Mt 21:1-11
When Jesus and the disciples drew near Jerusalem
and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives,
Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,
“Go into the village opposite you,
and immediately you will find an ass tethered,
and a colt with her.
Untie them and bring them here to me.
And if anyone should say anything to you, reply,
‘The master has need of them.’
Then he will send them at once.”
This happened so that what had been spoken through the prophet
might be fulfilled:
Say to daughter Zion,
“Behold, your king comes to you,
meek and riding on an ass,
and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had ordered them.
They brought the ass and the colt and laid their cloaks over them,
and he sat upon them.
The very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
while others cut branches from the trees
and strewed them on the road.
The crowds preceding him and those following
kept crying out and saying:
“Hosanna to the Son of David;
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord;
hosanna in the highest.”
And when he entered Jerusalem
the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?”
And the crowds replied,
“This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.”
BACKGROUNDER
“Who is this?” The whole city of Jerusalem is shaken when Jesus comes in, mounted on a donkey and greeted by crowds crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
Just a couple of weeks ago we met David, a young boy chosen unexpectedly to be the greatest king of Israel, anointed with oil by the prophet Samuel, and filled with the Spirit of the Lord.
The crowds are full of a mysterious but growing expectation. They are starting to believe that God has sent his Messiah, the Anointed One, the new and even greater king than was David. To a defeated people, especially to the poor and the outcast, Jesus represented the hope that God had remembered them. Their lives, marked by suffering and shame, were a vivid reminder to themselves and to others that the Image of God, once given to Adam and Eve had been distorted.
It is because they have little to lose that they are hopeful about a change. The Messiah was to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth, the rule of justice and peace. This would mean, the prophets had proclaimed that the rich and the powerful would lose out, and the poor would finally see the dawn of a new world where they could start to live the lives that God intended.
The city of Jerusalem – meaning the movers and shakers of that great city – probably feared that the crowds were right. The shakers were shaken at the possibility that the Kingdom of God had come to town. They had much to lose. For them, Jesus was a threat.
But Jesus is much more than the Messiah, though he does fulfill that role. He is to be enthroned King of Kings and Lord of Lords, not only over the traditional kingdom of Israel, or even of the whole earth, but of the cosmos itself – the divinely created order of all things was to be reshaped in his victory.
But there is a price to be paid. And this moment of triumph for Jesus is the prelude to a devastating death. Jesus is heading to the cross. The image will only be restored when we see Jesus hanging dead, his body twisted, his face distorted. There is no way to the crowning of humanity without the defeat of the cross.
