Palm Sunday, 2011 (officially, “The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday” - BCP 270)
In the “old” calendar of the Episcopal Church (i.e., pre-1979), the Fifth Sunday of Lent was known as Passion Sunday, and the Sunday before Easter was Palm Sunday. Because these two events were out of sequence, and because of the desire to keep five distinct Sundays in Lent, the two observations were merged, first by the Roman Catholic Church in 1969, and then in our own church, with the 1979 revised Prayer Book. The advantage is that we keep five Lenten Sundays; the disadvantage is that we endure a rapid decompression from the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to his Passion and Death, all in one morning.
In one sense, that may be a good thing, and it may reflect the wide range of emotions that his disciples undoubtedly experienced: from the high of seeing jubilant crowds welcome Jesus as Messiah and King, to the casting-out of the moneychangers in the Temple, to the Last Supper (which may or may not have been a Passover Seder), to the Agony in the Garden, the arrest, two or more trials, the Via Dolorosa, crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus ― all in less than a week (if the chronology in the Gospels is not simply a compression of many different events over a longer period of time).
So, let us take things as they are. Our service commences (often outside the church) with a retelling of the Gospel story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. This is a story that made a big impact on his followers. It is recounted in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but not even mentioned in John, who often tells very different stories than the Synoptics do. This year (2011), we hear Matthew’s version.
We need to keep in mind that Matthew wrote for non-Jewish Christians, so he often had to explain Hebrew or Aramaic words, and almost always explained Jewish rituals and traditions. In addition, he frequently referred back to the Hebrew Bible (“Old Testament”) to show his audience, who may not have been familiar with that book, how Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecies.
Sure enough, Matthew does that in our reading for this morning. He quotes Zechariah 9:9, which is part of a lambasting prophecy foretelling the destruction of Israel’s enemies and the coming of a new king:
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
But here we run into a funny translation problem. The version that we will probably read is from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and it creates a strange picture:
“The disciples... brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.” [Mt 21:6-7 NRSV, emphasis mine]
Really? Jesus sat on a donkey and a colt at the same time? NOT! First of all, Zechariah 9:9 in Hebrew does not say “on a donkey, and on a colt.” Rather, it says, “a donkey, even upon a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah was trying to emphasize the humility of the coming king: not riding in a chariot or on a great white horse, but rather on a donkey, in fact not even a full-grown donkey, but just a colt.
It is interesting to note that both Mark and Luke leave this confusing statement out and only have Jesus riding on “a colt.” So, why the difference? The author of Matthew was once again tying the New Testament to the Old by referencing the prophecy, but he was using the Septuagint version of the Jewish scriptures. (The Septuagint was written in Greek, not Hebrew, and it was a translation that differed significantly from the standard Hebrew version.)
Either way, we get the picture: Jesus, the Messiah of God, enters the holy city of Jerusalem very humbly riding a lowly beast of burden. Of course, it might have been even more humble just to walk, but apparently Jesus realized that mobs of people were waiting for him, so he may have felt the need for the protection of riding a bit above the crowd and for the sure-footedness of a donkey.
Well, we know how the people reacted. Or do we? We have three different descriptions, and none of them says anything about palms! Matthew says that “a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.” [Mt 21:8] Mark tells it slightly differently: “Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.” [Mk 11:8] Finally, Luke has no branches at all: “As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks along the road.” [Lk 19:36]
How do we explain this? First of all, biblical scholars believe that the Gospels were all written many years after the events that they describe, so they are not eye-witness accounts. They are the product of the memories of the people who were there. In fact, the timing of the writing of the Gospels suggests that the eye-witnesses were dying off, and the Church wanted to preserve their memories for future generations. Second, with twelve disciples and dozens (hundreds?) of other people there, it is not surprising that some people remembered one detail, while others remembered things differently. Finally, the writers of the Gospels were each writing for a specific audience, a specific group of early Christians, and they tailored their writing as necessary. Matthew, again, was showing the connection between Jesus and the prophecies concerning the Messiah ― all you have to do is to read Matthew, chapter 1, verse 1, to see his stated purpose for writing his Gospel. Mark’s Gospel is believed to be the first that was written down. It is the shortest, which suggests that those who came after him added details that he had not included. Luke wrote for a highly-educated Greek-speaking population outside the Holy Land, so he often goes in directions that make sense to that audience.
