This is the week of Jesus’ passion. And that story begins with Jesus entry into Jerusalem found in Luke 19:28-40.
Palm Sunday, a day when we recall the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week. But what was behind the symbols: the colt, riding from the Mount of Olives, the cloaks on the road, the stones?
In today’s world we often hear of protests and counter-protests, demonstrations and counter demonstrations, marches for and marches against. Well in Jesus final week there were two parades, two processions. The parade for Caesar with Pilate as the Grand Marshall and the parade for God with Jesus as the unlikely leader.
Pilate entered Jerusalem from the West, his horses and chariots, soldiers with shining armor, made for quite a spectacle of glory and power. He led the Roman army into Jerusalem for Passover week, a festival time that marked the liberation of Hebrew slaves in Egypt. They occupied the city in force during the week to prevent any insurrections or overly exuberant movements from arising.
Jesus and his disciples most likely would have heard the rumors and stories about Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem. The trappings of imperial Roman power were now all too familiar in the city. So everything about the Jesus movement on Palm Sunday, was a reaction too and a protest against the specious rule of the Empire of Rome.
Sometimes, it is the most familiar stories in the Bible that can surprise us the most. Year after year we hear them over and over and they lose their shock value.
Jesus was an outsider. He was from Nazareth, which is like saying he was from Timbuktu or nowhere. Remember what Nathaniel said, “Nazareth! Surely nothing good comes from Nazareth!”
But amazing things were happening. The prophet from Nazareth had caused quite a stir in Capernaum, in Tyre, in Sidon and other cities of the Decapolis, the ten cities.
Jesus of Nazareth had made the lame to walk, the blind to see, he cleansed the leper, and cured the dying. Then word came that he was making his way to Jerusalem.
But then something even more astonishing was being reported. Jesus had raised a man from the dead. His friend Lazarus had died and Jesus raised him up. The people were in a frenzy. Their shouts of Hosanna were honest outbursts of emotion to God. After all, Israel was a conquered nation, an oppressed land and now something wonderful was happening, a Jewish prophet of never before known authority was making his way to Jerusalem. To Jerusalem, for centuries the center of Jewish government, but even in a conquered state, the home to the Temple, where the High Priest dwelled and could enter into the Holy of Holies, the very place of God’s dwelling.
But what happens? Jesus doesn’t ask for a chariot or stallion, for a warhorse to come galloping in for a huge entrance with bravado. He decides to send a message of humility. He asks to ride a colt. He could have just as easily walked. Jesus walked endlessly with his disciples. Jesus didn’t avoid a large stallion because he didn’t want to be noticed. He wanted to be noticed even more and to send a message of peace! He came riding in upon a colt, not as a warrior, but as the man he was. A prophet, a mystic, a rabbi, a healer.
And so in John it says:
John 12:12-13 NRSV
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!’
Piecing together the stories, we see Jesus riding on a colt and in front of him people were placing whatever they could find before him. There was no red carpet. So they made a carpet of palms and cloaks and whatever they could find to make for a royal entry. They were declaring Jesus as the King!
Jesus had been teaching for months outside Jerusalem about a different way, the Basileia tou theou, as it was written in the gospels in Greek, the kingdom of God, an entirely different kind of heavenly empire.
So they entered from the east, not as soldiers or royal agents, but as commoners in a time of poverty. Jesus wore an ordinary robe and rode a simple young donkey. It was a lampoon. A ritualized prophetic satire evoking symbolism from the prophet Zechariah 9:9-10.
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus was a new kind of king and a new kind of priest, a prince of peace who eschewed the weapons of war.
The crowd following Jesus and anticipating his arrival in Jerusalem had grown to its peak. As Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east, a “whole multitude of the disciples” are amassed. Once again a parallel to the beginnings of Luke’s story when in the birth narrative for Jesus Luke had declared that the “multitude of the heavenly host” had greeted Jesus birth with “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace.” But this time the disciples add the word Basileus, in Greek, meaning “king” to the language borrowed from Psalm 118:26 and greet Jesus entry into Jerusalem by saying: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”
Luke then adds an homage to the Basileia, the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven as Matthew called it, as the crowds shout “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven.”
When Jesus prayed, he prayed “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These crowds were announcing that the peace and glory of heaven were now come to earth with the entry of Jesus. For them this signaled an end to the corruption and the ways of domination and oppressive power. Such was the dream of the crowd. A strong challenger had arrived and change was in the air. The heavenly greeting of the angelic multitude at Jesus birth was now coming to fruition with the earthly welcome of Jesus to the City of Jerusalem here on earth.
As Stephen Shoemaker asks: “What kind of King [did the people want]? So we have a clash of kingdoms: Caesar or Christ. Caesar’s kingdom is based on domination and ruthless power, the kind of kingship Jesus refused when tempted in the wilderness. The kingdom of God that Jesus preached is based on justice, mercy and the love of God. So we have our choice: Pax Christi or Pax Romana. Our challenge is to [understand] how the gospel of the kingdom has political implications but transcends our everyday political loyalties.” (H. Stephen Shoemaker, Luke 19:28-40, Homiletical Perspective. Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2. Pp. 152-156.)
But for the pharisees, these royal and priestly adulations by the crowd were too much. “Order your disciples to stop,” they demanded of Jesus. Were they trying to protect Jesus from Herod again, were they embarrassed by the ecstatic praise or were they offended by its implications? The text does not clarify this. But we do have Jesus response. “I tell you if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Among the gospel writers, this is a unique theme to Luke. He foreshadows the idea in Luke 3:8 when John the Baptist declares: “God is from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”
As always, Luke is firmly rooted in the voices of the prophets. Habakkuk 2:9-11 reads: ““Alas for you who get evil gain for your houses, setting your nest on high to be safe from the reach of harm!” You have devised shame for your house by cutting off many peoples; you have forfeited your life. The very stones will cry out from the wall, and the plaster will respond from the woodwork.”
From this entry, Jesus went on to upset the tables of the money changers and echo the words of another prophet, Jeremiah, by pointing out how the Temple had been made into a den of thieves.
In this passage we see Jesus as both holy priest and royal king. “Jesus not only proclaims God’s word, he is God’s word.” (George W. Stroup)
Scripture is not to be idolized, we worship God understood as Author of Time, Living Word, and in-dwelling Word.
We greet the Word on the pathway into Jerusalem, knowing all too well that the crowds who gathered there as he entered the city of the Temple would witness the week of Christ’s passion.
Can we say it? “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Let this week be dedicated to remembering that the journey to the kingdom is a journey to the cross.