In Saturday’s DM, we meditated on the which means of marching on No Kings Day. Little doubt many DM readers participated or supported those that did.
In that meditation, I alluded to marches of Thich Nhat Hanh, Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King; the Buddhist monks from Houston; pilgrimages; the brand new girl chief of the Anglican church strolling from London to her anointing in Canterbury; and the hundreds of thousands who marched Saturday towards rising American fascism.
Synchronistically, Christians celebrated Palm Sunday yesterday which commemorates a march or procession on the inauguration of Holy Week that results in Jesus’ loss of life by the hands of the empire and in the end the Resurrection.
We’re informed by Mark, the earliest gospel author, that many individuals welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem on the primary day of the week in a procession of rejoicing and celebration. He rode a donkey on the event to mock society’s rulers who like to experience on horses.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan interpret that procession this fashion: What we regularly name Jesus’s triumphal entry was truly an anti-imperial, anti-triumphal one, a deliberate lampoon of the conquering emperor coming into a metropolis on horseback by gates opened in abject submission.*
It’s exhausting to learn this abstract of the Palm Sunday procession with out relating it to our second in historical past. Many have been the lampoons depicted in speeches and indicators at yesterday’s marches geared toward a selected emperor in our day who’s with out garments, however wears his narcissism proudly for all to see.
This wanna-be-emperor has unleashed his personal private military, due to a supine Republican congress, which has been killing residents and violently breaking apart households as a result of they converse with accents or are usually not white. This wanna-be-emperor is bent on constructing monuments to himself, whether or not big ballrooms that swamp the historic and modest-sized White Home, or a triumphal arch bigger than different kings’ arches of previous empires. He has already plastered his title on the John F. Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts named in honor of a slain president who truly cared about and didn’t censure artists.
On Monday, Jesus challenged spiritual leaders of the Temple who have been too cozy with the imperial rulers of Jerusalem by overturning tables of these promoting objects within the Temple. Jesus cited the prophet Jeremiah who complained a few “den of robbers.” (7:11)
In a direct rebuke of Christian nationalism so distinguished in at this time’s administration (take a look at the top of the protection division’s speeches), Jesus is alluding to centuries of warnings from the Jewish prophets about how each worship and justice have a spot in faith, however justice comes first, and is the take a look at of whether or not worship is genuine or not.
Jeremiah warns: “If you happen to really act justly one with one other, if you don’t oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow…then I’ll dwell with you on this place….” (7:5-7) Discover: “the alien”—which means immigrants.
Amos warns: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no enjoyment of your solemn assemblies…However let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (5:21-24)
Hosea: “I need steadfast love and never sacrifice, the data of God slightly than burnt choices.” (6:6)
Micah: “Shall I come earlier than him with burnt choices, with calves a 12 months previous?…He has informed you, ‘O mortal what is sweet; and what does the Lord require of you however to do justice, and to like kindness, and to stroll humbly together with your God?’” (6:6-8)
Isaiah: “Despite the fact that you make many prayers, I cannot pay attention; your fingers are filled with blood….Take away the evil of your doings from earlier than my eyes; stop to do evil, study to do good; search justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (1:15-17)
Justice issues and trumps spiritual hypocrisy.
* Borg, Marcus J. and Crossan, John Dominic: The Final Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Ultimate Week in Jerusalem (HarperOne, 2006), p. 32.
To learn the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click on HERE.
Banner Picture: An outline of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem by Croatian painter Ivan Tišov, 1897. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you discover the prophets cited by Jesus and referred to as up on this meditation particularly related to what you feeling occurring in America nowadays? Do they symbolize a wholesome outlet for ethical outrage and a spark to ally with others in holy resistance?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Items for the Peoples of the Earth.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice.
Authentic Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
Trump & the MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Reworking Evil in Soul & Society.
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Imaginative and prescient For a New Era.
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug, Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Imaginative and prescient of Love and Motion.
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