Caesar is Not Amused- A Palm Sunday Meditation

Ivory Constantinople, c. 950-1000 Jesus Entry

As the crowds proceed the man entering from the Mount of Olives

And shouts of “Hosanna” echo through the festival clogged streets of Jerusalem

While the prophet from Nazareth makes his way through the gates

Mounted on a donkey with no sword or spear, no armor or armies

No parade of the vanquished but rather a rabble of pilgrims

Strew his way with cloaks and the palms have their crowns removed

To lay before him in this mockery or the victory procession of a conqueror

And Caesar is not amused.

In Herod’s Temple, with its courts and curtains

Where the cultic apparatus of the priests of the most high

Separate holy from unholy, men from women, Jews from Gentiles

Walks the one who touched the untouchables, ate with sinners and tax collectors

Brought righteousness to the unrighteous and holiness to the unholy

And as he turned the tables of the lives of so many who were previously excluded

Now here in a temple which has ceased to be a house of prayers for all the nations

The tables are turned, as currency and cattle, scapegoat and dove

Are liberated from the sacrificial efficiency of expiation

And the priests seek a new scapegoat

In frustration for the lack of promised fruit the fig tree withers where it set down roots

And a vineyard is tended by unfaithful tenants who kill the messengers of the master

And invited guests snub the banquet of the kingdom of God as the hall fills with others

Gathered from the forgotten highways and byways of the nations to fill the wedding hall

For the arrival of the bridegroom and the promised bride

But in a world where the things of God are given to Caesar

And the things of Caesar are looked upon as a god

Where the God of the living is attempted to be contained within a temple of cold stone

Where religion is used to puff up the proud and to step upon the poor

The master cries over the people and the city that is destined for desolation

For the wood is green that will soon be dry and the tinder is arranged

For a city that seeks a conquering Messiah

As in days of old when prophets came and confronted king and priest

Where city and temple, land and kings become the objects of dedication

When covenantal identity is consumed by cultic propriety

And the city kills the prophets and stones the ones sent to it

When people prefer the darkness to the light which has come into their midst

And the city cries to Caesar’s procurator to ‘crucify’

When priests proclaim the messiah as a new scapegoat

And Caesar sits amused as the city consumes its own king

As life seems to be consumed by death, love seems forsaken

And might seems to make right

Yet the God of the living

Of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob

Is not done, for the obedient one to death will be the name above all names

The prophet of Nazareth will become the high priest of the nations

The crucified king will be the one that every knee will bow to on heaven and on earth

The forsaken love will be the love that nothing can separate the world from

The light will not be consumed by the darkness

And powers that reign in the shadow of death will be disarmed

By the son of David who entered from the Mount of Olives

Neil White, 2014

Other Holy Week poems: At The Table, Golgotha, Stay Here and Keep Watch

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Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular

Caesar is Not Amused- A Palm Sunday Meditation

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