By Doug Ort
Remembering the Triumphal Entry of Jesus the Son of David into Jerusalem provides pause for reflection on fallen leaders past and present.
A view from overseas into the very public demise of a U.S. Governor and questions it raises for us at Easter...
One vital element of social, political, religious, and family life is leadership. Much is possible when leaders function responsibly. But a nagging question remains: What must be done with those who compromise their roles in life by behaving in ways that are antithetical to responsible leadership? The recent demise of Governor Eliot Spitzer's career brought my mind forward just a few days to an event that Christians around the world will celebrate this Sunday, the so-called "triumphal entry" of Jesus into Jerusalem.
I'm thinking about two leaders, one now known to just about everyone in North America and the Western world (the story is conspicuous by its absence on English-language Aljazeera -- the Islamic world, radical or not, is no doubt well aware of Western leader's proclivities concerning sex), and the other known for his place in the "triumphal entry" story. My heart was burdened by Spitzer's fall, because in many ways he has conducted himself responsibly and well as New York's Attorney General for eight years. Among Attorneys General in modern times he has distinguished himself as a lion on Wall Street, bringing to heel theft, financial manipulation, extortion, and assorted felonies among some of America's wealthiest financial wizards. He has protected pension funds and stockholders from greedy felons. He has revealed, time and again, the dark underbelly of late capitalism. He has faced down arrogant power, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, but always with a tenacity that won the support of an extraordinary number of my fellow citizens just over a year ago when he was soundly elected governor.
The details of his fall I leave for others to chronicle. But it is clear that there were two contradictory dimensions to this man, one hidden and salacious and the other rightly aggressive and courageous in pursuit of justice. We live in a world that is hell-bent to resolve all tensions. Our culture wants in its leaders no ambiguity, no whiff of scandal, no weakness, no mis-steps. That, of course, leads good men to lie and dissemble more than they might otherwise.
Salacious revelations are then doubly punished, once for the crime and once for covering one's tracks. The sadness is that the process of destruction takes on a life of its own, with endless repeating of every nuance of the crime, real or imagined.
Citizens of my State are now watching the demise (for now) of a man whose complexity is not easily reduced to one dimension. And, co-incidentally, the Christian world is soon to reflect, in pageant and words and readings and music, another complex man, one who is central to the Palm Sunday narrative. Not Jesus. David.
Let us remember that Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem is clearly a political act making a political statement. The people cast palm fronds in Jesus' path. Palm fronds were well represented on Roman coins of that era, and were symbols of Caesar's kingly reign. Symbols associated with that reign were used to welcome another king, an incredibly provocative act by any account. Another important symbol of "Palm Sunday" was the chant that welcomed Jesus as the Son of David, and the refrain, "Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord!" Here is a direct affront to Caesar, whose ears became used to his subject's refrain, "Casar et Deus! Casar et Deus!" Caesar is God! Caesar is God!
Jesus is riding a donkey (a narrative echo of Solomon riding David's animal into the holy city, a thousand years earlier), and he is welcomed with symbols of kingship and refrains of allegiance to this man who would be king (so everyone was hoping). In less than a week this man would be accused of standing in Caesar's place and he would be killed. But the man whose life is accompanying the life of this man (soon to die) was once a king himself. David was no simple, one- dimensional man. He didn't pay prostitutes (he didn't have to), but he did arrange for a man to be murdered under the guise that he was simply (!) being killed in battle, so that he could take that man's wife as his own. The child conceived of that union would not live, the narrators suggesting that the death of this infant was a consequence of the horrific behavior of David.
But there is something that happens as David's story plays out. The narrative says that David was shaken to his core by his crimes (but can kings actually *do* crimes?). He became contrite. (Why?) He repented in deep ways. (How did this happen?) And he emerged through redemption to be located in Hebrew and Jewish and Christian history as a pattern man. And therein is the tale. Jesus is acclaimed as the Son of David, a legitimate heir through David's royal line (as is the point in Matthew's genealogy). This man who deeply offended God and the sensibilities of every responsible reader of David's dark side, this man emerges because a way was made for his redemption.
There is, of course, an asymmetry between Governor Spitzer and David the King of Israel. But let us not lose the lesson. The spirit of the world around us seems to have taken upon itself the belief that one mistake (or six years of them) is all it takes to end the career of a man whose life is in fact more than the sum of his sins and errors. What makes Jesus' entry all the more poignant is that he never challenges who David is understood to be in the minds of the people. David repented and he was chastened by his crimes and mistakes. I think that there is something to be said for the possibility that a truly chastened and repentant leader may in fact govern more fairly and more effectively as he lives his life forward in the shadow of his own redemption.
New Yorkers, in the end, could not tolerate waiting to see matters mature. Seemingly they could not tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing what to do with the contradictions of Spitzer's life. The media played its appointed role, that of chronicling salacious behavior and relentlessly probing for ever more errors and sins and mistakes. Mature people of faith, however, may wish to reflect on how redemption serves to bring the dead back to life. They may wish to step back for a moment, to not move quickly with the crowd. When matters are complex, it is often useful to place one's own anxious reactivity in check for a time. One would do well to think about how repentance (not humiliation) and forgiveness (not indulgence) serves, not to avoid the sins of men who perhaps yet have a work to do in this world, but to provide a way for those men to engage the work of life once again.
Who will raise their own voices in this work of redemption? Who will stand against a crowd chanting for blood? Who will make tough political choices that cut against the grain of convention? Who will choose to be less reactive and more thoughtful in the presence of clamors for quick resolution of complex matters? Who will do this?
Doug Ort is a family therapist working in North America.