There are certain visual images that are common to the collective memory of large groups of people. All it takes is the mention of a word or two, and those images immediately come to mind. Pearl Harbor and the Arizona. John Kennedy and a motorcade in Dallas. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” 9/11. Those are some of the recent ones. But we can go back a long way, so far, in fact, that the images themselves have to be supplied by our minds, using the words that history has chosen to describe the particular event. The exodus of the Jews from Egypt. The signing of the Declaration of Independence. The crucifixion. Among these images is the sight that Matthew describes for us in some detail, the spectacle of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

There are many important images in our collective mind, and it would certainly be fun and interesting to try to rank them in order of importance, the kind of thing one does late at night with a group of close friends. I would propose to you today that one that should be included in the top tier is the sight of the itinerant preacher from Nazareth making a very public entry into a religious and political stage the power and potential of which would be difficult to overstate. I would propose to you that the image that we commonly refer to as Palm Sunday is something that should be recorded in your mind and heart and often called to mind for the sake of what it has to say to us about the nature of God and the genius of the faith that you and I profess.

Let’s briefly remember the setting of Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem. It was the Passover, the most important religious celebration in the Jewish state. But it was more than religious, it was also political. It was the Fourth of July and Christmas all rolled into one. Passover commemorates the singular event in Jewish history that happened about a millennium before Christ, the night that the Spirit of God passed over the homes of the Hebrew slaves held captive in Egypt, the night that God dealt a stunning blow to Pharaoh so that he would let the slaves go free, to be led by Moses into the wilderness and eventually, into the Promised Land. Scholars over the years have tried to estimate the number of pilgrims who flooded into Jerusalem for the Passover. Jews from all over the known world would try to come for Passover. Some credible estimates suggest that, in addition to the several hundred thousand who lived in Jerusalem year-round, there were perhaps another 2 million who had for the party. It would make a million-man march on Washington look small by comparison.

Jesus’ entry into the city was no simple or accidental thing. It was a calculated and planned statement. Like the ancient prophets who often acted out the spiritual message they were told to deliver by God, Jesus acted out some very important religious and political statements. He had made arrangements to ride in to town on a donkey that had never been ridden before, thus making it especially suitable for religious purposes. The people were prepared to receive him, shouting out ancient greetings used to welcome the king, and waving palm branches in the air, another symbol of the approach of royalty.

That Jesus rode into town on a donkey was no small thing. Calling to mind the prophecy of Zechariah, Jesus’ choice of steed was a deliberate claim to the Messiahship, and also an unmistakable declaration of his intention. He did not choose a horse, which was the animal of warfare, but the donkey, in that culture just as valued and respected as the horse, but an animal of peace. The parade that Jesus planned also brought up another religious and political memory for the Jewish people. Nearly two centuries earlier, Jerusalem had been captured by a powerful king named Antiochus Epiphanes, who had profaned the temple with the blood of pigs and turned it into a brothel. A group of Jews called the Maccabees rose up and retook their land, and to celebrate, the people waved palms and sang psalms, happy for the restoration of their independence and their faith. Imagine if you will, the foreign occupation of Washington, D.C., and the celebration that would follow its liberation. Such was the amazingly complex and emotionally laden setting and method of Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem.

Of course Jerusalem was again an occupied territory, an oppressed land. Her people were not free but chafed under the domination of the Roman Empire. And now, here comes a popular teacher and powerful miracle worker whose dossier seems to fit so well with the ancient visions and whose timing is nothing short of impeccable. It was a moment of amazing possibility, so tense and so ripe for explosive change that you could feel it in the air. And truly, something very, very big was about to happen…but not like anyone expected.

You can look at Jesus’ entire life as one long journey into his destiny. He came all the way from heaven to be born in a stable on the outskirts of civilization. He had to make a run for it to Egypt for a while, the very same place from which his people had fled centuries earlier. He hit the road again in his adult life, traveling from village to village, teaching and healing and showing people a new way. Now, he was making his final trip into the heart of the people whom he had come to save, into their capital city, into their religious nerve center, into their most important holiday. There was one last trip he would take, and that would be his long walk up a hill, carrying a cross on his back. You might expect that when God enters the scene something big is going to happen, and it was. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day, in the way that he came, and the time that he came, he was taking one more step along the road of what I have come to see was a gentle revolution.

