It really had become something of an annual ritual for me. On the first day of the week of Passover, I would get up dark and early, pack a lunch with a good amount of wine to sustain me for the day, and walk through the Temple precincts, out the Golden Gate, down into the Kidron Valley and start the climb up the paths on the side of the Mount of Olives.
And, as usual, the guards by the gate would give me a bit of a look over, but I always knew that it wasn't folks leaving Jerusalem that concerned them so much, as it was folks entering later in the day.
You know there was never really just one reason why I took this annual hike up the Mount of Olives at the beginning of Passover week. On the face of it, I just wanted to get out of the hustle, bustle and dust of the city for a clay. Smell the moist soil; enjoy a little green instead of the drab browns and grays of the city. Listen to the birds sing. And just be quiet for a while.
Maybe that is it. I wanted to be quiet. It was Passover week, and I wanted to prepare myself. As I climbed I would sing one of the great psalms of our people, "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!" And I believed Psalm 118 as I sang, even though most of the evidence all around me brought into question whether it was true. It's hard to believe in God's steadfast love when everywhere you look there is evidence of the power of imperial hatred and cruelty. Somehow I've always had a hard time putting together God's steadfast love with Roman rule over the holy land.
Of course this tension was especially heightened for me, and for all of my people during Passover. And that is why Passover was a dangerous time in Jerusalem. Here we celebrated a feast of liberating memories in the face of an oppressive reality. In the face of Roman imperial rule we remembered that first empire that had oppressed us, our earliest memories of imperial brutality, our first experience of slavery. And we remembered our God who confounded and destroyed our oppressors. We remembered our exodus, the blood on our doorposts, the Passover lamb.
So Passover was a dangerous time. These kinds of memories only served to deepen our disappointment and pain, and make more acute our longing for liberation. It's quite the thing to remember God setting you free from one house of bondage when you are living in another house of bondage. And the Romans knew that Passover was a time ripe for revolution, so the tensions in the city were high. Perhaps so high that I just needed to get away, climb the Mount of Olives and calm myself for the week ahead.
But as I climbed and sang my psalm, I remembered that there was always another good reason to be up here at the beginning of Passover week. From the top of the Mount of Olives I could not only see the holy city, I could look down the road to my left and see the pilgrims come up the Jericho road to the city and the Temple for Passover. And they would be singing the same psalm that I was singing, and I would know that in solidarity with my brothers and sisters, maybe I could believe that refrain about God's steadfast love a little longer.
This particular morning, however, was different. I was at the top of the mountain shortly after the sun had risen and the Jericho road was still deserted. But off in the distance to the west, the road that came in from the coast, I could see a cloud of dust off in the distance. And my heart began to beat with anxiety. I stopped singing my psalm and stared down that road trying to catch a glimpse of what was coming. As the procession came closer and closer it was becoming clear what it meant. But then I began to hear noises coming from the other side--sounds echoing up the valley from the Jericho road. Familiar sounds of singing. The pilgrims were coming to Jerusalem. I looked down to my left for a few minutes, straining to hear snippets of the same psalm, "O give thanks to the Lord. for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!"
Joy was beginning to overcome my anxiety, but then I turned and looked again down the road from the West, and there they were. A fresh regiment of Roman troops marching down the road to Jerusalem. A little show of force to remind the locals about who was in control around here. A strong arm to keep an oppressed people down and to confront their memories and hopes with the hard reality of Roman boots, swords, and ... if necessary ... crosses. The Romans knew what week it was, and they knew that Jerusalem posed a security threat to the empire during Passover, so they reinforced the security personnel in the city.
A king on a donkey?
But the noise from my left was getting louder. I looked back down the Jericho road and listened again for the song of the pilgrims. And I then first heard, and then saw something that could only mean trouble this week. What I heard was the crowd singing the end Psalm 118, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord," but it seemed like they were singing "blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord." That in itself was a dangerous thing to sing in a land that already had a puppet king in the north, Herod, and a Roman appointed governor here in the south, Pilate. But what made this crowd recklessly seditious and a threat to us all, was that it appeared that they actually had someone who they were heralding as a king!
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