Many in the crowd that cheered Jesus’ entry on Palm Sunday mistook his mission as one to eradicate their political rulers, rather than to eradicate the sin in their own hearts. Two thousand years later, you can find the same mistake in the pages of The New York Times.
In a Sunday op-ed, the recently resigned Episcopal Rev. Andrew Thayer argues that “Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession.” Jesus, he says, was killed for threatening the power of the Roman Empire, an empire with which Thayer draws explicit parallels to the United States under President Donald Trump and “Christian nationalism,” whatever that means.
He says Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem was an act of “political confrontation.” Jesus, in Thayer’s telling, “came to dismantle the very logic of Caesar: the belief that might makes right, peace comes through violence and politics is best wielded through fear, coercion and control.”
“Dismantling” political empires is, obviously, not why Jesus came to Earth and allowed Himself to be crucified. As any of the children I’ve taught in Sunday school could tell you, He came to take the punishment for our sins so we sinners could be reunited with God by His grace.
Jesus was not protesting Caesar, of whom he had said days before, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” When He was arrested, His reply was, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?” When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what His crime had been, Jesus responded, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest.”
Thayer goes on to say that Jesus, in contrast to the Roman Empire, “inaugurated a counter-kingdom that aspires to loving kindness, radical welcome, mercy and justice.”
It’s true that kindness, mercy, justice, and welcome (for those who accept His kingship) are all characteristics of Christ’s kingdom. But those traits alone are not what make His kingdom different from earthly ones. After all, kind, merciful, and just kings have existed before. The kingdom of Heaven is, literally, otherworldly. What distinguishes it from earthly governments is its very nature, not just its attributes.
At the risk of stating the obvious, Jesus did not die merely to usher “kindness” and “mercy” into our political discourse. His kingdom is not aspirational, as Thayer claims. The message of His death and resurrection was not, as Thayer put it, “that even when the empire kills truth, truth still rises.” The message of the resurrection was that man could once again be right with God because Jesus had defeated death and washed us of our sin.
Ironically, the man Thayer portrays as an American Caesar displayed a better understanding of the resurrection than Thayer, in a White House statement about Holy Week: “Through [Christ’s] death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.”
Thayer commits multiple biblical inaccuracies in his effort to portray Jesus as an anti-MAGA crusader. He claims that flipping the tables of the moneylenders in the temple “is what gets [Jesus] killed,” and that Jesus was sentenced and killed as an “insurrectionist,” not for His miracles or message. In Matthew 26, however, the charge leveled against Him by the high priest is “blasphemy,” something which Thayer explicitly claims Jesus “wasn’t killed for.”
The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus dead because the new covenant of grace He preached threatened their authority as enforcers of the old covenant of the law. They tried to convince Pilate that Jesus was guilty of treason against Rome, accusing Him of “subverting our nation” (Luke 23:2), but Pilate told them he “found no basis for your charges against him” (Luke 23:14). Pilate did not find Jesus to be an “insurrectionist,” though Barabbas, the man he released at the insistence of the crowd, was (Luke 23:19).
Too Small a View of the Resurrection
The crowds that followed Jesus hoping for a political Messiah to overthrow their Roman overlords missed the reason for his incarnation. Even some of those who sought his healing were looking for something less important than what Jesus came to offer — Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of a paralytic who was brought to Jesus for healing, only for Jesus to tell him, “your sins are forgiven.”
Thayer commits the same mistake. He’s right that Jesus “never sought to replace Caesar with a Christian Caesar.” And he’s right in his implication that Christians should trust not in princes or presidents. But nor should we place our faith in opposing them. Thayer manipulates the Gospel to portray Jesus as a political revolutionary, albeit a nonviolent one. In accusing Trump supporters of twisting Christianity to fit political ends, Thayer does the same thing. In doing so, he takes the same small view of Christ’s mission that the cheering crowds hoping for an anti-Roman revolt did.
Indeed, Thayer has too small a view of the entire Gospel.
“Scripture’s power isn’t in magic or miracle,” he says, “but in its witness, of people who loved boldly, acted justly, spoke truth to power, resisted empire and hoped defiantly in the face of despair.”
Thayer has it exactly backward. To the extent that “people” in the Bible show “Scripture’s power,” it’s to show our sin, our inability to redeem ourselves, and our need for God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice before we can be reconciled to God. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, David, the disciples, and the rest are not in the Bible because they “spoke truth to power” and “resisted empire.” Like us, they are the sinful objects of God’s mercy. Christians are not resistance heroes but sinners who have been granted grace by God and access to His holy kingdom.
Certainly, we should all seek to uphold justice and righteousness in our communities and in our governments, which are established by God. But to think that earthly reform is what Jesus died on the cross to offer is to take an impoverished view of the great gift of His grace.
In preparation for the celebration of Easter, Christians remember our need for Christ’s sacrificial death. On Palm Sunday, we reflect on our sinfulness and see ourselves in the fickle crowds that would crucify Him days after heralding His entry. We also cheer His arrival into our own hearts, looking forward to His second coming and His heavenly kingdom.
I hope Thayer and his readers will join us in doing the same.
Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.
