Dead Man Walking

Anyone should know that the verdict was fixed before the trial even began.  Sham trial that it was.  And while the charge was sedition, claiming a kingship over Cesar, the real problem was compassion.  The minute Jesus was hauled before Pilate, he was a “dead man walking.”  The fix was in.

How did we get here?

It might have been that fickle mob that gathered along the dusty road into Jerusalem.  All the hoopla and waving of tree branches.  A notorious rabbi and healer entering the city on a donkey with his followers in tow.  Children running ahead, darting in and out of the procession.  The crowd, hoping he would overthrow the Roman tyranny kept shouting, “Hosanna, Hosanna.”  Treating him as if king.

It was all too much for the Roman authorities and their puppets, Herod and Pilate.  It smacked of insurrection for sure.  Not to be tolerated.

That fickle crowd was easily manipulated, as are folks today.  They didn’t want any trouble.  Go along to get along.  And how quickly they turned.

Don’t ever trust the mob.  With threats, bribes and propaganda they will sell your soul down the river in a New York minute.

It happened in Germany in 1933.  It happened in Russia in 1918.  It happened in Rwanda, in Srebrenica.  It happened in America along the Trail of Tears.  It happened throughout the 20^th century in Jim Crow America.  It’s happening now in Gaza and in Sudan.  History is replete with massacre and genocide.  Don’t trust the mob.  For temporary security, they’ll toss away all their rights.

We in America now stand on the verge of a police state.  And a good number of us would willingly have it so.  People are snatched off the street by unidentified thugs in ski masks, soon to be deported to hell-hole prisons in far away countries.  No due process.  Not even the sham show-trial Jesus got. This is a Stalinesque nightmare beyond belief.

Masha Gessen[1] writes in their New York Times op-ed piece (an aside — being nonbinary, Masha uses the pronouns “they/them”):

“It is the catastrophic interruption of daily life, as when a Tufts University graduate student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was grabbed on a suburban street by half a dozen plainclothes agents, most of the them masked.  The security camera video of that arrest shows Öztürk walking, looking at her phone, perhaps to check the address where she was supposed to meet her friends for dinner that night, when an agent appears in front of her.  She says something – asks something – struggling to control her voice, and within seconds she is handcuffed and placed in an unmarked car.”

Folks are being “imprisoned indefinitely, without due process…It’s the growing irrelevance of the law and the helplessness of judges and lawyers.”[2]  Though courts have issued rulings prohibiting the transfer of those arrested without warrant, without any process – even though a federal judge forbade the government to deport, without notice, Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University medical school professor – even though another judge prohibited moving Rümeysa Öztürk from Massachusetts without notice.   The executive branch has ignored all these rulings.  We now are in an extra-Constitutional order.  There is no rule of law

The same as was justice in Stalinist Russia, the same as in that kangaroo trial in Jerusalem 2000 years ago.  “The secret lists and student arrests are dreadfully familiar.”[3]  Jesus betrayed in the dead of night with a kiss and hauled off to torture.

The psychiatrist-activist, Robert Jay Lifton, documents the pervasive PTSD caused by such calamities.[4]  For days, maybe years, the victims of such catastrophes are stunned into inaction, into silence.  As were the survivors of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Hitler’s death camps and Jim Crow lynchings. 

Stunned, as were those followers who witnessed Jesus’ torture and brutal crucifixion.  Finally cowering in an Upper Room.  As many of us might be, watching the impending death knell of our democracy here in America; witnessing the mass firings and destruction of our government.  We all may be suffering some degree of PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder.

At the moment, we can only huddle in silence, as did those brave women who stayed behind near the cross.  As did that brave doctor who had the courage to listen to the victims of such tragedies – the survivors of the atom bombs, the hibakusha (the explosion-affected persons).  He had the courage to enter their pain and suffering, as did those women who stayed by Jesus.

We, at the moment, gather in silence, before the genocide committed in our name, and with our tax dollars in Gaza – grateful to a courageous Jew, Peter Beinart, having courage of steel to honestly reflect on that tragedy as a Jew.[5]

In solidarity with those who grieve, we, too, will gather.  We will hold on to one another.  And we will trust in God’s Grace to bring new life out of the “imprint of death.”[6]

Do not trust the wisdom of the crowd.  The abiding Grace of God is that we have one another.  And the Spirit of encouragement.  Listen to her.

To quote Paul Tillich – at these moments of crucifixion, gulag and genocide, as we await, stunned to silence — all the while, God abides, obscured in the wings of mysterious darkness with an abounding Grace of New Life and Acceptance.  Hear Tillich’s wisdom:

“You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!”[7]

Let us patiently abide our time.  Take the moments needed for the Holy Spirit to gather us together, to gather our courage into action.

That’s the glorious mystery that awaits after the three fraught days.

In time all shall be redeemed, yes, even if it does take three days to work the transformation from death to Life.

So, in our waiting, might we sing:

“Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, ever constant by thy side; that with thee we may appear at the eternal Eastertide.”[8]  Amen.

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[1] M. Gessen, “America’s Police State Has Arrived,” New York Times, “Columns & Commentary,” April 6, 2025.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Robert Jay Lifton, Surviving our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic (New York: The New Press, 2023).

[5] Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 2025).

[6] Lifton, op. cit., 27.

[7] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).

[8] George Hunt Smyttan (1822-1870).  The Hymnal (New York, Church Publishing Co. 1985), #150, 5^th verse.

April 13, 2025
Palm Sunday

Luke 19:28-40 (processional reading);

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;

Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 22:14-23:56

“Dead Man Walking”