Lost in the crowd. How the Passover minions participating in Jesus' procession on Palm Sunday must have felt this way, on the Mount of Olives east side of town! Given that theirs was a counter-procession -- a political resistance action, if you will -- to the main procession across town, from the west: the steeds and stallions of Governor Pontius Pilate's minions, known to descend on Jerusalem during Passover for crowd control. Pilate, after all, represented "peace" through victory. These rowdy, ragtag peasants represented peace through justice -- justice denied so many of them, the majority of these first century Palestinian Jews debt slaves to the end.
Contrary to popular perceptions shaped by a nine-figure Israeli lobby and a few high-profile terrorist actions, the vast majority of our Palestinian sisters and brothers know full well this feeling of lostness -- the seeming futility of fighting a peaceful, quixotic fight. They know full well the feeling of being lost in the crowd, as they seek their own homeland and a two-state solution at the crossroads of the Middle East – the land where Jesus walked and rode. Our Palestinian sisters and brothers know full well how difficult peacefully fighting for their most basic rights is, when their homes are swept away – often unannounced – by illegal Israeli settlements, now populated by nearly half a million people (you read that correctly: nearly half a million illegal settlers!) They know full well how difficult peacefully fighting for their most basic rights is, barricaded as they are into barrios (a euphemism) by a country that receives $8.2 million daily from ours – and they receive not a dime.
The Israeli-Palestinian morass. A dilemma that brings us back to the man who was both a Palestinian and a Jew. Jesus of Nazareth – our Lord and Savior, and a carpenter – bridges both allegiances. And yet, the bridge of love he offers between Palestinian and Jew today enters through only one Jerusalem gate – and not the other, the one that presumptive peace-through-victory enters. Caesar’s victories, after all – just like military victories everywhere – simply provided lulls to the state's onslaught of violence. Peace at any price – as long as some have the peace, while someone else (read, the Palestinians) pays the greatest price.
But Jesus’ gate is not Caesar’s gate. It's the gate of peace through justice. A vindication far more profound, if elusive, than any victory any military could bring.
Jesus: The Palestinian Jewish bridge of love and gate of justice, where he is justifiably celebrated by those who find themselves lost in the Palm Sunday crowd. Lost, by the injustices committed against them. Lost, thanks to the larger, imperial forces that lend its full $3 billion-a-year hand to the parties at one end of the bridge, and shows its empty hands to the other.
