This week I went and I saw the movie “The Hunger Games.” In short, it’s a futuristic story about an unjust society that has a government that every year demands two tributes, or sacrifices, from each of its districts to fight to death in an attempt to remind the people who is really in control. Very reminiscent of the Gladiatorial fights of ancient Rome – where slaves and criminals were forced to fight to the death for the amusement and entertainment of the elite and powerful - and a reminder to everyone else... the Capitol was in charge.
There’s a scene in this movie where the heroine and the other boy from her district are brought into the Capitol city in a chariot, with people waving, cheering and applauding their arrival. Excited about the upcoming games that will be played. The main character, Katniss, has this sense of both awe, and revulsion, at the fact that all these people are cheering for her at this moment, knowing that in just a few short days, they will be cheering not for her amazing entrance or for who she is as a person – but will be cheering and rooting for her death.
As I watched that scene on the movie screen, I couldn’t help seeing the similarity in what happened to Jesus on Palm Sunday – the people were cheering and shouting and praising Jesus as he enters through the city. For the people of Judah, finally – the messiah had come. Finally, here is the savior of Israel that will get their nation back on track.
But one week later, the same people who are cheering his arrival will be chanting and demanding his death. Jesus is going to be something of a dismal disappointment when it comes to the political hopes and dreams for a better, stronger Israel.
For Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem quickly turns from hope – to anger. Rather than playing the political game that would easily catapult him into the hearts and minds of the Jewish people, he instead gives a blunt indictment of how human societies tend to operate. How leaders reassert authority by oppressing and tyrannizing their subjects – a type of kingdom and rulership Jesus will have no part in.
According to Mark’s gospel, immediately following the triumphal entry, instead of making some moving speech about the reform and changes he hopes to make once he’s King, Jesus marches into the temple – the center for both religious and political life of the Israelites – and chases out the money changers, derides the scribes and priests when they question his authority, challenges the current ruling system’s understanding of scripture, and finally warns of their coming destruction.
It doesn’t take long for him to develop some pretty powerful enemies in a very short period of time.
So in our Gospel reading for today, we find Jesus not trying to drum up support for his kingship, but rather, he is sitting in the midst of a leper’s house – every Pharisees nightmare when it comes to associating with the unclean – while the priests and scribes are trying to figure out a way to kill him.
But I want you to imagine for a moment that you’re one of the disciples. Imagine how this rapid turn of events had to make your head spin.
One moment, you’re shouting Hosanna’s as the crowds are cheering and waving their palm branches, heralding the new candidate for king – probably not too different from our own version of the democratic and republican national conventions – and then you watch, probably in horror, as Jesus embarks on what has to be the most self-destructive political campaign in recorded history. He’s committing both political – and literal – suicide, and is not only embracing it, but insisting upon it.
Had Karl Rove been a follower at the time, not even he would have been able to undo all the political and public opinion damage Jesus managed to wreak in just a few short days.
In short – Jesus makes a really bad political candidate when it comes to getting the powerful backing and sponsors necessary to become the next King of Israel.
His special interest groups – the lepers, women, cripples, the sick and… well, the recently raised from the dead – just don’t have the kind of clout or resources necessary to smooth over his ever-growing image problem among the Jewish elite.
It’s a system he is not going to play ball with. He will not be king and ruler according to the world’s ways.
Jesus has set for himself a path that will not only wind up getting him killed, but will cause his followers to desert him as well.
Judas has already left the Jesus bandwagon. Jesus commending this woman in our gospel reading for her act of preparing him for his death and burial was the apparent tipping point for Judas. Who wants to side with a man bent on suicide after all?
In a twist of irony, while the woman hands over an expensive and costly gift to prepare Jesus for his burial, Judas runs off to make arrangements to receive money for a betrayal that will lead to that very burial he is being prepared for.
But Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. He was tanking his kingly aspirations on purpose. He knew the Roman system. He knew what his actions would bring.
Roman capital punishment – crucifixion – was reserved for a select few: slaves and political insurgents. The two “thieves” on the cross on either side of him mentioned in Mark 15 are not petty thieves –according to other sources that utilize the same Greek word, they were revolutionaries.
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ death is a political statement against the human systems of our world as much as it is anything else. His deeds, words and reputation were contrary to Roman interests, promoting a different type of “king” and “kingdom” in a political setting that had no tolerance for such things.
The “judicial system” did exactly what it was intended to do. It was not a case of mistaken identity, it was not that they didn’t understand his claims. Jesus' death was exactly what Rome demanded for someone like him, the predictable outcome of the life he led.
Suzanne Collins wrote her Hunger Games trilogy as an indictment against the power differentials between the rich and the powerful – and the subjugation and hopelessness of the poor that were trapped by that system they lived in. Her story, though set in the future and sometimes difficult to for many to read – draws on our own sad and violent past.
It highlights the same tyrannical and intolerant system under which Jesus lived and died. Jesus' death on the cross is an indictment of that same problem in our world of the unjust society in which he lived.
He relinquishes himself to human authority and a system that is bent on destroying him and those like him.
Everything in the human realm fails him. Utterly and totally. His disciples fail him. His people fail him. The system of government fails him. Even God – who you would think could have stepped in and stopped it – appears to fail him.
Mark’s gospel doesn’t point us necessarily to the pain and suffering Jesus goes through. It’s not trying to pull on our heart-strings and make us sob over the brutality and pain of being flogged and crucified, but rather points us to the absolute and utter failure of everything the world and its systems have to offer.
The empty tomb of Easter next Sunday will proclaim God’s triumph over all these systems and worldly ways – but as we enter into Holy Week, the looming cross leaves us to struggle and comprehend what Christ’s impending death says about us.
Christ on the cross is an indictment of us and our world – plain and simple. Our indifference at times to injustice – not just in our world as a whole, but sometimes within our own communities.
We can put as much emotion and sorrow around what happened on the cross as we want – but the end result is that the cross that hangs above our heads here, that we wear around our necks, stands not JUST as a symbol of God’s redemptive work in the world, but also as a stark reminder of how unjust and terrible humanity and our systems can be. To put it in more modern terms for us – it’s as though we were hanging images of an electric chair around our necks and in places of worship. Reminding us of how a system can fail and condemn an innocent man to death. Reminding us of our complete and utter need for God to intervene in our sinful world.
The good news of the cross, however, is that the cross – God’s indictment and judgment of our world and its systems – is not God’s last word on the subject. It will not be the final thing God has to say about humanity.
Because Easter is coming.
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