Palm Sunday sermon: Rev. Dr. Howard Wallace

The story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, which we celebrate on Palm Sunday, is probably familiar to most of you. It is told in all four Gospels. In Mark’s Gospel it comes at the end of a long journey toward Jerusalem. Jesus sends two disciples to get a donkey from a nearby village. He is seated on the donkey as he enters Jerusalem to cheers of many people following. Some lay their cloaks and leafy branches before him.

The scene is greatly symbolic. The scene of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey recalls words of the prophet Zechariah, who over 500 years before Jesus envisioned the coming of a king who would bring peace to the city:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Chances are that the words of Zechariah have greatly influenced the Gospel writers in shaping this part of Jesus’s story. As I have said before, if Jesus did enter Jerusalem seated on a donkey it was probably a small event, unlike the scene painted in the Gospels. We must remember, it was getting close to Passover time, the celebration of the escape of the Israelites from Egypt many centuries before. Thousands would flock to Jerusalem. The Roman government would be on alert with reinforcements in the city ready to quash any sniff of rebellion.

The Gospel writers are not simply recording events in Jesus’s life. They use those events to say something about Jesus himself, something their readers need to hear and remember. Since all four Gospels have a version of the story, we might have a brief look at them all to see how the story develops and what it has to say in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus. We will concentrate on what the crowd says in the story.

In each Gospel the crowd shouts out some version of Psalm 118:1. But then we note that there are small changes in what the crowd says in each Gospel. They are marked in yellow. See first what Mark and Matthew have the crowd say.

Now we turn to Luke and John. John’s Gospel is the briefest but most radical: Jesus is ‘the King of Israel.’ It would have really got the Romans in a twist if the crowd had shouted that. John’s Gospel is also the latest of the versions of the story and the most developed theologically. Let us leave that for now and see what the other Gospels have to say.

We start with Luke’s Gospel written some two decades after Mark but also building on Mark’s version. Here the crowd shouts for ‘peace in heaven.’ This is similar to the song of the angels at Jesus’s birth where they proclaim ‘glory to God in the highest and peace on earth’. Luke links this event to the birth of Jesus and says what is about to take place is the culmination of Jesus’s life. In some ancient myths there is a story of a struggle between good and evil in heaven and on earth. Luke is saying that in Jesus there is the resolution of all conflict and struggle in the world. What is happening may be a small event but it has cosmic consequences.

In Matthew, also written about two decades after Mark and building on Mark’s version of the story. Here the crowd shouts ‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’  It had been the hope of many that a great king in the line of David would come and set the people free from their oppression and hardship, namely from the Roman occupation. Matthew identifies Jesus with that individual. What was happening with Jesus entering Jerusalem was that the hopes of the past were being fulfilled.

In Mark, the earliest version of the story, the crowd shouts: ‘blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!’ Mark does not quite say what Matthew does later, that Jesus is the Son of David, but that what has been hoped for in a descendant of David is ‘coming’ or starting to emerge. I sense a slight reservation in Mark’s version: something is happening but what and is it now?

The declaration in John’s Gospel that Jesus is ‘King of Israel’, which comes about three decades after Mark’s Gospel, is the culmination of developing ideas of who Jesus is. However, it leaves open the question of what type of kingship is understood here and what type of king will Jesus be. That question is already posed back at the start of this story’s history in Mark’s reservation. Will all the dreams of the people from the past be fulfilled as Matthew’s Gospel hints at? Or will all the hopes of peace in heaven (and on earth) become a reality as Luke’s Gospel poses?

What Mark also leaves open, is how this ‘king’ who comes in the name of the Lord will be ‘enthroned’. As the story goes that enthronement is to be seen both symbolically and ironically – in Jesus’s obedience unto death on the cross, in his being raised from the dead, and in his exaltation to God’s right hand.

Here is a kingly one who ushers in a kingdom where:

• life is to be gained by giving oneself for others;
• and the normal human ways of measuring worth – by power, wealth, ability, opportunity, success – are all replaced by the measure of love and compassion.

This is the king and the type of kingdom Mark would have us see as Jesus enters Jerusalem. This is the king and the type of kingdom we welcome as we celebrate this Palm Sunday.