RCL, Year A, Proper 20, Track 1
Injustice at The Tournament of Roses
When I was a kid, my Mom absolutely loved watching the New
Year’s Day Tournament of Roses parade on television. We watched it every year.
I wasn’t as excited about it as Mom was. I got a bit more excited about it when
we finally got a color TV. After all, as a kid, it isn’t particularly
interesting to watch a bunch of floats go by on television decorated with
flowers of various shades of gray. I became much more excited about the Rose
Bowl parade when Rebekah and I moved to Pasadena, California where I pursued my
masters a Fuller Theological Seminary. We lived on campus, and our apartment
happened to be just two blocks away from the parade route.
It was either our first or second year in
Pasadena, either 1997 or 1998, when we walked down to watch the parade. Now
there is something you need to understand about the Rose Bowl parade. Something
like a million people line up along the 6-mile parade route to watch the
parade. And thousands, if not tens of thousands, camp out on the streets and
sidewalks on New Year’s Eve so as to get a good spot. We arrived about an hour
early, and the sidewalks were already crowded. We were on a sidewalk down one
of the crossing streets, and so we were about a 100 to 150 feet away from one
of the intersections of the parade. As the time neared for the first floats to
pass our intersection, more and more people joined us on the sidewalk and in
the gutters of the street. The police would come down the street every few
minutes, and tell the people to move back and clear the streets. Some moved,
but most didn’t. Instead of moving back, they would simply cram into the crowd
on the sidewalk.
