Palm Sunday
Shelagh Balfour

Mark 11:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11

Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

I would like us to try imagining the scene. Place yourself within the story as a part of the crowd at the eastern gate to Jerusalem. It is late in the afternoon on a spring day, just a few days before Passover. The sky is still a bright blue, although the shadows begin to lengthen. There is near chaos all around as the city grows noisier and busier with crowds streaming in for the festival.

But then something changes. Over the constant buzz of Jerusalem, you begin to hear a repeated chant: Hosanna! Turning toward the gate you see men and women and even children gathered on each side of the road. All their attention is on a man riding into the city on a donkey colt. More than that, they aren’t just crying Hosanna!, they are throwing branches and their cloaks in his path and waving more branches in the air. The air is filled with their energy and their joy. Others are running to join the procession.
As the rider comes closer, you recognize the teacher, Jesus, and, for a moment, you feel yourself drawn to join the crowd, to fling your coat in the path and join in the praises. But only for a moment. Because it dawns on you what the crowd is doing. Here, in Jerusalem, under the noses of Roman occupiers and Temple authorities, this crowd is proclaiming the coming of a king in the line of David. They are crying Hosanna, “Save us”, as they imagine this king freeing them from oppression and putting all things right. Here in Jerusalem, under the noses of the Roman occupiers and the Temple authorities, how can that end well?

This is a relatively short scene, especially in Mark’s gospel, but it contains layers of meaning. It’s worth spending time with those meanings, because they help us understand why this moment begins our journey through Holy Week, why this moment will lead inevitably to the cross.

Within the story, the crowd themselves appear oblivious to the consequences of their actions, although that seems hard to fathom. In recent years there had been a few revolutionary leaders who challenged Roman rule. Those leaders tended to die very public, very gruesome deaths on the cross. Rome made them a harsh example to any other would-be saviours of the people. So it’s hard to see how the crowd thought it could end any other way. Perhaps they were caught up in the spirit of the moment. Theologian N. T. Wright says it this way:

It was Passover time – freedom time! But it was also, as far as [Jesus’ followers] were concerned, kingdom time; the time when Passover dreams, the great hope of freedom, of God’s sovereign and saving presence being revealed in a quite new way, would at last come true.

And, in a way, they were right.

The Triumphal Entry as it is called, is a clear and decisive step toward the cross. Jesus is making a definitive statement that he is king. For a people steeped in Scripture, the signs were undeniable. For example:

There was the donkey colt – the prophet Zechariah says Lo your king comes to you triumphant and victorious, riding on a colt, foal of a donkey. It appears Jesus planned and prepared for this and the crowd responded with understanding.

Then there was spreading their cloaks for Jesus to ride on – which was something that would only be done for royalty – and the waving of branches. The branches, a sign of welcoming a victorious leader, harkens back to Judas Maccabaeus who, 200 years before led a revolt that drove out foreign occupiers and reclaimed the Temple. If we read on in Mark’s gospel we would fine that Jesus himself returned to Jerusalem the next day and cleansed the Temple.

Finally, there are the words the people were shouting – Hosanna, says N.T. Wright, is a Hebrew word which mixed exuberant praise to God with the prayer that God will save his people, and do so right away. To make the point more explicit, the people add Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! All of this while entering the Holy city, the seat of the Davidic kings.

One of the assigned psalms yesterday, psalm 144, gives us one picture of what the crowd might envision as God saving God’s people:

Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down;
touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
Hurl the lightning and scatter them;
shoot out your arrows and rout them.
Stretch out your hand from on high;
rescue me and deliver me from … the hand of foreign peoples,
Whose mouths speak deceitfully
and whose right hand is raised in falsehood.

So the people declare in a loud and public way, in defiance of Rome, that their true king is entering the city and will deliver them. It is an entirely understandable longing in a people subjugated by an oppressive occupier of their land, something we’d do well to keep in mind as we live out our commitment to justice, truth, and reconciliation. But the Passover-fueled salvation they imagine is far from, and far less than, the kingship they actually receive. The Palm Sunday Epistle describes the kind of king that is actually entering Jerusalem. It goes like this:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus took the downward path to kingship, emptying himself, humbling himself, being obedient to the will of God to the point of accepting a horrible death by crucifixion. It is through doing so that he becomes king, not just in the small nation of Israel but in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. The crowd cries Hosanna! Save us, but the salvation Jesus makes possible is far beyond what they can imagine. It encompasses the whole world, the whole of creation. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The story of what that kingship looks like and what it requires of us as followers of Jesus Christ will begin to unfold in the coming week as we walk together through Good Friday and Easter. How all that changes us will be the ongoing story of the rest of our lives. For now, with the crowds in first century Jerusalem, and with Christians throughout the world, we cry out to our redeemer king:

Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Amen