Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
Mark 11:1-11
By this time next week, you’re going to be shaking your head and asking, “What’s wrong with the Gospel of Mark?” Trust me on this. Your going to hear me read the text and say, “What? That’s it?” Then, I will have to make sense of what you’ve just heard.
In the meantime, though, this morning, don’t get ahead of yourself. The good news is that the Gospel of Mark gets Palm Sunday exactly right. When you see how Mark brings Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem to life, you just might think he gets Easter right, too!
For years, I’ve told you that I think Palm Sunday is political theater. Let me remind you again. Every year, the population of Jerusalem swelled with visitors who came to celebrate the festival. Every year, the Jewish rulers would get super nervous because they didn’t want anything to happen that would irritate the Romans. Every year, the Romans would feel compelled to have a show of force. So, parades of Roman soldiers would make their way to the city and through the streets, demanding allegiance to the Emperor. They would ride huge warhorses with full armor and resplendent saddles. They would wave their spears. And if you didn’t cry out your allegiance to Caesar then you might feel the point of the spear in your side. This was Passover in Jesus’ day.
With all that drama as the background, here comes Palm Sunday. Matthew, Luke, and Mark, all agree that this was a pre-planned event. They reveal this to us by telling us the plan. Two disciples are to go into a nearby town where there will be a donkey (older donkey, younger donkey, or both, depending on which Gospel you read.) The secret code phrase when people ask why they’re taking the donkey is, “The master needs it.” Mark includes the promise that they’ll bring it back. The disciples take both a grown donkey and a young donkey in Matthew. Luke emphasizes that the young donkey has never been ridden. Despite these differences, the underlying idea is that there was nothing spontaneous about this unfolding parade. This was carefully calculated and planned.
(In contrast, the Gospel of John presents Palm Sunday as almost an afterthought. The crowd hears that Jesus is coming and they run out to meet him, all on their own. Jesus just seems to find a donkey. He decides to sit on it, seemingly, just to fulfill a prophecy. The disciples don’t understand what’s happening at all. Then, John just drops the whole subject and moves on.)
So, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus rides toward Jerusalem—whatever and however it is that he is riding. If this were a modern setting, the Roman guards would have been driving tanks around town and Jesus would be showing up in a clown car. (Beep! Beep!). If you have ever been at an event in Grant Park and had the mounted police present, you get my point. A police officer on a horse is a daunting prospect. Those horses are huge! Anyone on a donkey is a comedy waiting to unfold. Those animals are stubborn and strong willed, especially if they’ve never been ridden. And yet…this donkey (or donkeys if you’re in Matthew) is totally on board and never thinks of wandering from the path.
There are two other donkeys that come to mind for me in Scripture. There’s the donkey that Mary rides to Bethlehem with Joseph leading the way. That donkey also seems to be doing God’s work and is totally on board—trustworthy transportation on a sacred night. The other donkey is a bit more obscure. I’ve preached the story before—the story of Balaam and his donkey. This is a slapstick comedy told at Balaam’s expense where Balaam keeps thinking his donkey has gone rogue by veering wildly off the path but the donkey is actually saving Balaam’s life each time. We think it’s just another stubborn donkey story until the donkey becomes a talking donkey. The donkey asks, “Am I not your donkey?” And everyone who has ever spent time with donkeys is roaring laughing at the prospect of a donkey suddenly talking and becoming God’s angel and doing God’s work. It makes you feel like if God can work through a donkey, then God can work through anyone—which, after all, is kind of the message on Palm Sunday, too.
Not only are donkeys not warhorses, they are not even remotely like any horse. A lot of people in the crowd would have owned a donkey or two. A lot of people would have known how quickly a donkey can become an immovable object. Those people would not have been thinking of Scriptural prophecies. They would have been thinking, “Man…look at that little donkey go!” And I think there might have been just a little strut in that donkey’s stride!
So, the political theater point is this: Jesus doesn’t look anything like the Roman guard on their warhorses. In fact, if you didn’t know better (or maybe precisely because you do know better), Jesus looks for all the world like he’s poking fun at them. Seemingly, the crowd picks up the joke and runs with it. In Mark’s Gospel, they shed their cloaks, both for Jesus to ride on—in leu of a pretty saddle—and for the red carpet treatment that would be afforded a king. However, because their cloaks would have been a big tip on who was rich and who was not (the more colors your cloak was, the richer you were), they were shedding the whole hierarchy. Not only is Jesus offering them a display of the power of being powerless, the crowd is moved to shed whatever power they have when they see Jesus. None of that matters to them, not for that moment. Then, they take their palm fronds, which any kid knows make great play swords, and they lay them down with the cloaks. They disarm themselves instead of flashing their “spears” like the Romans. This whole parade is one giant rejection of Rome and its notion of power.
