A Tale of Two
Processions
Probably everyone in the west of the city would have heard it. The sharp crunch of grit and rock under hundreds of marching feet, the scraping and squeaking of leather, the heavy huffing of horses, and behind it all, the rhythmic pounding of drums. People would have looked out from their windows and would have crept around to the side of the street to see men with arched backs high on their horses, foot soldiers with frosty eyes trained ahead of them, leather armor and helmets and weapons, banners and poles of metal and gold, with eagles mounted on the top. The silent onlookers would have beheld this spectacle with a range of emotions: curiosity, wonder, fear, resentment. Like it or not, the Romans were here, and they would have their way.
Around the same time, a man rode a donkey down the Mount of Olives and through the eastern entrance of Jerusalem. A rag-tag crowd brimming with smiles and laughter threw their threadbare cloaks and leafy branches onto the road, shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). It was a strange procession, nothing like the daunting show of force that was happening at the other end of the city. The donkey hee-hawed, bucking this way and that, occasionally stopping and pausing the parade in its steps. It is almost as though the man on the donkey planned it this way, to be so different from the imperial procession happening on the other end of the city. Some historians have since suggested that it was a bit of ingenious “street theater.” After all, wasn’t the man on the donkey the one to choose this young, untrained colt? He knew what he was doing.
He was orchestrating a message. He was aiming for more than absurdity, although the obstinate, low-riding donkey and the shabby, unarmed guard of honor would certainly have conveyed a ridiculous image. And he was aiming for more than a response to the imperial procession on the other side of the city, although historians tell us that Pilate and his troops would have been entering around the same time as Jesus, for it was the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, a festival celebrating liberation from an oppressive empire, and the Romans needed to ensure that there was no insurrection. The message that Jesus was orchestrating was not just a comical counterthrust to the imperial procession. It was a holy act of remembering God’s promise. For the prophet Zechariah had envisioned just such a royal entry into the city of Jerusalem: “Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zech 9:9). The prophet Zechariah had gone a step further to anticipate that this king would be unlike other kings. He would not achieve his way through force but through peace: “He 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” (Zech 9:9-10).
Of Pride and Running
the Show
This Lent, we have been exploring the eight thoughts that early Christ-followers identified as deadly. Today, we come to the final thought, which many considered the deadliest of them all, the root from which all the other thoughts originated. Pride. It is, essentially, the thought that I am in the place of God. I am in control. I can do it on my own. It’s not difficult to see the pride of the Roman empire in their spectacular military processions, which were designed to overwhelm and send the clear message, “We’re in charge here.” Indeed, the emperor was considered by many to be a god himself.
It is, perhaps, a bit more difficult to see our own pride. Most of us don’t march around in such ostentatious fashion, commanding honor and respect—or else! Our pride is of a subtler sort. The desert fathers and mothers observed that much of their own pride showed itself first through speech. They noticed that their words were often crafted to assert their authority over the surrounding world. Words of judgment, argument, justification, flattery, slander. It’s probably easier to see this in others. Have you ever known someone who could get their way by charming others with compliments and cheerful words? Or maybe you’ve known someone who could get their way by whining, with bitter laments and accusations? Or maybe by threatening, with shouting and intimidation? The tactics are endless, but the thought underlying them is the same. Pride. I am in control. I will get my way.
One of the most compelling, relatable pictures of pride that I know is the twelve-step tradition’s portrait of “an actor who wants to run the whole show.” He “is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. … [But] what usually happens? The show doesn’t come off very well. … Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are [still] more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? … Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?” This metaphor concludes with a succinct realization that pride doesn’t work. We cannot control the world, even with all the swords of Rome. Thus the final acknowledgment: “We had to quit playing God.”
The God Who Quits
Playing God
The biggest surprise about Jesus, both in the ancient world and today, is not that he is the embodiment of God. It is that, in Jesus, God quits playing God. In the rest of the world, the gods are always duking it out, engaged in a battle against chaos or evil, promising us that in the end they will win. It is the story of good versus evil, us versus them, and we see it all the way from Greek mythology to American destiny, from ancient stories to Star Wars. In all these stories, there is a force that will eventually triumph, a will that will win out. In all the world, the story of God is a story of control.
But not in Jesus. In Jesus, God quits playing God. That is, in Jesus, we don’t see the kind of God that we desire, the kind of God that we fantasize about. We don’t see a God of control, a God who gets his way. We see a God riding a cranky donkey, surrounded by the riff-raff. We see a God whose passion for nonviolent justice will become the passion of an unjust crucifixion. We see a God who will profoundly disappoint the crowds, who proclaim his greatness but expect a conquering messiah.
Christian tradition identifies humility as the remedy for pride. And I think humility characterizes the crazy, scandalous, ever-surprising nature of the God whom we worship. We worship a humble God, a God who quits playing God, a God whose way is not force and control, not swords and guns, but care and service. How many times does Jesus turn the tables on his disciples, telling them to become like little children, to become the least, the last, servant of all? Our God is a humble God, who revels in the company of children, who pays special attention to the foreigner, who breaks bread with the outcast, who hugs the sick and diseased, who spends time with the poor.
Our God is not enflamed with conquest and control, with power and possessiveness. All of these candles—anger, greed, lust, and so on—all are extinguished. Only one candle remains. It is the candle of God’s love. Which is who Christ is. And it’s who we are too.
Perhaps you have heard the saying, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” Well, that is our God. It is not that our God is a doormat, but that our God is continually thinking of others and seeking their welfare. Make no mistake, Jesus is not killed for being kind. He is killed for insisting that everyone is a child of God and deserves treatment as such. And it is precisely this insistence that orients his way—a way not of force and destruction (for no child of God deserves that), but rather a way of care and restoration. His way is love, whatever the consequence.
Prayer
Whose nonviolent justice
Challenges egos and empires alike—
When we are willful
And preoccupied with control,
May your strange procession—
Your colt never ridden,
Your vulnerable, rag-tag followers—
Shock us out of old habits
…
Teach us what it means
To walk the way of Christ
In a world bent on control.
In Christ, who bears his cross: Amen.
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