What Parade Will You Join?
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Bob Henry
April 13, 2025
Good morning Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. The scripture for this Palm Sunday is from Luke 19:29-40 taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Palm Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays. That may be because I love remembering the story of how I was presented as a baby to God on this day, 51 years ago. In the church tradition in which I was raised we baptized infants, but the universal church has always had a focus during this special week (what some call Holy Week) on a time of preparation for one’s journey of faith.
Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, Palm Sunday has always captured my attention not just because of the great story or church traditions, but this special Sunday almost always begins with a parade (and who doesn’t love a parade).
Parades have always fascinated and drawn me. I am sure it is the child in me, the traditions, and the community coming together to celebrate who we are, that makes it all so alluring. I love the sound of marching bands, the antics of clowns and characters, big floats and so much more.
Actually, some of my favorite memories are the parades in the places I have lived and visited. Growing up in the small town of New Haven, Indiana I did not miss a parade, on several occasions I was even part of our local parade as a child. I remember once decorating my bike and riding the parade route with other kids from my community.
I will never forget when my parents took me to Walk Disney World for the first time and I saw the Main Street Electrical Parade with all the floats covered in lights and I was completely mesmerized – it is a core memory of mine.
In high school I played the trumpet and joined my marching band in the Fort Wayne Three Rivers Parade on a 90+ degree day in July. That is a different kind of core memory.
During college, I watched Michael Jordan, and the Chicago Bulls NBA Championship Parade make its way to Grant Park three years in a row, and when Michael returned from retirement…I watched three more.
When we lived in Wheaton, IL and had our first child, Sue and I would always attend the big 4th of July Parade with the entire town. I remember Alex not liking the sirens of the police cavalcade, just like me when I was that age.
When we lived in Silverton, Oregon we had two parades each year – one was the Homer Davenport Festival Parade and one was our annual Pet Parade which many from our meeting participated in by bringing their pets – from cats and dogs to horses and llamas.
My entire family has rituals and traditions around watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, The Disney Parks Christmas Parade on Christmas Day, and the Rose Bowl Parade on New Years Day. When we visited Alex at Christmas this year, he had even recorded the Disney Christmas Day Parade so we could have it on as we celebrated with him. Parades are a big thing in our family.
And since moving back to Indianapolis we have added watching The Indianapolis 500 Parade, and on a couple of occasion we have participated in the Indy Pride Parade.
So…parades have had and continue to have a big part in my and my family’s life. And let’s be really honest, parades are part of all of our lives.
History shows us that parades have been part of human culture for centuries, dating back to ancient civilizations. The origin of parades can be traced back to the extravagant processions of the Egyptians, where they celebrated religious ceremonies and important events with grand marches.
Throughout history, parades have taken various forms and served different purposes. They have been used to showcase religious ceremony, military might, to honor heroes and victories, commemorate historic events, and simply bring communities together in a joyful display of unity and pride.
And this all leads us perfectly into this morning, where we are going to look at two different parades happening as Jesus enters Jerusalem.
Several years ago, now, I preached a message titled, “What Really Happened on Palm Sunday?” where we explored some of what was going on in Jesus’ day. Today, I want to return to that exploration but focus specifically on the two parades.
To help us, again, I will turn to the book, “The Last Week,” by New Testament scholars John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg and as well, the words of pastor and scholar Dawn Hutchings.
Let me refresh our understanding with some of what these scholars revealed in their writings.
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but the parade which heralded Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem wasn’t the largest or most spectacular parade in town during that particular Passover season.
We must understand that back then, Jerusalem was a destination hotspot—a tourist town. The city’s population swelled from 40,000 to 200,000 during the holidays and Passover was one of the busiest holidays.
Crossan and Borg point out that there were two processions into Jerusalem to kick off what we call Holy Week. One, we know well and commemorate today with the waving of palm branches. We remember a peasant prophet of sorts riding a donkey, accompanied by his peasant followers coming from the north into Jerusalem.
But, also entering Jerusalem at Passover, from the west, was the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Like the Roman governors of Judea before him, Pilate lived in Caesarea by the sea. In other words, Pilate spent most of his time at his beach house (probably playing a round or two of golf, as well.)
