Who is Jesus? This is the question we’ve been asking as we travel with Jesus through Mark’s story of who Jesus is. Today we celebrate Palm Sunday, the day that kicks off Holy Week and Jesus’ journey down the path of the Via Dolorosa, the Path of Suffering or Way of Grief. But it sure doesn’t look like a path of suffering or grief today. It’s a day of celebration and waving palm branches; it’s a day where Jesus reveals that he is the Messiah who has come to save his people, and the people recognize that Jesus is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
The people know the
promises of a Messiah, and they have different pictures in their heads of what the Messiah is
going to be. Jesus uses these images now to show the people who he is. One of
the pictures comes from Jacob’s blessing of Judah in Genesis 49, “Judah, your brothers will praise you; your hand will be on
the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a
lion’s cub, Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion he crouches
and lies down, like a lioness—who dares to rouse him? The scepter will not
depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to
whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his. He
will tether his donkey to a vine, his colt to the choicest branch; he will wash
his garments in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes. His eyes will be darker
than wine, his teeth whiter than milk.”
As Jesus and the disciples
come close to Jerusalem, he sends a couple of them into the city to bring him the colt that they
will find there. Jesus is going to ride into Jerusalem at the beginning of the
Passover, a time where the people are coming together to remember how God saved them from slavery and oppression in the past, and Jesus is going to
reveal himself as the Messiah, as a king who comes to save his people. Jesus is
also picking up on what blind Bartimaeus has just called him, “The Son of David.” So, with all the images of kings
and colts, of Messiahs and salvation, Jesus is priming the pump for the week
coming up.
The disciples are
completely misreading the whole story here. They’re getting excited, finally Jesus is
becoming the person they’ve been waiting for, the king who’s come to claim
David’s throne from Herod, the one who will free them from Rome. They’re
thinking of the powerful positions that Jesus is going to give them once he’s
king. Now maybe Jesus will stop talking about suffering and dying and crosses. Following
Jesus has become all about them rather than about Jesus. This temptation is
still with us today. It’s so easy to think we’re following Jesus, but when we
actually listen to Jesus’ teaching, to his call to give him our entire life and
loyalty, we often find that we haven’t really been listening, but have heard
only what we want to hear. We focus on rights when the only rights Jesus gives
us is the right to be called children of God. We focus on freedom when the
freedom we are given is the freedom to serve.
The disciples find the
colt, just as Jesus has said they would, and they bring it to him. As Jesus gets ready to ride the
colt, the disciples place their cloaks on the colt for Jesus to sit on. Jesus
climbs on the colt and joins the other pilgrims who are walking the last couple
of kilometers to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast that’s coming up. The
pilgrims recognize Jesus and an excitement begins to build. The people are
steeped in the stories of God and his promises of a Messiah. They have been
waiting for such a long time for him to arrive. As they see Jesus on the colt,
echoes of the prophet Zechariah’s prophecy ring through their hearts, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a
donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will take away the chariots from
Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He
will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and
from the River to the ends of the earth.” Could Jesus be the one?
This is quickly becoming an
exciting procession into Jerusalem. The people gather branches and spread them on
the road, some even spread their cloaks on the road like a red carpet. Could
Jesus be the new Simon Maccabees who rode into Jerusalem just like Jesus is doing
right now to the cheers of the crowds? Simon was a huge hero to the Jews after
freeing them from the oppression of Syria. 1 Maccabees tells the story of how
he regained Jerusalem, “Those who were in the citadel at Jerusalem were
prevented from going in and out to buy and sell in the country. So they were
very hungry, and many of them perished from famine. Then they cried to Simon to
make peace with them, and he did so. But he expelled them from there and
cleansed the citadel from its pollutions. On the twenty-third day of the second
month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, the Jews entered it with praise
and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and
with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from
Israel. Simon decreed that every year they should celebrate this day with
rejoicing.”
The crowd starts getting
into it, shouting, “Hosanna!” which means “Save now!” the people are eager for the Messiah, for
freedom. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest
heaven!” They realize, at least for now, that Jesus has come from God,
though they don’t quite get that he is God! Mark calls the people a great crowd,
though an intense crowd probably fits the situation better. At Passover, Rome
usually brought in extra solders to keep the peace, a reminder to the Jews that
they were not a free people. Now with the Messiah here, the intensity ramps up
big time. The throne in Jerusalem is on their minds; they want their king on
their throne, they want the one who comes in the name of the Lord to claim the
Lord’s city and people for his own. The Passover is a reminder that God saves,
and they want God to save them now! With Jesus’ power and ability to do
miracles, how can they fail?
Scott Hoezee and Carrie
Steenwyk ask, “What if Mark ended
his story here with Palm Sunday?” This is the way the world, and maybe even us, would like the story
to end: Jesus is on his way to claim the throne, the people love him, and he
has the power to accomplish this; what’s not to love about this ending? This is
exactly the end that Satan promised Jesus in the wilderness during the
temptation, that Jesus could rule, not only Israel, but all the kingdoms of the
world if Jesus would kneel before him. Salvation has come, the one who comes in
the name of the Lord is on the throne of David, and everyone is happy.
There’s only one problem, this story ending doesn’t
solve humanity’s biggest problem: our slavery to sin and its effects on
creation. God has written a different ending to Jesus’ story,
an ending that leads to all the things Jesus has been warning the disciples
about: his suffering, death and resurrection. God knows the story we need and
it’s different from the story that we often want. We want the story of the
conquering king. Our temptation is the same as the crowd’s, to turn Jesus into
a Messiah created in our image. God knows that we really need the story of Good
Friday and Easter Sunday; a story of redemption, renewal, of death and new
life, of forgiveness and reconciliation. We need the king of Zechariah, a
humble king of peace.
Jesus has come as our king
and Messiah. Kings
provide for their people what they really need, not always what they want;
kings protect their people, often from enemies and threats the people may not
even be aware of. By refusing the throne in Jerusalem, Jesus provides us with
forgiveness and reconciliation with our heavenly father; by going to the cross,
Jesus protects us from the power of Satan, ensuring Satan’s defeat. God raises
Jesus to the throne at his right hand and gives Jesus authority and power over
all creation, making sure that we have eternal life with him.
Jesus is a humble king, a
king of peace, a
king who defeats our enemies with the greatest love the world has ever seen. Jesus is a king who washes feet and who tells his followers to humbly serve since even he came to serve rather than be served. As
you go home today, ask, “What kind of a king have I made Jesus into, and if
Jesus is a suffering, sacrificial king, who is he calling me to become as his
follower?”
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