Rev. Allie Perry.
“Faith Matters” is a column that features pieces written by local religious figures.
(Opinion) While the dates for Passover and Easter vary from year to year, this year they converge.
The eight days of Passover in the Jewish calendar are almost a complete overlay of the seven days of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter, in the Christian calendar. Dates are not the only commonality, however.
More significantly, both these religious observances memorialize sacred stories of freedom struggles and resistance to oppressive empires.
In our current reality, when cruel and lawless oligarchs — our contemporary Pharaohs and Caesars — are engaged in dismantling democracy, these sacred stories have powerful resonance. I find their themes especially relevant, compelling, and instructive.
To focus on Holy Week: It begins with what is now known as Palm Sunday when Jesus, on the occasion of Passover, enters the city of Jerusalem to the cheers of followers, giddy with enthusiasm, ostensibly akin to that of the fans celebrating the champion UCONN women this past Sunday. But Jesus’ entry was no such parade; it wasn’t just pageantry. It was a protest, strategically planned and cleverly orchestrated. A campaign of civil disobedience, if you will, designed to confront and challenge the imperial occupying power of his day, Rome.
Jesus timed his entry into Jerusalem from the east to coincide with that of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, entering from the west. The contrast could not have been starker. Pontius Pilate arrives on a war horse, with a retinue of armed Roman soldiers, exuding smug, coercive power and Rome’s ethos of “might makes right.” And Jesus? He arrives astride a borrowed donkey, his humility a deliberate mockery of imperial power’s hubris, his nonviolence an explicit critique of Rome’s militarism. His retinue of followers? No power-brokers. No one-percenters. Just common folks — peasants, women, children, tenant farmers, fishermen — those on the margins of society, exploited by an empire that deemed them of no account and accorded them no status, the very same people whom Jesus centered throughout his entire ministry.
One could say, using today’s parlance, that Jesus was a prophet of DEI. He advocated for the least, the last, and the lost, with an inclusive love, embracing all in their full humanity — sinners, foreigners, laborers, children, those most vulnerable — no exceptions. Where the empire projected the love of power, Jesus preached the power of love. More than that, he lived the power of love, acting in defense of, and pursuing justice and equity for, those on the empire’s “hit list.”
As the week continued, Jesus intensified his campaign. He went into the temple, “the heart,” as one commentator has written, “of Jerusalem’s religious and economic life and flipped the tables in the marketplace, which he described as a ‘den of robbers.’” The symbolism was not lost on religious or Roman authorities.
Jesus was seeking to upend an exploitative economic structure, or in the words of Dorothy Day, a “dirty, rotten system,” designed to enrich the few and impoverish the many. He was a threat to the corrupt status quo. He had to be silenced; he had to be crushed.
No, the symbolism was not lost, and within a day or two, authorities rounded Jesus up and arrested him, spiriting him off in the night. This scenario is hauntingly familiar right now: Think of the rounding up of Rümeysa Öztürk or Kilmer Abrego Garcia. We know how the Holy Week story goes on from here: a kangaroo court, no due process, and then Jesus’s torturous crucifixion. The empire comes down hard. Resistance is costly, the consequences severe.
Jesus is crucified and that can’t be undone, any more than the targeted killings of more recent prophets like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Archbishop Oscar Romero or Gazan poet Rafeet Alareer. But the story does not end there with death.
Easter dawns. The tomb is empty. The resurrection message is resounding: Divine love will not be contained, it breaks out and bursts forth, energizing all.
Death does not have the last word. Nor do oppressive or fascist empires.
They will come but they will collapse. They can never make might right. They can suppress the truth, but truth will out. And that truth, affirmed in the Easter proclamation is this: God’s spirit is alive. God’s love never ends. God’s justice will prevail. This is a matter of faith for us to take to heart in these challenging times.
May these sacred stories of freedom struggles inspire and embolden us as we commit ourselves to join with others “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God” [Micah 68].
The Rev. Allie Perry is the worship coordinator of Shalom UCC, New Haven. Her email address is: allie.perry@gmail.com.
Previous “Faith Matters” columns:
• Faith (Still) Matters
• Faith Matters: Gaza & Ramadan
• Faith Matters: On Passover & Redemption