Palm Sunday
Sixth Sunday in Lent
“The Good News Is…Inspiring Us to Act”— Rev. Brent Gundlah
Zechariah 9:9-10
Matthew 21:1-17
The story of Palm Sunday is one of the toughest a preacher has to deal with all year because it’s so familiar and so simple. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, people wave palm branches and shout Hosanna. The end.
But perhaps it’s not really as familiar and as simple as we think it is.
All four gospels contain an account of this event and while they have many things in common they’re all a little different too. Consider Matthew’s version, for example, which is the one you just heard. It has a whole lot of Hosannas (as do all of the others except for Luke) but it doesn’t necessarily have palms; Matthew says that folks spread branches they’d cut from the trees on the road but he doesn’t specify what kind of branches they were (only John does that). Maybe it doesn’t really matter, though.
On top of that, according to Matthew, Jesus rode into town “on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of donkey,” which is kind of weird when you stop to think about it. Did he switch animals halfway? Or did he stand with one foot on each — you know, like a trick rider at the rodeo? Perhaps Matthew simply misconstrued the words of the prophet Zechariah (which Sarah read earlier) when he cited them here — specifically, the verse that says the Messiah will arrive “riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Using a comma instead of the word “and” can make a difference, but at the end of the day, this probably also doesn’t matter that much (and even gospel writers can make a mistake). The more important point here is that Jesus chooses as his mode of transportation some type of humble farm animal instead of the regal stallion that your typical conquering king would have opted for because Jesus isn’t your typical conquering king; he’s not the leader the people expected or, quite frankly, the one they actually wanted.
Neither Mark nor Luke emphasize how many people had gathered to watch the procession and to greet Jesus that day, but Matthew and John both feel the need to do so. Apparently, concern about crowd size was a thing back then too, but I’ll be darned if I know why that matters either.
Sometimes, though, the details do matter. Even though we read a version of the Palm Sunday story the week before Easter every single year, whatever is going on in our place and time can make a particular version of that story land differently than it otherwise would — and this is the case this year with Matthew’s telling of it (at least for me, anyway).
As Jesus enters Jerusalem and the march is about to wrap up, we learn that the city is “in turmoil” (and I think we all know what turmoil feels like these days). The customary Matthew Palm Sunday reading typically ends with the very next verse — as the crowd proclaims, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee,” in response to some folks who are wondering who this guy riding into town on the back of a donkey and a colt, or a donkey, or a colt, actually is. And ending the reading there kind of makes sense for a few reasons.
First, it wraps up this part of the story. The public festivities that got everybody all riled up served as a prelude to him entering the city, which has now happened, and so the focus can shift elsewhere (kind of like Santa’s arrival at the end of the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving means it’s time to turn the channel and watch some football).
Second, the crowd’s final words summarize who Jesus actually is — at least in part, anyway (I mean, he is a prophet and he is from Nazareth in Galilee, even though he’s way more than that).
Lastly, the location of the action changes in the very next verse as Jesus enters the temple.
And this is where Matthew’s version of the story starts to get really interesting, which is why I took the liberty of adding the next six verses of it to today’s gospel reading.
The city, as we’ve been told, is already in turmoil, but Jesus feels the need to turn up the heat little. As he enters the temple, he drives out all of the people who are doing business there; he flips over the the tables of the money changers and the seats of the dove sellers, and then he chastises them. Matthew tells us that he says to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of robbers.” And this is, in fact, written — in the words of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, too be exact.
Did this all really happen like Matthew says it happened? I can’t say for sure because I wasn’t there and because the gospels themselves don’t even agree about exactly what took place and when. For example, both Matthew and Luke say this incident occurred right after the Palm Sunday parade wrapped up. But Mark says it happened the next day, and John says it happened way earlier in Jesus’s ministry.
Matthew and Mark both say that Jesus flipped over tables and chairs but Luke doesn’t say anything of the sort. John doesn’t mention any chairs but he does say that Jesus flipped over the money changers’ tables after pouring out their coins on them. John also has Jesus enter the temple cracking a whip that he had made, which is a pretty dramatic thing to do, even though none of the other gospels ever talks about this.
But let’s consider for a moment the details upon which Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all agree: Jesus rode into Jerusalem (for the final time) one day on the back of at least one humble farm animal and was greeted with branches of some kind and the shouts of an adoring crowd (who may or may not have been yelling Hosanna; and Jesus, at some point in his life, created a ruckus at the temple that was directed at the merchants and money changers who were allowed to do what they did there (and, by implication, at those who allowed them to do it there).
And what, pray tell, do these two incidents have in common? At a basic level, they were both protests. That’s right: On this latest “No Kings” weekend. we have confirmation that Jesus himself was up for making a little noise directed at the powers-that-be: in the case of the Palm Sunday parade, at the Romans who were oppressing the people, and in the case of the Temple cleansing, at the religious authorities who not only cooperated with the Romans but who also allowed God’s house to be defiled. There you have it, folks — Jesus was a rabble-rouser; the Bible says so. And yet, if Matthew is to be believed, that’s not all there is to the story.
You see, after Jesus marches into town amidst great fanfare, after he lays into the merchants and the money changers in the temple for everyone to see and hear, he does something far less dramatic but at least as important. Matthew tells us that people who were in search of healing came to Jesus in the temple, and he healed them. It might not sound like a big deal, but this, interestingly enough, is what makes the chief priests and scribes angry: tending to people’s needs.
Now let’s pull back the focus a little further still. In Matthew’s version of the gospel, what does Jesus do in the verses leading up to the public display of Palm Sunday? He stops by the roadside and restores the sight of two blind men. And what does he do just a few verses after today’s extended reading about the parade and the furniture flipping ends? He returns to the temple in order to teach. And it’s worth remembering these other, less dramatic parts of the Palm Sunday story in our place and time.
I was scrolling through my Instagram feed one day last week and stumbled upon a clever meme that someone had posted in advance of yesterday’s “No Kings” rallies, which read as follows: “Just had a conversation with a nice French couple who said the problem with American protests is that we schedule them one by one instead of showing up every night until the change happens.” And there’s a lot of wisdom in this statement — perhaps even more than either the poster or the couple they are quoting had actually intended to convey.
Is protest one way in which we can go about working for real change in our society? Absolutely. And, as we see in today’s story, Jesus himself actually did just that. Are sustained and spontaneous rallies and marches more effective than sporadic and scheduled ones? I’ll leave it to others who are more qualified to draw that conclusion than I am to do so. But when we look at the totality of Jesus life and ministry, it’s pretty clear he’s trying to tell us that there’s more to “showing up” than just protesting.
Please don’t misunderstand me: Protest is important; protest is effective. And as we’ve learned in this country over the past few years protest can also be dangerous precisely because it is so effective. Empires throughout history have consistently sought to exert their will and to end public resistance through the threat and/or application of overwhelming force and violence — and because fear of these things can be so powerful, this is a strategy that’s often worked, at least in the short term anyway.
But the one thing the powers-that-be have never been able to put an end to, not even for a minute, is the incredibly subversive act of people simply caring for all the people they can’t be bothered to care for; by tending to the needs of those who live on society’s margins, by welcoming the stranger, by embracing the outcast, by truly loving all God’s children as God does.
As we will hear once again over the course of the next week, love always wins and love never dies. Despite their many differences, all of the Gospels agree on that. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the point that really matters.