Posted by Palm Sunday
Today is Palm Sunday, and we mark the start of Holy Week, the final approach to Easter and the climax of the Church’s liturgical year. We hear the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. This happened as he made his final approach to the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of the Passover, which would prove to be the Passover at which he met his death. As he approached the city he came to Bethpage and sent two of his disciples before him telling them to go into the village where they would find an ass tied and a colt with her, to loose them and bring them to him. The disciples did as Jesus commanded. They brought the ass and the colt and laid their garments on them and made him sit on them. “And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way: and others cut boughs from the trees, and strewed them in the way; and the multitudes that went before and that followed cried, saying: Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
But what did this action mean? It was intended as an acted parable after the manner of the Hebrew prophets. The prophets often performed strange symbolic actions to illustrate their teachings. Yet the actions did more than simply illustrate, they in some mysterious way enacted what they symbolised. Thus, Isaiah walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia (Isaiah 20). Jeremiah broke a pot to proclaim that the Temple would be destroyed (Jeremiah 19) and he wore a yoke to indicate that Judah should submit to Babylon (Jeremiah 27). Standing in this tradition Jesus also performed symbolic actions such as choosing twelve disciples to illustrate that his message was a call to all Israel, for Israel had been divided into twelve tribes. His miracles, and his exorcisms in particular, had symbolised the defeat of the forces of evil and the coming of the Kingdom of God in his own person and ministry. His Triumphal entry into Jerusalem was a dramatic symbolic action that expressed more powerfully than words could express the true nature of his kingship. Instead of making the final journey to the city on foot, as was the usual custom for pilgrims on their approach to the city to celebrate a religious festival, he rode into the city, but rode on a donkey. His royal status was not that of a warrior and a conqueror, but rather that of the coming king foretold by Zechariah “Tell ye the daughter of Zion: Behold thy king cometh to thee meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of her that is used to the yoke.”
The pilgrims had come to meet him with palm branches. They recognised his kingship, but misunderstood the meaning. Palm branches were fitting for a warrior and a conqueror who would take on and defeat the might of Rome. But in deliberately deciding to ride into the city on a donkey, Jesus was performing an acted parable of the true nature of his kingship. He was indeed the true king of Israel, but his kingship was very different from the kingship that the crowds were expecting.
But what sort of king were the crowds expecting? The word “Christ” means anointed, and the Messiah is the one who is the anointed liberator of Israel. It looked back to the independent kingdom of Israel and in particular the reign of King David. David had defeated the enemies of Israel and captured Jerusalem. His son Solomon had built the first Temple in Jerusalem. The kingdom had later been divided between Israel and Judah. Israel had eventually been conquered by the Assyrians, and Judah by the Babylonians and the Temple had been destroyed. The Persians had subsequently allowed the Jews to return from exile in Babylon, and the temple was rebuilt as the Jewish people regrouped under Ezra and Nehemiah. Though they no longer had political independence, they looked forward to a future restoration of the kingdom through an anointed liberator, the Messiah. The Persians were replaced by Hellenistic rulers after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Judas Maccabeus successfully revolted against Antiochus Epiphanes and purified the temple. But the Hasmonean rulers (the successors of Judas Maccabeus) proved just as worldly and compromised as the regime they replaced and in due course the Jewish kingdom was conquered by Rome. By the time of Jesus’ ministry Judea was subject to direct Roman rule, while Galilee was under the client kingdom of Herod Antipas. The people consequently looked for an anointed liberator, the Messiah, who would defeat Rome and restore the kingdom of Israel.
When Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God was now breaking into history in his own words and works, it inevitably raised the question of whether he was in fact the agent of God’s final deliverance of his people, the Messiah. At the climax of the Galilean ministry after the feeding of the Five Thousand, the multitude sought to take him and make him king by force, but Jesus withdrew by himself (John 6:14). The world could not be won by the world’s own methods. When Peter acknowledged that Jesus was not simply a prophet like one of the old prophets, but the Messiah, Jesus explained that his messianic destiny of enthronement and rule could only be won by reversal, repudiation, suffering and death.
For those who were looking for a warrior and a conqueror who would re-establish an independent kingdom of Israel by force of arms this was a difficult message to accept. Jesus’ decision to enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey was his final dramatic appeal to the nation to see the true nature of his kinship. He would indeed subvert the authority of Caesar, not by violence, but by sacrificing himself as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah who dies in substitution of the sins of the many. Jesus had taught the path of self sacrifice, of turning the other cheek and going the second mile, of loving enemies and praying for persecutors. In his passion, in his non resistance at his trial, and his praying for his persecutors he would embody the message that he had taught. He would turn the other cheek, he would go the second mile, and would thereby take evil upon himself and somehow subsume it to good, of power made perfect in weakness. Almighty and everlasting God, who didst will that our Saviour should take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience and also be made partakers of his resurrection.