holy fools (on Palm Sunday)
This Sunday is the last one in Lent, Palm Sunday. Here’s a Palm Sunday sermon I preached with the people of Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren in 2022, the day after the congregation hosted a really beautiful wedding for two really beautiful young adults.
Can you remember the last parade you saw?
It's been a WHILE since I've been to a parade, myself. But I have memories of riding in my grandpa's old blue Ford pickup with my girl scout troop, all of us dressed as angels with tinsel halos in the Fincastle Christmas Parade circa 1988. And at the Manassas Church of the Brethren, a creative group designed and built a fun church float for a bunch of us to participate in the local St. Patrick's Day parade in town there. I know our young adults who were in marching band know all about what parades are like – sometimes freezing and other times sweltering, getting all dressed up and waiting to march through town.
Parades, you probably know, were historically military exercises. Throughout history, armies have paraded their troops in front of people to show off their power and might, and when they returned from battle, a parade was a way to exhibit prisoners and the results of pillaging enemy groups. Parades – whether they are like the ancient military parades or modern day protest marches – are meant to display power and might.
That was true in Jesus' day, as well. On Palm Sunday, we remember the way that Jesus paraded into Jerusalem. It was Passover – a holy time when the Jewish people remembered God's salvation and liberation from Egypt – and the Jewish people in Jerusalem were preparing to celebrate. Jerusalem was ruled by Roman governors, and the Roman rulers always made sure to have a big military parade right around the start of Passover. They wanted the Jews – a minority group granted certain privileges but still held under the thumb of Rome's power – to understand that even though they were celebrating this massive event of liberation in the past that the present day reality was under control of Rome. They didn't want the Jews to get any funny ideas about being liberated from ROME, like they were liberated from EGYPT, you know.
It would have been like slave patrols riding obtrusively by a group of enslaved people gathered to sing gospel hymns remembering God's salvation: sure, yes, go ahead and sing, the ruling powers seem to be saying, just as long as you know who's really in charge here. Don't get too excited about this god of yours who frees enslaved people and liberates people from occupied territories.
The day that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem was the day of the Roman parade meant to intimidate and remind the Jews of the structure of power. Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, would be leading the procession on a giant horse, followed by banners and gilded cloths and retinues of Roman soldiers. They'd all be decked out in their Roman finest, uniforms made of heavy metal and rich leather. Ostentatious shows of power, might and wealth, meant to remind the people of Jerusalem not to get too big for their britches and keep their religious celebrations in their own place.
So when Jesus shows up and sends his disciples to get a young, unbroken colt so that he can stage his own parade, well, he's not just using what's available to him. He doesn't walk quietly into town, or ease in unobtrusively: Jesus is making a huge point.
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There is this trope in many spiritual traditions called the “holy fool.” Think of the jester character, or the story of the Emperor Has No Clothes. Holy Fools do seemingly illogical things that manage to expose the lies and vulnerabilities of the ruling powers. They are moved, by their faith, to act in ways that society considers ridiculous in order to point out that the human structures of power are...less powerful than they claim. In this story about Palm Sunday, Jesus is acting like a holy fool. Who in their right mind would choose to parade into Jerusalem on a donkey DURING PASSOVER, KNOWING that the Romans are exhibiting their incredible military might and wealth and political power on the other side of town? Why in the world would Jesus do something so ridiculous?
One possibility is that Jesus, in his journey toward the cross, is bent on exposing the lies of the occupying Roman powers. Rome wants to make sure nobody really believes that liberation is possible; Jesus pokes holes in that falsehood by mocking their shows of power. Rome wants the people to be intimidated and frozen in their occupied state; Jesus knows that liberation is at hand and that what he is about to do is more powerful than any kind of fancy army parading in the streets.
Palm Sunday is a weird moment in the story of Holy Week: Jesus chooses to act in strange ways, foolish ways that just don't really make sense if we try to read and understand the story linearly and logically. But if we consider that Jesus wasn't bound by human logic but was, instead, the incarnation of God's own wisdom, if we entertain the possibility that Jesus was operating with a different set of priorities and commitments, we can start to see the ways that Jesus himself was...having fun. He was exposing Rome and all its military might, all its politically oppressive power, all its ostentatious cruelty for what it was: laughable.
There is a story about what happened when the Ku Klux Klan came to Knoxville, Tennessee in 2007 to put on a parade of power and might. When they showed up, they were met with a retinue of CLOWNS. Yes, clowns. David Lamotte has written a children's book about the story, and it goes like this:
White Flour – David LaMotte:
Here's the beauty of Palm Sunday, from Jesus' own vantage point and our own: Rome does not win. The KKK is, in the end, laughable. All those suffocating powers of empire and violence and enslavement? They are absolutely no fucking match for the cosmic divine power of a God who loves us enough to join us in human form, laugh and expose the powers of evil, succumb to their murderous rage only to mock them by a mysterious, beautiful, powerful, divine, matter-settling resurrection three days later.
Why did Jesus get on a donkey? To point out that Rome – all powerful, all consuming, ruler of the world – was, actually, a joke.
So I wonder how we might be holy fools, here and now. What would it mean for us to expose the empires around us as having no clothes on? How can we point out that the tenets of war, capitalism, racism, homophobia are, actually, foolish?
Paul tells us that God chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise, the powerless ones to expose the lies of the powerful. Maybe you've got a clown nose sitting in your closet that could stand some use. Maybe there's a donkey around we could have paraded in on yesterday when former President Trump came to NC.
Or maybe the holy fool opportunities are closer to home: maybe it's as simple as laughing in response to someone's ugly, racist remark, as if you couldn't believe they'd ever be serious. Maybe it's as easy as choosing to celebrate life and love – like yesterday's wedding – in the face of the death-dealing powers that threaten to choke out life and love altogether.
How will we be holy fools, together?