But with crowds of devout Jews flowing into Jerusalem to commemorate their liberation from Egypt, the Roman Governors would put on a display of force, to deter the Jews from getting too exuberant about the possibility of liberation from Rome. Pilate’s procession was the visible manifestation of Imperial Roman power. This almost seems right out of our headlines, today.
Once a year, during the Passover, the Roman procurator moved his headquarters to Jerusalem in a show of strength designed to prevent any outbreaks of insurgency or violent rebellion against Roman rule.
Such outbreaks were a constant danger, both because Roman rule imposed real hardship economically on their subject nations, and because, no one likes the foot of a foreign power on their necks. I suspect there were tariffs involved, as well.
In a show of military force, the second parade included what Crossan and Borg describe as, “cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold.”
As Crossan and Borg say, The sound of “marching feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums” would have had a sobering effect on all those who saw this parade. There would have been no shouts of Hosanna as the powerful Pilate rode astride of his horse, hoping to strike fear into the resentful onlookers.
As Pilate lead a regiment of his own most trusted soldiers into town; as a show of force, he did so with confidence knowing that he was backed up by several battalions of Rome’s finest garrisoned on the west side of Jerusalem ready to flood into the city at Pilate’s command.
The Gospel according to Mark, written some 50 years after the event, tells us that Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem was not a spontaneous, slap-dash, spur-or-the-moment event.
In fact, Mark, the first Gospel to be written, spends more time telling us about the preparations for Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem than about the event itself.
It would seem Jesus wanted intentionally to set himself in stark contrast with the other procession coming into town.
According to Mark, the event was a sort of counter-procession, designed to contrast the kingdom of Rome to the dominion of God.
According to the first account, Jesus assigned two disciples to the job of acquiring a colt. It’s an odd clandestine mission that Jesus gives to his two disciples.
At the entrance of a village, they are told they will see the animal tied up. They are instructed to untie the donkey and bring it back; and if anyone questions their actions, they are to offer the oblique explanation that their master has need of it. Oh, and by the way, the animal has never been ridden before.
As we heard in our text for today, the disciples do as they are told, find the colt and they are indeed questioned as to why they, two strangers, are making off with (or literally stealing) someone else’s animal.
They bring the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on this unbroken colt and Jesus sat on it. Jesus simply sat on the back of a previously un-ridden colt.
Now by the time the writer of Luke gets around to telling the story, some 60 or 70 years after the event, the colt is now a donkey.
Matthew written 60 or 70 years after the event, can’t seem to decide so that gospel has the disciples bring a donkey and a colt and Jesus sits on them and rides them into Jerusalem.
They spread their cloaks on the road and some lay leafy branches on the road. According to the Gospels of Mark and Matthew these are just any old leafy branches. If you were listening carefully to our text from Luke, there is no mention of branches at all.
By the time you get to the Gospel of John written some 70 to 80 years after the event, the leafy branches are named as branches of palm trees.
Now, if you are thinking that I’m nit picking, there’s a point to “any old branches” verses “palm branches.”
Waving palm branches was the way that conquering military leaders were welcomed home from battle. The Gospel of John hints that Jesus is a conquering hero, when the earlier gospels seem to be setting up this particular parade as an ironic antithesis to a military parade.
So, what really happened, all those years ago?
Well, I have come to agree with John Shelby Spong, who seems to think that the followers of Jesus were interpreting their memories of the Jesus experience through the lenses of their own Jewish traditions.
In his book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, Spong points out that at the time of the Passover there wouldn’t have been any leafy branches about. Jerusalem at that time of year would have had leafless trees. Except of course for the only tree that keeps its leaves; the evergreen of the desert: the palm tree.
Now, this may also come as a surprise, Scholars agree that it is entirely possible that the death of Jesus took place not at the time of the Passover, but rather at the Jewish festival of Sukkoth, one of the most popular festivals of the Jewish calendar.
Sukkoth is the harvest festival. It is also known as the Festival of Tabernacles or Booths. This holiday, which also attracted huge numbers of pilgrims to Jerusalem, would have also required Pilate to exhibit a show of force. It was probably the most popular holiday among the Jews in the first century. There are some very telling features of the festival that suggest that the crucifixion did not actually occur during the Passover.
