April 10th: "Protest Parade"

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The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland

“Protest Parade”

Rev. Amy Morgan

April 10, 2022

Luke 19:28-44

Jesus went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

 29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 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.

 31 If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' just say this, 'The Lord needs it.'" 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" 34 They said, "The Lord needs it."

 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road.

 37 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, 38 saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"

 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop."

 40 He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

 41 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

 43 Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side.

 44 They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."

It looked like a parade. Rows and rows of people – children, then women, then men – marching down 5^th Avenue in New York City. They carried banners. A drum line kept everyone marching to the beat. But there was one exceptionally strange thing about this parade. Other than the sound of the drums and marching feet, it was completely silent. No shouts, no music, no songs. Just silent marchers for blocks and blocks. 

This unnerving silent parade was, in fact, a protest. In 1917, violence against African Americans was on the rise. The Great Migration was underway, bringing throngs of Black Southerners to the North in search of better work, better pay, and better treatment. But as they arrived in those Northern cities, industrialists recruited them to serve as strikebreakers, enraging Northern Whites. In East St. Louis, hundreds of African Americans were massacred in a violent uprising. At the same time, highly publicized public lynchings took place in Texas and Tennessee. 

And so the newly-formed NAACP organized the Black churches of New York City to stage a silent parade in protest against the violence, calling on President Woodrow Wilson and the American public to recognize their citizenship, their plight, and their humanity. 

The parade was not a success by any discernable measure. Wilson increased the segregation of the federal government, and violence against African Americans increased as well. The generation that marched silently down 5^th Avenue 105 years ago died without seeing Jim Crow laws dismantled, without seeing hate crime legislation enacted, without seeing an African American occupy the same office as Woodrow Wilson. Their silence was met with more suffering and death. 

The Palm Sunday event looked like a parade, too. Crowds of people waving palm branches – a symbol of triumph and peace. Songs and chants filled the air. But this parade was strange, too. The central figure was not riding a grand steed, as a king would do when entering a conquered city. Instead, he was riding on a colt that had never been ridden. Instead of an ornate saddle, he sat on borrow cloaks. The humility of the parade’s centerpiece stood in stark contrast to the celebration erupting all around him. 

This paradoxical parade was also a protest. Jerusalem was governed by puppet rulers loyal to Rome and obsessed with power. The people wanted a regime change. Zealots and self-proclaimed messiahs were plentiful, and their rebellions were brutally suppressed. 

But none of them had demonstrated the kind of power Jesus’s disciples had witnessed. Jesus had cast out demons, healed people who were blind, paralyzed, and leprous. He taught with authority. And he had even raised the dead. 

These were deeds that could only be attributed to the power of the living God, a sign that this man was, without a doubt, the actual Messiah God had promised, the king who would restore Israel to its former glory. He was the one Zechariah had prophesied would come riding in to save them on the colt of a donkey. He was the one who would overthrow the powers that were oppressing them. 

But this parade was not a success, either. In fact, as we’ll remember this week, it was a colossal failure in every possible way. These same disciples who marched with Jesus will betray him and deny they ever knew him. Jesus will be tortured, ridiculed, and executed. Just another messiah, put to death and erased from history. 

As unsuccessful as these protest parades were, they have continued throughout history and still continue today. Suffragettes marched on the capital in 1913, and the amendment to the Constitution allowing women the right to vote failed once again that year. And the next year. And the next five years after that. In November 1969, half a million people marched in Washington, D.C. to urge an end to the Vietnam War. The war continued for several more years, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives. The first Pride parade was a protest against the violence and discrimination experienced by people in the LGBTQ+ community. But it would be another 42 years before those marchers would have the right to be legally married. And today, teenagers protesting gun violence in their schools and demanding action on climate change are being largely ignored. Russians marching for peace are being met with arrest and imprisonment. 

So why do we do it? Why do we continue these protest parades? They clearly don’t work. They never have. We get worked up, we take a stand, we call on history to change the future. And even those who marched in silence saw no progress. 

It’s enough to make a person weep. And that’s just what Jesus did. He looked down on the city that was the home of God’s sanctuary on earth, the home of God’s covenant, the city from which the whole world was supposed to be blessed, the city for which all his people prayed for peace. And he wept. Because there was no peace. The things that make for peace were not recognized. They were hidden. They were silenced. 

And so the stones must cry out. Jesus weeps, and the stones shout. Even if no one hears them. 

This is the first part of the good news: Jesus weeps with us, and the whole creation cries out with us. Even if our tears and cries and protest parades seem to go unheeded, we do not weep and cry out and march alone. As Father Richard Rohr wrote this week, “Jesus does not observe human suffering from a distance; he is somehow in human suffering, with us and for us.” 

But that is not the end of the gospel. Suffering is not the last word. Jesus weeps and suffers and dies, yes. But that is not the end of the story.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is often quoted as saying, “the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice.” The apostle Paul wrote that “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains,” as it awaits redemption. The cosmic forces of time and space, the spinning of the earth and the expansion of the universe, are all caught up in God’s redemptive purposes. 

We may not see it on a hill outside of Jerusalem or the streets of New York, D.C., or Moscow. But the stones are crying out. And God is listening. God is seeing. God is acting. 

The peace proclaimed by Jesus’s protest parade did not come through military victory, legislative action, or social change. That peace came through death and resurrection. Before his arrest, Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” The peace of Jesus was announced by angels at his birth and echoed back to heaven in the palm parade. And we continue that refrain each time we gather, saying, “The peace of Christ be with you. And also with you.” 

We participate in that peace by continuing along the way of Jesus. By praising heaven for signs of healing, restoration, new life, and new hope. By proclaiming God’s peace on earth and in heaven. And by participating in what Rohr calls God’s “solidary love.” He writes, “embracing union with oppressed and despised peoples, placing any privilege you hold at the disposal of the movement to dismantle oppression and alienation and to restore balance and wholeness to human community—this solidary love is how we most closely and faithfully follow Jesus and join him in beloved community.”

The silent marchers did not experience the change they hoped for. But the arc of history did bend toward justice. And we now have two African American justices sitting on the highest court in the land. The great-granddaughters of those who marched for women’s right to vote have help elect women to the offices of governor, senator, and vice-president. The almost five decades since the end of the Vietnam War have seen the fewest war casualties of any time in American history, even while fighting a decades-long War on Terror. Federal law now protects people from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and allows the federal government to prosecute hate crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Those marching today – for peace, for change, for freedom – those protest parades may not end the violence, transform our world, or liberate the oppressed. But that is not a cause for despair, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t join in the parade. Because Jesus rides in the midst of those parades, and the stones cry out where voices have been silenced. May we recognize the time of visitation from our God, Christ’s presence with us in suffering and death, and may we recognize the things that make for peace. We, along with the whole creation, are caught up in God’s redemptive purposes, as we join the parade, shouting “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.