However the events were remembered, and whichever details we read, we get the picture: people had heard about Jesus, the teacher and preacher and miracle-worker from Nazareth in Galilee. His reputation preceded him. Some may have thought that he could be the promised Messiah, but their vision of the Messiah was a soldier-king like David, who would reclaim their land from the Romans. Many were probably just curious. Some welcomed Jesus as an honored figure, laying their garments on the dusty road to keep the air clean so they could see him better and to protect his clothes from being soiled. It was common in processions and celebrations to wave branches in the air as a sign of joy. There were and are certainly palm trees in the area around Jerusalem. We have no way of knowing whether they lined the road that Jesus took into the city, or were in the nearby fields (the most common form of palm tree at that time was the one that produced dates as fruit ― those would have been in an orchard).
In Matthew and Mark, the crowd cries out, “Hosanna!” ― a Hebrew word meaning “help us, save us, we pray.” It is not the joyful hallelujah (“let us give praise to God”), but rather a cry for assistance that we hear. Luke leaves it out, probably because it is a Jewish term and he is writing for Greeks and Romans.
All three Gospels then quote Psalm 118, verses 25 and 26: “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Notice that there is no recognition that Jesus comes as Lord. Rather, the comparison is made between Jesus and David, a human king, a man who sinned as often as he acted the way God wanted. As we are reminded in Eucharistic Prayer D, Jesus is not the same as David or any earthly king. He ”lived as one of us, yet without sin.” [BCP, 374] Nevertheless, David was a precious hero to the Jewish people: he united them as their second king, he set up a grand capital city on Mount Zion, and he moved the sacred Tabernacle to the place where his son, Solomon, would build the Temple where all Jewish sacrifice would take place. Only Matthew specifically calls Jesus “the son of David.” [Mt 21:9] Only Luke calls Jesus a king. [Lk 19:38]
It must have been a spectacle. The reaction of the crowds was tumultuous. Perhaps they just saw it as an opportunity to remind the Romans that they didn’t like them. Maybe it was just a contagion of excitement, with most people not really knowing what was going on.
At any rate, each Gospel tells us something different about what happened next. In Mark, Jesus goes into the Temple, looks around at everything, and then, because it was late, leaves Jerusalem and goes back to Bethany. [Mk 11:11] In Matthew’s version, Jesus also goes into the Temple, but he gets right to work: he drives out the moneychangers and begins healing all the people who come to him. [Mt 21:12-14] In Luke, some of the Pharisees stop Jesus and ask him to order his followers to be silent (which he refuses to do). Before Jesus cleanses the Temple, as he does in Matthew, Luke shows him looking at the great city and its Temple and weeping for it. [Lk 19:41]
So, what lessons can we take away from this significant event in the life of Our Lord? First, he was a well-known figure, considered to be a prophet by some, hoped for as a king by others. As much as Jesus’ fame had preceded him to Jerusalem on this day, the truths that he was teaching apparently had not:
The Son of Man came to serve, not be served.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
These are not the proclamations of a conquering hero!
The crowd on that first Palm Sunday was not so different from people today. They saw a famous person and concentrated only on his fame, not his message. They got caught up in the excitement without fully realizing its meaning. They wanted a soldier-king who would lead a successful rebellion against Rome and the corrupt Temple leaders. They saw what they wanted to see, and when it turned out to be an ordinary-looking man riding a donkey, they didn’t get the point.
That helps explain why they abandoned him so quickly. Even his closest friends denied knowing him after he was arrested. The same crowds ― who hailed him as a son of David and cried to be saved ― reviled and condemned him when he was presented to them in chains, crowned with thorns. And they mocked him as he hung on the cross, dying from pain, dehydration, the effects of torture, and ultimately suffocation.
The peoples’ high instantly became a low. Their joy became disappointment, then anger: ”He got what he deserved.” “He never should have gotten our hopes up.” “He’s just another flash in the pan.”
That we can follow this momentous climb and crash, all in one Sunday morning, and still keep focused on what we will celebrate next Sunday, is a credit to our faith and our hope. Just when things looked darkest, the true meaning of all these events was revealed. When all seemed lost, for Jesus and for us, God intervened and changed the universe in one amazing moment.
So much passes before us in the pageantry and scripture readings on this Sunday of Palms and Passion. I pray that we will take home the kernel of truth in it all: Jesus went through this for a reason ― to stand before God and redeem his lost sheep, to take upon himself the sins of you and me, to die once in our place so that we don’t have to die forever.
To thee, before thy passion
They sang their hymns of praise;
To thee, now high-exalted,
Our melody we raise!
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