‘The Lord Needs It’

(Matthew 21:1-11; text Luke 19:34)

Today is Palm Sunday. It marks our entry into what we call ‘Holy Week’. The story of holy week and the history that lies behind the story is terrible: because it is the week of Jesus’ passion. Awful things happen to him. The betrayal of Judas. The desertion of friends. Arrest in the garden with that deceptive kiss. A rigged trial. Torture. A dragged out execution. And finally death and burial. Awful things.

But wondrous things too. A last meal shared. Immortal words, ‘this is my body given for you’. That amazing prayer in the garden, ‘let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not my will but yours (O God) be done.’ An up-side down view of the whole ghastly business: ‘Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?’ says an exasperated Pilate. Jesus replies, ‘you would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.’ And on the cross, an unmatched disclosure of the heart of God, ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do.’ Wondrous things.

This clash of the terrible and the sublime forces a rethink of what we mean by holiness when we call this week, ‘Holy Week’. And Palm Sunday is the doorway into all that. The three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all tell the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem which triggers the sequence of events called holy week. If we read the accounts side by side they pretty much mirror each other in terms of what happens, who does what, and the order in which things take place. There are some interesting differences. For example in Matthew, Jesus asks his disciples to fetch two animals for his journey, a donkey and her colt. In Mark and Luke is just a single colt. All three report that Jesus, in asking his disciples to get the donkey, warns them that if anyone challenges their actions to say simply, ‘the Lord needs it.’ Mark and Luke report that the scouts were actually challenged as they untied the donkey. Luke says the challenge came from the donkey’s owners; Mark that is was bystanders who spoke up. Matthew is silent on any challenge. But apart from such minor variations, the three narratives stay largely in sync. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey decked with the clothes of his disciples. A crowd of people mill about cheering, waving branches cut from trees, and spreading their cloaks on the road to make it a kind of red carpet ride into the city. And the substance of the jubilant reception is also recorded pretty much in common. ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ (Matt 21:9).

So all three accounts cover much the same ground. Except in one respect. Where they really differ is in the conclusion they draw from the event. This is Matthew’s ending. ‘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.”’ So for Matthew, it’s a matter of looking at Jesus and asking about his identity: ‘who is this?’

But here is Mark’s ending. ‘Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the Temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.’ No turmoil in town. No crowd looking at Jesus and questioning. Here the focus is solely on Jesus and his looking; ‘he looked around at everything’, the text says.

And here is Luke. ‘Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”’ For Luke, it is a question of witness. What witness is given to Jesus in this event, and who gives it best?

So, Matthew, ‘who is this?’; Mark, ‘Jesus looked at everything.’ Luke, ‘if you stay silent, even the stones would cry out.’

These conclusions are not in conflict with one another. They are different; but they all point to a truth about Palm Sunday and the meaning of Holy Week. I want to reflect on that.

Matthew says, this thing’s all about identity. Who is this Jesus in his journey to Jerusalem? And that surely is what holy week is about. But the thing to note is that, for Matthew, we have to get the order right. It is Jesus who defines what holiness means, that is, what God means in this whole story. It is not what we think holiness means, or what we think God means, that defines Jesus. That’s the way the crowd on the first Palm Sunday operated. They knew how to interpret this event. ‘Who is this?’ Well, they know his name and his origins. And they know what a prophet is. They put the two together and come up with their answer. ‘This is Jesus the prophet from Nazareth.’ And yes, they are right on the surface. That is exactly who he is. He is a teacher, a theological critic, and a visionary. There have been many of those. And here’s another one. And many such met a sticky end, and in a week’s time so will this one.

But Matthew sees it differently, because by the time he is writing, he knows about both the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. This Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth, was rejected, crucified, murdered. But this Jesus, God raised from the dead on the following Sunday. That changes everything. It leads to a revolutionary understanding of the identity of the donkey rider. This is no mere prophetic visionary. This is the Lord of all being. This is no simple son of Nazareth. This is the Son of the most High. This is no local hero. This is the Word made flesh; Emmanuel, God with us. And that transforms all we know of Jesus, of God and of ourselves. Yes, the question raised by observers of Jesus’ donkey ride is correct. ‘Who on earth is this?’ But we will only begin to see the real answer after holy week is over; only then do we discover that we have to rethink all our understandings of God, of holiness, and of salvation in the light of who this one is, and what happens to him in that outrageous week. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Godself’: that is who this is; and that is what is happening in him.

