Some years ago, I led an adult formation (Baptists, read “Sunday school”) series for the good people of Calvary Episcopal in Bastrop, Texas, on The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, a book by the great scholars Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan.
Borg was a devout Christian who read the historic creeds as saying he assented to “give my self at its deepest level to” these beliefs; Crossan was a former Catholic priest who said many of the teachings of Christianity needed to be regarded metaphorically, not literally. In their book, however, both these great scholars of the historical Jesus leaned into the awareness that the biblical story of Palm Sunday sets up a competition between two kinds of “good news,” between two faiths to which people give their selves: trust in the power of empire, or trust in the power of a God who rescues.
Pilate’s procession
Greg Garrett
At the west gate to Jerusalem, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate rode in at the head of an awe-inspiring military procession, a throng of Roman cavalry and soldiers who were entering Jerusalem at the Passover feast to keep order and to represent the true faith: acquiescence to Caesar, to the Roman Empire and to the power of that empire.
It was a military parade very much like Donald Trump hopes to send thundering through our nation’s capital on his birthday, a conscious expression of power and the authority to harm, to control, to kill. Look at this might! Watch and weep, all you who stand in opposition!
As Borg and Crossan wrote, “Pilate’s procession displayed not only imperial power, but also Roman imperial theology. According to this theology, the emperor was not simply the ruler of Rome, but the Son of God.”
For the Jewish subjects witnessing this imperial parade, Pilate’s progress was not just a different way of being, a different social order. It was “a rival theology” to that of the one God of Israel.
“Pilate’s progress was ‘a rival theology’ to that of the one God of Israel.”
The euangelion (good news) of the Roman empire was about power and control, about privilege, about the marginalization of those who didn’t fit the profile. Maybe some of that feels familiar in this moment. You may have seen messianic memes and claims about Donald Trump, or the “God Made Trump” campaign video.
Jesus’ procession
For his part, on Palm Sunday Jesus entered the city from the opposite side. He wasn’t at the head of a daunting procession, and he wasn’t mounted like the Roman cavalry.
He rode a colt, and his followers cheered and chanted “Hosanna!” a word meaning “Save us!” They held palms, cut from local trees, and they looked as though they were participating in a “planned political demonstration” in direct opposition to the imperial power parade coming in the west gate.
What Jesus was doing was, most definitely, a response and a rebuke to Pilate’s procession, a mirror opposite to what the empire was doing.
Taking sides
As many readers here know, I study race, religion, politics and power, and I partner with scholars and pastors and writers considering how America has moved toward an imperial model under MAGA and Donald Trump. The contemporary curse of white Christian nationalism reveals a great deal about what the Roman imperial parade was offering: Throw your lot in with the empire, and your faith and your lives will be preserved. If you’re a worthy citizen of the empire — today, think someone white, Christian, heterosexual and probably male — wouldn’t it be better to seek power and surety by an alliance with might and violence than to risk compassion, love and mercy?
What does this peasant Jesus have to offer in opposition to the steel and stamina of the Roman empire?
Why shouldn’t we just bend a knee to the fire and the blood, to the power that seems to overwhelm everything?
“Should we worship this humble Jesus, or should we join the imperial parade?”
Should we worship this humble Jesus, or should we join the imperial parade?
In this present moment, the empire is a firehose of constant noise: Hate this person. Scapegoat this one. Throw away this one. If you want to be rescued, hold tight to the powers. To the empire. To Caesar. Just do what we do, repeat his lies, and you’ll be safe.
The peasant parade carries a countercultural message: The weak and the powerless gathered together with the divine presence become the powerful. In Holy Week, God puts God’s thumb on the scale to privilege love and justice, faith and mercy, surrender and resurrection.
Crossan and Borg put it this way: “Jesus’ procession deliberately countered what was happening on the other side of the city. Pilate’s procession embodied the power, glory and violence of the empire that ruled the world. Jesus’ procession embodied an alternative vision, the kingdom of God. This contrast — between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar — is central not only to the gospel of Mark, but to the story of Jesus.”
And it still offers us an alternative vision this Holy Week.
So many Christian nationalists have thrown their lot in with Donald Trump and MAGA. Trump promises he will save the church, that his “beautiful Christians” will be ascendant. Marco Rubio, following a February executive order from Trump, has asked State Department workers to inform on each other if anyone has been guilty of anti-Christian bias.
It’s the best of both worlds, some MAGA Americans think: a strong protector aligned with a version of Christianity, albeit one that seems to exclude almost everyone who doesn’t look, love or worship in a rigidly defined way. Such Christians might be better off in the Pilate procession, celebrating the military parade, walking on the rights and persons of others.
“And yet, there is Jesus, clip-clopping along at the far side of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, no cavalry, but on his slow way to Calvary.”
And yet, there is Jesus, clip-clopping along at the far side of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, no cavalry, but on his slow way to Calvary.
And there are the people calling for rescue and liberation even though Jesus and his counter-demonstration don’t resemble at all the power filing through the west gate.
‘Choose you this day’
Two parades enter Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week, and as with Robert Frost’s two roads diverging in a yellow wood, our choice will make all the difference.
In Joshua 24, the people of God are asked to choose which God they will serve. All the time I was growing up Southern Baptist, when I heard “idols,” I thought of the Golden Calf, of the gods of the Canaanites, and I thought, how stupid for these people to bow down before lifeless statues!
But now, I understand what idolatry is: It is choosing to worship something that isn’t God, to treat it as God, to pray to it, to put your faith in it to be your salvation or your retribution.
White Christian nationalism professes that Donald Trump will keep us safe, preserve our faith, bless white Christians with power and punish our enemies.
But liberation theologians remind us God did not choose or champion the Egyptians or any of the other empires encountered by the people of God, and Jesus on Palm Sunday reminds us the pomp and spectacle of military and economic power may be head turning, but salvation resides in the loving God who asks that we “choose you this day whom you will serve.”
There never has been a Holy Week in my lifetime when that request has seemed so fraught, nor the conclusion so clear.
As for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.
Greg Garrett is an award-winning professor at Baylor University, where he is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture. One of America’s leading voices on religion and culture, he is the author of 30 books, most recently the novel Bastille Day and The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity. He is currently administering a major research grant on racism from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation and finishing a book on racist mythologies for Oxford University Press. Greg is a seminary-trained lay preacher in the Episcopal Church and Honorary Canon Theologian at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jeanie, and their two daughters.
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