Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
Palm Sunday, 24th of March 2023
Psalm 118:1-2 19-29
Mark 11:1-11
After hearing today’s gospel story, of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem the week before his death, I am a little surprised that the Roman powers in Jerusalem only executed Jesus, and did not also seek out all his followers to ensure that they had completely crushed the Jesus Movement. The last thing an occupying power wants is for the people it occupies to have their emotions raised and their collective identity reinforced by a public event. Crowds resisting the Powers That Be in the streets is a significant moment in many movements that overturn the status quo: the gay liberation movement that was sparked by the Stonewall Riots in New York in 1968, and that spread further when the NSW Police attacked the Gay Solidarity Group celebrating the Riots’ tenth anniversary; the Vietnam Moratorium marches in the 1970s; the People Power Revolution that overthrew the Marcos Government in the Philippines in 1986; the mass demonstrations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Marching in the streets is not enough without a campaign that includes less visible tactics like education and political lobbying. And popular uprisings do fail, when the Powers That Be are both powerful and willing to use murderous violence: the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968; the Chinese government’s massacre of thousands at Tiananmen Square in 1989; Israel’s killing of hundreds of Palestinians participating in the non-violent ‘Great March of Return’ in 2018-2019. Sometimes governments can feel confident enough that they just ignore street marches, as happened with the worldwide marches against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. But taking to the streets is often an effective way of getting the attention of the Powers That Be and drawing people to the cause. Continue reading
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