Sunday’s Palms
On December 10, 1989, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of protesters gathered outside of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to demand that the Catholic Church change the ways in which it was addressing the AIDS crisis. At the time, the archdiocese of New York was led by Cardinal O’Connor, who was an outspoken opponent of using prophylactics and comprehensive sex education as means of combatting the spread of HIV and AIDS. He was also firm in his understanding of homosexuality as sinful, which contributed to the demonization of members of the LGBTQ community and the perception of AIDS as a form of divine retribution. As he was such a powerful figure at the time, who was able to influence public policy in a number of areas, the AIDS activist organization ACT UP had begun directing its attention at Cardinal O’Connor. Their organizing efforts gained notoriety on that Sunday in December, when protesters gathered mostly outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They carried signs critiquing Church dogma and urging the Church to see that the over 100,000 people who had died in the United States from HIV/AIDS were people of sacred worth. That morning, as the roughly 7,000 protesters gathered outside the Cathedral, a few dozen entered the church intending to stage a silent demonstration. It quickly turned into a not-so-silent demonstration, as members of ACT UP began to shout to Cardinal O’Connor to stop ignoring those dying from AIDS, to recognize that people were dying, and to do something about it. Mixed into the voices calling out Cardinal O’Connor’s bigotry were cries for help, for justice. As the demonstration continued, the activists inside the Cathedral began lying in the aisles, carrying out something called a “die-in” to bring attention to the lives being lost each day, their bodies laid out like coats and palm branches waiting to welcome freedom from death itself.
Many of those taking part in this demonstration were people living with AIDS, a disease that would most likely lead to the end of their lives. They knew that they were most likely dying, if not from AIDS-related causes than from the violence that disproportionately occupied the same spaces where AIDS was common. They saw death on the horizon, and rather than turning away, rather than keeping their heads low and trying not to draw attention to themselves, they faced that death head-on. They did as Christ did, when he rode head on into the very city that was home to the religious leaders he had spent his entire ministry pushing back against, challenging, questioning, prodding, and embarrassing, knowing full well that he had upset enough people with the means to end his life that that was a very real possibility—if not a guarantee. Even so, he rode on, not with the triumphant prestige of a warlord or an emperor, but as one who was willing to put his life on the line for those whose backs were against the wall. Jesus surely would have known what was waiting for him in Jerusalem. The reasonable thing for him to do would have been to stay as far away from the city as possible, to disband his group of followers, take up his father’s trade, and live a quiet life in the country. But instead, Jesus does the unreasonable thing. He puts his life, his body, in between those in power and those at the margins. He draws attention to the ways in which the people around him are suffering, and pushes back—not in the way that the zealous rebels of his time would have, but by acts of non-violent resistance. Because violence belongs to the powers of this world, and it has no place in the beloved community that Jesus was building among those who loved him. That non-violent spirit is the one Jesus carries with him over the coats and palms on his way to Jerusalem, not because he does not anticipate violence against him, but because he knows that the kin-dom is not born out of violence. Rather, it is born out of standing together, supporting one another, and being willing to put our own well-being at risk for others.
But it’s also important to recognize who the people were in the crowd, who it was that laid out their palms and coats. It wasn’t the people of Jerusalem. Remember, the passage says that the city was confused, that they were in turmoil trying to figure out who it was that was causing such a commotion. No, these were the people from outside the city, from small villages and other cities. These were pilgrims who had made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover remembrances. In a quite literal sense, they weren’t the insiders. They didn’t live in the holy place, they didn’t live in the religious, cultural, and economic capital of the province. They were pilgrims, many of whom travelled long distances, almost all of them by foot. They were tired, dirty, and far from home. They weren’t comfortable. And, contrary to what many would argue, these were not the same people who turned on Jesus at the end of the week. Classics scholar and translator Sarah Ruden points out that the original Greek in which the gospels were written uses two different words to describe these groups. These weren’t the people who brought accusations and testified against Jesus. Those were the insiders, the people closer to the center of political, economic, and religious power. Which makes sense, since those were the folks that Jesus said ought to give away all their possessions and all their authority and follow him into struggle. So, while there’s something kind of poetic about the Palm Sunday crowd being the ones to turn on Jesus on Good Friday, it makes much more sense and is more correct to say that these were two different crowds. One who welcomed Jesus, a fellow pilgrim along the way to a city rife with power and in need of change. One who could not comprehend the witness of a shepherd king who couldn’t seem to help himself when it came to rubbing those in power the wrong way. One who saw that the “the aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community,” and one who could not see that “the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness,” as Dr. King put it.
After all, that is the example that Christ sets in this parade he puts on—that the beloved community is born not out of violence, not out of conquest, not out of cultural, racial, religious, and ideological homogeneity. But rather that it is built out of a concern for the outsider, a concern for those whose lives are regarded as sinful or worthless. It is built out of a concern for the sacred worth and the dignity of each part of Creation that bears the imago dei, the image of God, which is all of it. It is built when our love for one another overcomes the fear of death, and drives us to hear the cries of hosanna, ayudanos—help us, save us, stop letting us die—and we respond to these cries. It comes not only in the act of helping and responding to cries for help, but when we have the courage to cry out for ourselves, asking others for help. The beloved community, that sacred bond to which we are called in this place, becomes apparent when we become bearers and keepers of one another, so that none of us struggles alone. Not because it benefits us, not because of some animal instinct to band together in packs that compete with one another. But because it doesn’t make sense. The beloved community is not about self-preservation—that’s not one of our values. The beloved community is about offering all of ourselves for the sake of others, so that we might all experience the abundant, eternal, good life that Christ calls us towards. That comes not by turning away from death, not by turning away from the cries of our fellow pilgrims, not by ignoring the immigrant or the unhoused person or the people dying of AIDS or anyone whose back is against the wall in grand ways or simple. It comes by facing towards death and continuing our ministry in spite of it all. It comes from living as Easter people, as those who serve a death-defying God, and as those whose love for one another and all of Creation is greater than our fear. May this be our call, even as we walk this road to Calvary. Amen.