Finally, the big desired response from the crowd for the Romans—when everyone is supposed to yell, “Hail Caesar!”—turns into something else. In Matthew, because Matthew is all about Jesus being the Messiah, the people shout specifically Messianic things: “Hosanna to the Son of David”—literally, “Pray…Save us, Son of David.” The crowd believes Jesus is David’s heir, come to set things right for the nation. In Luke, the crowd yells less Messianic things: no mention of David; “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” but in the end, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven”—the kind of words the angels use at Jesus’ birth in Luke. So, you don’t have to know the Jewish scriptures, you just have to have read Luke. Then, you’ll hear the words on Palm Sunday and think to yourself, “I get it! I’ve heard this before!”
In Mark, the first account of Palm Sunday, those who want a nod to David get their nod: “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” Those who want the crowd to sound a little more angelic get their moment, too: “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” However, the beginning and ending words from the crowd are not about David and not about sounding like angels. The crowds first word is “Hosanna,” which literally means, “Save us!” “God help us all!” That’s what faithful people sound like, right! And, whatever else is said in between, the final word is, “Hosanna,” once again. The crowd begins and ends not by saying that they know exactly who Jesus is but by declaring that they know they need God’s help. It also means that what the Romans desired most—the people’s adoration, their willingness to see Caesar as a god—is directed instead to God, alone. All of which makes this parade a 100 percent subversive event.
At that point in the Gospel of Luke, the Pharisee’s show up and tell Jesus to silence his followers. Why? Because if the Romans catch wind of this uprising, they will squash the city. Jesus tells the Pharisees that if his followers were silent then the stones would start to shout out. At which point, we may smile and think to ourselves, “The man who wouldn’t turn stones into bread when he was starving when he was starving in the wilderness is now suggesting that God might well turn stones into disciples!”
In Matthew, the final moment of Palm Sunday is a question to the crowd. All of Jerusalem is in turmoil. They want to know who this man is. The crowd is having it’s best day ever, cheering Jesus on. This is the big chance to cap off their great day—the final jeopardy question—but they get the answer totally wrong: “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” “Uh-oh,” Matthew seems to tell us, “They don’t understand who Jesus is at all.” This is foreshadowing that things are about to go terribly wrong!
Mark’s not having any of that. The Pharisees don’t show up. Jerusalem is not in turmoil. The crowd has had a good day. In the rest of the Gospel of Mark, the crowd is constantly approaching Jesus and pushing people who need his healing towards him. They are creeping toward him tentatively to hear what he has to say. They are leaning in to hear a parable and then running when the upshot isn’t what they want to hear. On this one day, though, the crowd surrounds Jesus, front back and on both sides. Their coats give him relief from the dust of the road and a cushion for the bony seat of the donkey’s back. Their actions and their words line up with one another and seem to suggest that for this moment—this one shining moment—they get Jesus and they get what he’s teaching. Mark just seems to wink at us and say, “They’re having a good day. Let’s leave them alone.”
Instead, what happens at the end of Palm Sunday in Mark is really interesting. It may seem like the Scripture has been fulfilled. It may seem like the crowd has had their best day ever. It may seem like this is the moment that everyone has been waiting for. However, if that were true, then something big would happen next. The walls of the city would tremble. The gates would fling themselves open. The people would would rise up together in a rebellion. Things would begin to be set right. Jesus would show up and the revolution would start.
None of this happens. With the “Hosannas” of the crowd still ringing in the air, Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem, pretty much the same way anyone else would enter Jerusalem—through the gate. He doesn’t call the people to arms. The Romans didn’t throw their spears. He just walked in. He did make his way to the temple. But in Mark, nothing really happens there either—not yet anyway. Instead, Jesus just sort of takes a good look around. Then, he points out the time to the disciples and basically says, “It’s late. We should get some sleep.” Then, they head back out of town.
If Jesus was ever going to be the Messiah that so many people wanted him to be—the one who hates who we hate, the one who will make us great again, the one who will make us all a big success—this would have been the day. However, much to the disappointment of the crowd, that was no the work that he was there to do. That’s the truth Mark is here to tell us—plain and simple.
Just wait until you hear the plain and simple truth that he will tell us next…