MT 21: 1-13 

Matthew in the Margins…Palm Sunday Liturgy…Revised 2017 

The procession may end at v. 11, but we need Jesus to reach the Temple in v.12, & throw down the gauntlet in v.13 for it all to come together. The point the procession makes is the kind of rule Jesus comes to bring, & the kind of ‘religion’! Clive Sansom (‘The Witnesses’) contrasts Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey with Pilate ‘bouncing the same road on that horse of his…armour shining…half Rome trotting behind him’. Jesus is acting out Zechariah’s prophecy, deliberately & provocatively! He’s driving what’s going on! Not simply letting Himself be carried away by an event set in motion by others. Not yet!

W.H. Vanstone¹ argues a case for Jesus being the 'subject' of the situation until he becomes the 'object' by allowing himself to be handed over to his enemies in the garden. (Judas isn’t all that important in this process.) I’m attracted to this view. I wonder, though, if Jesus isn’t setting in motion this ‘letting Himself be handed over’ process earlier still; on Palm Sunday. (Some might say it started even sooner, with His raising Lazarus!) His secrecy in borrowing a donkey today strongly suggests He’s not going to prejudice His calling the shots without interference until it’s time to let go & let God. That stage at which He gives up control as totally as He's been in the driver's seat up to that point.

The introduction of a colt into the story as well as the donkey simply reflects the parallelism of the poetry of ZECH [9:9]. There is no second donkey! But it’s an example of how things creep into all our stories. What incidents, real or imagined, do we embroider, allow to take on new life in re-telling, face to face, or, say, on twitter, or Facebook? What are facts if fiction's better! (Or, ‘alternative facts’, like those coming thick & fast from a certain administration! Would we lend Jesus our donkey - or anything else - on the strength of what sounds an embroidered story of His being Messiah?  

MT wants us to see people who follow Jesus as able to recognise a true king, of a new & different kind, when they see one. Liturgy puts those words of recognition on our own lips with its: ‘Blessed is he……' But are we prepared to go further than just cheering Jesus’ procession on? Will we go on to enter the city with Him, & do what needs to be done there? Till we reach that ‘green hill far away outside a city wall’? Are we up for what that may entail these days? 

Jesus comes to bring not peace but a sword. To be a sword to pierce us through & through. As the religious crooks who run the Temple & those who work for them, trading on little people are soon to feel. That's when vv.12-13 become the punch line of the story! Words from a hymn by John Bell & Graham Maule² sum up the Jesus who declares his hand on Palm Sunday: ‘Praise the Son who feeds the hungry, frees the captive, finds the lost, heals the sick, upsets religion, fearless both of fate and cost’. Well may we say, or preferably, sing: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!” And mean it with every fibre of our being! 

¹ The  Stature of Waiting’, DLT, ’82  ² Wild Goose Songs 1, Wild Goose Publications