Two Parades
Mark 15:16-24
There were two parades that day. The first was in the morning. Downtown was decked out in Red, White, and Blue bunting and American Flags. Yellow ribbons tied in oversize bows were wrapped around utility pools, parking meters and any object that couldn’t be moved. Tony Orland had only recently released the record, Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘round the Old Oak Tree and the community had taken the words to heart.
The Daughtery boy was coming home today. His parents lived behind my grandparents and as a little boy I knew Bobby Daughtery. His younger brother was my age and I knew the circumstances but then, so did everyone else in town. Major Daughtery had been away a very long time but today, he was home and the town turned out to greet him.
The High School Band led the parade. White shoes, sharp creases, precise steps as they played over and over, Tie a Yellow Ribbon. Politicians in borrowed convertible waved at the crowd and we waved back. This was a day that we could all be congenial because it was a special, special day. After all, how often does a hero come home?
Finally, there he was sitting high on the back of convertible; smiling, waving, and really, he looked good. After six and half years it was amazing. We really didn’t yet understand the atrocities that the POW had endured in the Hanoi Hilton until months or even years later but I think we all knew that he had been brutalized beyond measure and here he was. He had endured. He was a real hero to the folks of my hometown.
What a day of celebration it was.
Maybe I should say, what a morning of celebration it was because there was another parade that day.
The car had all assembled hours earlier but at two o’clock the door opened and people made their way to the cars, started the engines, turned on the lights and waited.
So, the lead car pulled out followed by the hearse and several funeral cars packed with family. Then the parade began. Car after car, after car made its way across town to the cemetery because that day the Limmones boy had come home as well.
He too had been in Viet Nam. He too had been away for too long. He too had experienced a world that most could not and maybe should not even try to imagine.
I didn’t know the Limmones boy. I knew of his family. I knew he had graduated from the same High School I had graduated from, gone to the same move theaters, driven the same streets, cheered for the same football team, and call the same town home.
He had joined the Army and had gone off to serve. He didn’t understand the protests that he had seen outside the gates of Travis Air Force Base as he boarded the plane to Viet Nam. He didn’t get what was moral or immoral about the war. He just understood he was an American and it was his time to serve.
Understand this was not a war where our fallen heroes were honored upon their return. This was not a way where roadways were lined with veterans and other patriots waving flags to honor those fallen in the line of fire. Certainly, cars pulled to side of the road. Some men stepped outside their vehicle and remove their hats as the hearse passed but for the most part, Pvt. Limmones made his way to Woodlawn Cemetery in an unattended parade.
There were two parades in my hometown that day. A day of cheers and a day of tears. A day where one was proclaimed a hero and a hero was largely forgotten.
There were two parades that week in Jerusalem.
The first is a parade of disappointing expectations. It was to honor one who refused to be who they wanted him to be. They wanted Jesus to be the Messiah. They believed him to be the Messiah. And he was the Messiah. He just wasn’t the Messiah they expected . . . or wanted.
The wanted a hero. They were certain of the Messiah they wanted. They needed a swift repair of broken expectations. They needed a slash and burn Messiah to run the Roman back to Rome. They were really seeking a white knight on a white stallion.
They saw a stallion in a borrowed donkey - a young inexperienced one at that. They didn’t notice Jesus was riding so low they could look him in the eye. He had made the decision that said, “I’m not going to ride above you and I’m not going to slash and burn everything you think is bad.”
Maybe the only thing that got the point of the parade was the young donkey. Maybe the donkey understood that if the coach put him in the game that maybe, just maybe, there’s a role for the ordinary among us all.
Expectation not met leads to disappointment and in this case disappointment lead to the second parade.
The religious leaders of Jerusalem were already afraid of Jesus. They had heard of the miracles. They had heard of the radical statements. He was acknowledged as a Rabbi, a teacher but he wasn’t holding the company line. He wasn’t righteous enough. He hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners. There were rumors that he had offered marriage counseling to a Samaritan Woman and he had certainly interfered with the stoning of the young woman they had caught in the act of adultery.
He might be called a Rabbi but he didn’t belong to the Ministerial Alliance.
There were the Romans of course. They were really all that concerned but the they kept getting all this nonsense from the High Priest that Jesus and his band of followers were rubble rousers. There we’re some in his group who were seeking the overthrow of Rome. And, they had one in his group that was going to turn on him. He was going to tell all. He was going to be the one who could give them the information necessary to convict this Nazarene of treason and the maybe heresy.
The days between Palm Sunday and Good Friday are filled with some of the most prophetic teaching in all the New Testament and each of the Gospels has just a little something different to add to what Jesus thought was so important that he crammed it into those final days.
Jesus knew on the day of the first parade there would be a second and he made use of the time between the two. He cleansed the Temple, gave us the Great Commandments, told his followers the Temple would be destroyed, promised the Judgment of the Nations, had his hair washed with alabaster, celebrated the Last Supper with his Disciples, and prayed his last prayers in the Garden.
We have a tendency, you and I, to go from Hallelujah to Hallelujah. We want to go from the Hail Hosanna’s of Palm Sunday to Up from the Grave He Arose of Easter. We want to pass over the betrayal, the trial, the scourge, and the crown of thorns and move to the resurrection. We cannot, we must not, miss the second parade. We must come and see Christ carry the cross down the Via Dolorosa. We must understand the anguish of the cross or we can never appreciate the meaning of the resurrection.
We must be a people that understand the joy of Palm Sunday is the precursor the pain our sin caused our savior. Palm Sunday takes us on a journey, but not the journey down the coat strewn streets of Jerusalem. It takes us ultimately to a cross and it is the power of that cross that opens a grave on Easter.
There were two parades in my hometown many years and they both impacted my life. I am grateful I experienced both.
There were two parades in Jerusalem that week and they both change the history of the world. Do miss the second or you can never understand the significance of the first. Understand there is no messiah without the power and blood of the cross.
