends at the Los Angeles community, which annually holds solidarity stations of the cross around the city.
Each year our colleagues at Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice here in California hold a public vigil at local INS detention centers in support of immigrant detainees during Holy Week. And friends as far away as Australia march on Palm Sunday for refugee rights.
But two public liturgies I won’t forget I experienced after giving a talk on Palm Sunday in Bethlehem for Sabeel in 2012. Holy Week protests are common for friends who are still trying to find justice in Palestine—in the very paths that Jesus walked two millennia ago. Friday was Land Day that year, and we were in East Jerusalem as the mosque let out. At Damascus Gate, dramatic clashes between Palestinian protestors and Israeli police went on for hours, with concussion grenades, charging horses, water cannons, and scores of Palestinians being arrested or carried away
on stretchers. This included Sabeel’s Omar Haramy (right), who was standing between the police and several older women with pictures of their slain sons. Naim Ateek and I went to bail him out of jail.
Two days later we marched from Gethsemene to the Old City, as part of the annual Palm Sunday parade from the Mt. of Olives—just like in the old story. It was deeply moving to be among waves of Christians of all types, ages and countries, joyously parading—especially Palestinian Christians marching with the message: “We are not going away.”
May we follow the Jesus who marches with poor and marginalized people in the streets in the tradition of prophetic faith, even when politicians and priests (then and now) criticize and even demonize protestors from insular offices or pulpits. I wish all of you a powerful Holy Week of public liturgy!
