Matthew
21:1-11
Palm
Sunday
April
9, 2017
William G. Carter
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at
the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into
the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a
colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to
you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them
immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the
prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to
you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a
donkey.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and
put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd
spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and
spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that
followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who
comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When he
entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is
this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in
Galilee.”
In
a Bible study on this passage, a woman suddenly exclaimed, “Wait! That can’t be
right!” The teacher paused. Everybody turned toward her as she quickly flipped
through the pages of her study Bible.
One
of her friends said, “Why? What’s up?” And she said, “Were there really two
donkeys on Palm Sunday?” With that, everybody took a closer look at the Gospel
of Matthew.
There’s
nothing like the Bible to get you to take a closer look at the Bible. Matthew
says, “They brought the donkey and the colt. They put their cloaks on them.
Jesus sat on them.” Two donkeys, not one.
Them?
Two donkeys on Palm Sunday? The teacher
lost control as the people around the table began to thumb through their
Bibles. One of them asked, “Where else
are the stories of Palm Sunday?”
Somebody
said, “Here’s one. Mark, chapter 11. It only mentions one donkey, and it’s the
colt, the little donkey.” (Mark 11:2) Another said, “That’s what it says in the 19th
chapter of Luke too. It’s a colt. That’s like a foal, isn’t it?” (Luke 19:30).
“I’m
looking at the Gospel of John,” said somebody else. “Here it is, chapter 12. Jesus
has dinner with Mary and Martha, along with Lazarus whom he raised from the
dead. And the next day, he finds a ‘young donkey.’ That’s what it says in the
Gospel of John. One donkey, and it’s young.” (John 12:14).
With
that, all the heads snapped back to look at the study leader. One of them said
it, “What’s up with the Gospel of Matthew? Why does he say two donkeys, when
the others say one? Did he make a mistake?”
The
teacher said, “You’re missing one more account of Palm Sunday: Zechariah
9:9-17.” Somebody said, “Where’s that?” The teacher said, “It’s right before the
Gospel of Matthew, the next-to-last book of the Old Testament.” And they found
where it was written:
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter
Jerusalem! Lo,
your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble
and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah
9:9)
Somebody said, “Oh, this is like a prediction.
Someday the king will come and he will ride a donkey.”
The teacher said, “Not quite. It’s not a
prediction, it’s a fulfillment. The prophet Zechariah was speaking in the
present tense: Rejoice! The king comes. He already believed the king was
present, in some way. And 600 years later, Jesus comes and chooses to
ride a donkey into the city of Jerusalem. No doubt, he knew this verse and he
was intentional to ride a donkey. He was that kind of king.”
“Wait,”
another one said. “Zechariah said, ‘on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a
donkey.’ So maybe there were two animals after all.”
“Don’t
be ridiculous,” another said. “Jesus is not some circus rider, straddling two
animals at once.”
So
everybody looked back at the teacher. He was smiling. “Let me tell you about
Jewish poetry,” he said. “It often uses parallelism , an intentional echo, to
let the thought sink in. It happens a lot in the Psalms. Sometimes it also happens
in the prophets, if they’re feeling a little poetic. Zechariah is talking about
one animal, not two. And my opinion is that Matthew is so excited that Jesus is
coming to town that he jumps past the nuances of Jewish poetry to say Jesus is
choosing to be Zechariah’s kind of king. He is triumphant and victorious – and he
is humble.”
By
this point, the teacher had them in the palm of his hand, so he kept going.
“Let’s
look at what kind of king Zechariah could see. The king ‘will cut off the
chariot and the war horse.’ He ‘shall command peace to the nations.’ His ‘dominion
shall be from sea to sea.’ This king will save ‘the flock of his people.’ And
in a wonderful line: he shall return the ‘prisoners of hope.’” (Zechariah 9:12).
It
was quiet for a moment. Then somebody said, “We still need a king like that.”
Well,
certainly we do, especially when the leader of Syria is gassing his own people and
American missiles are exploding at a Syrian airbase in response. The world is still in a
mess. And a primary reason is because a lot of people are hell-bent on having
the kind of leaders who swagger around and brag of their strength, rather than
welcome a humble king whose primary weapons are the word of truth, the deeds of
healing, the establishment of fairness, and the practice of kindness.
Welcome
to Holy Week. This is the week when we feel the awkward clash between power and
humility, when we sense the distance between telling the truth and getting your
own way.
A very
large crowd was there, says Matthew. They went out to see the Lord, singing
Passover psalms about deliverance and freedom. They pin their hopes on this man
who has healed their diseases and confronted public hypocrisy. He has taught of
the higher righteousness of the ways of God and punctured the puffed-up pride
of those who pretend to speak for God.
The
people in the crowd really want him. They really need him. By the end of the
week, they push him out of the world and onto a cross. In a nutshell, that is
our human condition. Welcome to Holy Week.
But
we can come to this Palm Sunday defined by the words of Zechariah, as “prisoners
of hope.” That’s a wonderful phrase, isn’t it? It is also a title of a memoir
by two recent Christian missionaries, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer. After
hearing about Jesus, they volunteered as aid workers in Afghanistan in 2001,
their primary desire being to serve the poorest of the poor. Talk about
entering an antagonistic city! They were arrested by the Taliban and imprisoned
for a hundred days.
But
here is what Heather said about her sense of God’s calling:
I was not
confident I had much to offer a devastated nation like Afghanistan. I had no
experience to qualify me – only average talents and abilities. In prayer I felt
God ask me if I could do three things: Can
you love your neighbor? Can you serve the poor? Can you weep as I weep for poor
and broken people? I came to see God didn’t need someone with extraordinary
gifts and achievements. He just needed someone who could love, share life, and
feel for others as he did. He was looking for faithfulness, not fame.”[1]
We
are prisoners of hope, captives to a greater calling and a deeper service. We
are held by the Gospel, claimed by God to serve in a world that still resists
the grace and justice that Jesus brings. In spite of living in a world of
cruelty, nevertheless we persist, because we have seen Jesus come into town,
seen him just as he is – triumphant, victorious, and humble.
And
we will see him again. Oh yes, we will see him again.
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