Today at church Rev. Forbes referenced a new book by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week : A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem. I'm not as familiar with Crassen as I am with Borg, whom I consider puzzling yet compelling, although I think much of his scholarship is not bad. Regarding Palm Sunday, Borg and Crossan write that two, rather than one, processions had that day. The first is that which we often hear about--the procession by Jesus, attended by throngs of peasants affected by his teaching and ministry, waving palm branches and throwing garments for him to walk upon. The other procession is one that has been neglected in typical teachings--the procession by Pontius Pilate and all his attendants into Jerusalem, looking to maintain order in the name of the empire. It turns out Palm Sunday was a juxtaposition between the haves and the have-nots.

Rev. Forbes discussed how today's gospel reading, the story of Jesus overturning tables in the temple, fit into this juxtaposition. During Passover, the temple in Jerusalem was more than a center of religious activity; it also hosted much imperial activity. The Roman rulers of the time shrewdly noticed the throngs coming to the temple, so they would set up shop to collect taxes and carry out other government affairs. Read within such a framework, Christ's actions have a largely political element to them, an element of defiance to the status quo. (Indeed the wannabe Radical Orthodoxy scholar in me wants to chime in here that the perceived status quo is really just a parody of the Kingdom of God. In truth, Christians countering the government, etc. are not the reactionary ones; they merely seek to live out the truth of the Gospel, yet it appears recalcitrant to those in the world lost from the Church.) Today's sermon ran with this contention of confrontation in Jesus' life, particularly during holy week. Rev. Forbes inspiringly called for Christians to live true to the Gospel in opposing those who mete out injustice and war, particularly in light of all too often complicity among Christians in the country to such actions.

And that brings me to the Iraq war, upon which I have been ruminating a lot the last few weeks thanks to the three year anniversary of the invasion. What most troubles me is the anemic amount of action against the war by Christians in America. One intriguing development I came across the last few weeks was the founding of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. How badly has Christianity lost its message in this country when the military is assumed by most within it to be an evangelical Christian body? One of the urgent issues for this foundation is a legal battle to end imposition of evangelical beliefs and practices on cadets at the US Air Force Academy. Am I the only one troubled by this?

Another story that troubled me was this story about Tommy Franks' boredom and lack of patience for those concerned about casualties in Iraq. Remember, this is the same man who emphatically stated, "We don't do body counts," but I was amazed to see that he didn't even care that much about American casualties. What troubled me was not the callousness of a grizzly war veteran, but my memories of numerous Christians I know to be smitten with Franks for his patriotic, hard-nosed style in leading the troops. I find it so disheartening that this war and most of the government's blunders were headed by a imperialist plutocrat only concerned with rewarding cronies and padding the pockets of the rich. (Recently we learned Bush was determined very early to go to war.) While Halliburton, et. al are making out like bandits, Joseph Stiglitz (yay Columbia!) and others have shown us costs of the war have hit one trillion dollars--that's $1,000,000,000,000, for those who need to see zeros--and that might be a conservative estimate. (Although I'm not sure anything associated with Stiglitz could be considered conservative. Teehee.)

While quiet capitulation seems to be the popular approach for most American Christians, I was thrilled to hear Rev. Forbes' sermon on the truth that often Christians are called to confrontation. At least those awesome activist nuns haven't given up. Peace of Christ to all of you during this holy week.