Mark says, Jesus ‘went into the temple; and looked around at everything’. What a contrast! It’s not the crowd looking at Jesus here. It is Jesus looking at everything. It is almost eerie how the crowd, the city, the critics just melt out of this perspective. The town is silent. It is as though no one at all is there except for Jesus. And how ‘spot on’ that is when we know the full story of holy week. Of course, the gospel record of all that went on in that fateful week is brim full of people: the disciples, the soldiers, the Jewish Council, Pilate and his court, the co-condemned criminals, and so on. But underneath all that conflict, argument, action, and suffering, we feel the pulse of a deeper reality. It is not just human blustering, pontificating, judging, and hurting that drives this drama. It is God. God is at work here in an absolutely central, saving, judging, renewing capacity. This is exactly the meaning of Jesus’ word to bolshie Pilate, ‘Look, you would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.’ It’s not Pilate’s game, or Caiaphas’s, or Judas’s. It is God’s game. What happens here, and its consequences for the whole world, occur because in Jesus, God is working, deciding, acting, and transforming. God is saving a broken world. In the end that is the only thing that counts, because that is the final truth that fuels the drama. Mark, too, is spot on. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is his (and God’s) looking around at everything; because everything is at stake when God acts.

And finally, Luke’s conclusion. You can’t silence the witness given to Jesus as he enters into his holy week. If the people are silent, says Jesus, ‘the stones would shout out.’ I find that really moving. The stones would shout out. One of the striking things about these three stories of the first Palm Sunday is how the more than human world is so deeply involved. Yes, there are the crowds, and the disciples, and the critics. But they’re not the only ones. If we look at the story carefully, we see that a lot more is going on. At the heart of it is a donkey. The bulk of the Palm Sunday narrative revolves around getting the donkey for Jesus to ride on. And remember Jesus’ words about it. If anyone challenges you, say: ‘The Lord  needs it.!” God needs this donkey for the prosecution of His purpose in the world; the purpose of salvation no less. G.K. Chesterton was right in his famous poem about the Palm Sunday donkey. Donkeys, like so many other animals, have so often been mocked, abused, ignored, and neglected by humans; but it’s a donkey that carries the Lord of heaven to his enthronement in Jerusalme. This is Chesterton’s donkey talking to us:

When fishes flew and forests walked 
And figs grew upon thorn, 
Some moment when the moon was blood 
Then surely I was born; 

With monstrous head and sickening cry 
And ears like errant wings, 
The devil's walking parody 
On all four-footed things. 

The tattered outlaw of the earth, 
Of ancient crooked will; 
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, 
I keep my secret still. 

Fools! For I also had my hour; 
One far fierce hour and sweet: 
There was a shout about my ears, 
And palms before my feet. 

Hmmm… yes indeed! And it’s not just the animals who star.  It’s also the vegetables and the minerals. Praise of the donkey-riding Jesus is mediated by branches of the trees that are cut and waved and held high as he passes. The trees know and participate in this divine holiness, this week of God’s transformative action for the world. And for Luke, it’s the stones as well. If all other witness falls silent in this world, he says, the true witness to what God is doing in Christ would not cease, because the stones, the stuff of the earth itself, would cry out of what happens in this week.

God’s act of creation calls all being, not just human beings, into being. All things: animals, plants and rocks are God’s creation and deserve honour because of that. But the same is true in God’s act of redemption. Luke is saying in his conclusion: the whole of the world, not just the human world, is the object of God’s saving love. God intends to create a new heaven and a new earth. And Palm Sunday is its inauguration. Jesus comes to his strange glory and to his upside down kingship riding on a borrowed donkey, blessed by the branches of the local trees, and praised by the shouting of the rocks that pave the road he rides on.

Holy Week has begun. Jesus rides to his destiny in Jerusalem. His story defines his identity; not ours. His look determines what is to take place there; not ours. And His glory is noticed and acclaimed by the world, and that includes donkeys, trees, and rocks; and hopefully along with them, us too.

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Palm Sunday

17^th April 2011