I’ve chosen those last two words very carefully. Jesus was the leader of a gentle revolution. When you and I think of a revolution we usually think of something that is anything but gentle. Napoleon said that a revolution is “an idea which has found its bayonets.” Revolution means upheaval, war, a drastic change in the landscape of things. In a sense, those same descriptive words can be used of the revolution Jesus was starting, but he didn’t use bayonets. Edmund Burke said that the most important revolution was a revolution in “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.” That gets closer to the kind of revolution Jesus started. Did things in the human scene begin to change after Jesus arrived on the scene? Of course they did, and they still are changing. Did his revolution start a war? If you consider the battle between good and evil a war, and I do, then yes, of course it did. Wherever Jesus is taken seriously, and wherever his teachings are followed and his example obeyed, a titanic struggle begins between the ways of a lost world and the ways of the Savior who would rescue it. Here’s one way to test whether or not a person is walking along behind Jesus: If that person’s life doesn’t change in some measurable way, and if they don’t begin to encounter obstacles and challenges in the process, then they aren’t following Jesus. Make no mistake about it: following Jesus’ way is the best way, but because it goes against the grain of the world, it is often a way of struggle, of challenge, of battle with all the other folks who are going the wrong way.

Jesus started a revolution, which is exactly what the Romans and Jewish leaders feared. But his revolt was not what they expected. In fact, I’ll bet that if you had asked the chief priest Caiaphas and the Roman governor Pilate about the success of Jesus’ revolution, they would have laughed in your face. Sure, Jesus’ closest associates had a different story, but Jesus had been put to death. So what if a few folks said otherwise? Based on every possible measure, Jesus was a miserable failure as a revolutionary leader. But that’s only if you think that the kind of revolution he started was like all other revolutions. Remember, I said that Jesus was starting a gentle revolution.

Had Jesus meant to throw out the Romans and install himself as the religious and political leader of a New Israel, he would have ridden into town on a warhorse. Not that he would have needed even that, considering that he was God’s Son and as such had entire armies of angels at his command. No, Jesus meant to start a gentle revolution, the kind that was not so much about the power and prestige and position of one tiny little nation, but another kind, of a magnitude and scope so large that anyone in Jerusalem that day would have been blown away at the thought of it, including people with names like Peter and James and John. Jesus was starting a revolution not against one nation’s enemy of the moment. He had much larger things in mind. He was starting a revolution against hatred, against fear, against pride, against injustice, against greed, against despair, against manipulation, against death itself. The revolution Jesus started was against all those things that make people fight each other, and sometimes even fight within themselves. Jesus didn’t want to save just one nation, but all nations, not just one bad political mess, but all bad political messes, not just one set of problems, but all problems, everywhere, for all time. And he started it in a gentle way.

Don’t think for a minute that gentle is the same thing as weak. You cannot defeat the enemies Jesus fought and be weak. You have to be so strong as to fight those enemies in ways that the world often doesn’t trust. You fight hatred with love, fear with faith, pride with humility, injustice with selflessness, greed with generosity, despair with hope, manipulation with freedom. And you fight death with life, which means you have to have the power to create life, or recreate it. And that is real power. And real power doesn’t need to strut its stuff or show off or make big spectacles. Real power can be gentle. Saint Francis de Sales said, “When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.” Leo Buscaglia said, “Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”

What kind of conquering king rides into the heart of the battle, gives himself up, and dies? What kind of superhero approaches the brink of success only to let himself be turned over to his enemies? Only the kind strong enough to prevail even in the midst of apparent defeat, strong enough to allow the worst to happen and then turn even that into victory, strong enough to say nothing in his own defense because his actions will speak a thundering word that will never be silenced but will instead be celebrated every Easter morning for the rest of time. The only revolutions that truly last are those that come from such strength that they can withstand the worst the enemy has to dish out, and still conquer.

I have only one purpose today: to help burn into your mind an indelible image of your Savior riding into the heart of the storm with a powerful gentleness that only a Son of God could display, and with a powerful gentleness that would start a revolution against all the worst enemies of humanity, even the final enemy of death. With that image in your mind and your heart and your soul, imagine what strength you can find to do battle with the evil that attacks you in your own life. Imagine what patience and courage and wisdom and persistence and calm you can find to rise every morning to meet the challenges of your day. Imagine what divine power you can bring to bear as you fight even death itself, knowing that this Jesus was riding into town not for his sake, but for yours. Jesus the Gentle Revolutionary rode to his destiny that day so that you could approach your own destiny with the same heavenly help that he called upon, as he met the worst this life can do, and won. Let that revolutionary image begin to fill your soul, and you too, can become a gentle revolutionary, full of love and grace and peace that will change the world.

Amen.

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