Palm Sunday Rally Speech 2024
Susan Connelly – Palm Sunday 24 March 2024
The whole world is experiencing an “escalation to extremes” and much of it is because we humans imitate each other to a profound degree.
Over 100 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes and over 36 million of these are seeking refuge in other countries.
All forms of media are thriving on tales of violence, dissention and disinformation. Certain news barons make their fortune by paying staff liars to tell lies.
There are about 110 armed conflicts but only the major ones make the news. We don’t see the violence in West Papua because foreign journalists are not allowed into the place.
We are in the grip of a rapidly changing climate.
The invention of new and deadlier weapons is an industry designed for financial gain. Australia spends 10 times more on weapons than it does on foreign aid. We aim to be among the top ten arms exporters in the world. That’s not just about defending ourselves; it’s an escalation to the extremes of making money.
More than $300 billion is tied up in the frantic AUKUS bid for submarines, which may not eventuate for decades. No wonder the acronym AUKUS puts Australia first. Had the US been first it would have read “USUKA – You sucker”.
Now, many major cities across the world boast a large statue, in a public place, of a man on a horse.
The man usually has a hand raised in power and victory, or holding a weapon. Even though horses aren’t used in war now, the numbers of these statues have risen even in this century. How strange that dictators even today want to be immortalised on a horse.
And today, all over the world, it’s Palm Sunday. And here comes Jesus, riding on a donkey. He goes into the temple, the heart of the political and religious power of his time, and upends the money-makers’ tables.
Jesus rode the donkey of active nonviolence, not the horse of victory. It was an anti-militarism march, but Jesus wasn’t just “anti” something; he was showing an alternate Way of Being Human.
He leads a march of marginalised peoples, the ones considered of no account. He’s on a donkey, and they are waving palms, not swords.
The teachings that Jesus gave have changed the world, and they would change it even more if we had the courage to imitate him.
Imitation is how we learn anything: ask any teacher. The fashion industry would collapse without imitation. In sport, almost identical participants engage in almost identical moves to pursue the very same goal.
Actually, sport is a brilliant human invention to channel our inbuilt imitation into something innocuous like winning a trophy. Forget our supposed individualism. We are terrific copy-cats.
And we imitate others in violence. I bad-mouth you and you call me names. I hit you, you hit me. You shoot my family, I shoot yours. You’ve got big submarines, so I want some too.
How about another “escalation to extremes”? Most people have more goodness than violence in them, so why not escalate that? Why not choose carefully who to imitate?
What if everyone here today went home and told someone that you loved them? Or said hello over the fence to someone you usually ignore? Or refused to “like” some nasty comment on social media? Or said a genuine “please” or “thank you” in a shop? Or wrote a letter or a text congratulating a politician, a teacher, or a public figure who did something well? Or argued a point with someone without getting heated?
The man on the donkey really does have the answer. He said to love our enemies.
Martin Luther King said: “….It is love that will save our world and our civilisation, love even for enemies.”
But this love is not sentimental or emotional. It’s the refusal to lord it over someone, to defeat them, to beat them down. It’s about willing good for them. This love seeks only to defeat evil systems, not individuals caught up in that system. Those individuals are to be loved. The system is to be defeated.
Let’s imitate the real heroes. Imitate the people who show extremes of love, patience, kindness, self-control, forgiveness and courage. We can’t do everything, but we can do this.
Let’s get off our high horse and choose the donkey instead.