In the observance of Sukkoth, worshippers processed through Jerusalem and in the temple, waving in their right hands something called a lulab, which was a bunch of leafy branches made of willow, myrtle and palm.
It gets better, as they waved these branches in that procession, the worshippers recited words from Psalm 118, the psalm normally reserved for Sukkoth. Among those words were: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord.” “Save us” in Hebrew is hosianna or hosanna. That phrasing was typically followed with the words: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Spong and a good many other theologians point to the book of the prophet Zechariah. The prophet quoted by the gospel writers when they tell the story of Palm Sunday.
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victories is he humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.”
Spong insists that the Gospel writers were trying to make sense out of the crucifixion and did so through the lens of their own Jewish scriptures and traditions.
Jesus may well have participated in the festival of Sukkoth before the crucifixion. Those events were spoken of down through the decades until in the hands of the gospel writers, (and this may surprise you the most) they were reinterpreted to portray Jesus as the messiah, the one the people were waiting for. Thus, Jesus was no longer just some political rabble-rouser who was executed by the Romans for provoking an insurgency.
Rather, Jesus is reinterpreted as the longed for Messiah as foretold by the Prophet and the story is reset during the Passover to portray Jesus as the new Moses, sent to deliver his people from the hands of their oppressors.
Sadly, the historical details are impossible to sort some two centuries after the events.
Reading the accounts literally is also impossible; that is unless you are willing to leave your brain out of the equation; and picture Jesus riding a colt and a donkey, both of whom have never been ridden before.
So why would I bring this up? Well, what is important is that the gospel writers wanted to give their readers an impression of who Jesus was, using words and images that that they would understand because they came straight out of the Jewish scriptures and traditions.
What we must not do is read these stories outside of their own context. To do so is to run the risk, that Christianity has fallen prey to over and over again down through the centuries that has labeled our Jewish friends as the killers of Christ and punished them mercilessly.
So, let’s get to the real query for us this morning, what is Palm Sunday speaking to us, today in 2025?
It seems to me that no matter how you look at the story of this procession into Jerusalem, you can’t help but see the image of a Jesus who offers us a choice between two parades.
The attraction of the power and the might of Pilate’s military parade with all its glory and wonder is still there to tempt us. The temptation to use fear, revenge, force, and violence, military might, nuclear deterrence, shock and awe, is still marching its way into the hearts and minds of so many people in our world, today.
The pathways to glory still beckon. Power and might, greed and violence attract more attention and more converts than the path less traveled: Jesus versus Pilate, the nonviolence of the dominion of God versus the violence of the empire.
Two arrivals, two entrances, two processions—and the reality is that we all too often can easily find ourselves in the wrong parade.
Pastor Dawn Hutchings says,
“The world is full of parades or as we might more frequently say, full of “bandwagons.” Sometimes it’s really difficult to know which parade to join, which bandwagon to hop on. It’s so easy and so tempting to join the wrong ones and so hard, sometimes, to get in the right procession. It’s so easy to simply get caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowds and join the processions which has the loudest brass bands or the most elaborate floats or the greatest number of celebrities or the most charismatic leaders.”
And that means,
“…it’s easy to miss the counter-procession that is taking place on the other side of town—the one where Jesus is riding on a humble donkey, claiming a dominion, not by violence, but by courageous loving, serving and accepting his place among the victims of imperial power. In so doing, for those with the eyes of faith to see it, Jesus bears witness to the futility of the world’s kind of power in establishing God’s peace, God’s shalom, and points us to a different way. The dominion of God is nothing remotely like the kingdoms or empires with which we are all too familiar.”
Folks, power does not come from domination or oppression, but rather flows from love and service. Let me repeat that…Power does not come from domination or oppression, but rather flows from love and service.
Leadership requires servanthood and grace.
And as Quakers we know that peace is won without sword, and no person claims greater value than another.
While Pontius Pilate processed into town with a showcase of intimidating muscle and glinting armor astride a noble steed, Jesus processed unarmed, unflanked, on the back of a borrowed burro.
So, what parade will you join, today?
Let that query speak to your condition as we enter waiting worship this morning.