This Sunday marks the high point in the season of Lent—the Sunday when we get to shout with joy and cry out ‘hosanna!’ to the king who can, indeed, save us. That is what ‘hosanna’ means, after all.
We meet Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, coming from Jericho with a crowd following behind.
Scripture: Matthew 21:1-17
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:
“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.”
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’
but you are making it a den of robbers.”
The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did and heard the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Jesus rides into Jerusalem in the middle of the swirl of messianic expectations in his time—and chief among those expectations was the overthrow of the Roman occupation. Some probably hoped for an overthrow of the whole empire, but they would settle for a king. A king in the line of David, who would restore the glory of the kingdom of Israel.
So you can imagine why some folks are confused, when the supposed Son of David rides in to the city, but not on a white stallion. There is no grand procession, no trumpets, no red carpet. This is an impromptu parade, with folks yelling and plucking branches off of trees and laying their coats on the road.
But none of this is an accident. Jesus is making a very particular statement about what it means to be the Son of David. This, my friends, is a parody. It’s a show, a mockery of the Roman military victory parades, where a conquering hero would return to Rome and be greeted with a crown of laurels or myrtle, ride into the city on a chariot or a war-horse, and there would be ovations and singing, tales of triumph, sacrifices, and feasts. Over time, those celebrations would become reserved only for the emperor himself.
Jesus is communicating clearly in this moment what he could be – the leader of a righteous rebellion, returning victorious to his capital city with war stories and loot – but he’s chosen instead a different path: the path of surrender, humility, and self-sacrifice.
On the very first Sunday of Lent, we met Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry, directly after his baptism, where he spent 40 days and nights fasting, and then was tempted by the devil. And if you think back, Jesus met three essential temptations there: to be relevant, to be spectacular, and to be powerful. At least three years later, Jesus is still rejecting those very same temptations.
Jesus could, very easily, have borrowed a horse. He could have arranged a grand parade. Mercy, he could have raised an army and marched on Jerusalem. I mean, that wouldn’t have ended well for most of the people involved, with the Roman imperial army and all, but he could have.
But this King does not come wielding the power of violence and conquer, basking in extravagance and self-importance. He comes, instead, as the Prince of Peace—the one who does not resort to violence or coercion or manipulation—but who still, somehow, threatens to upend just. about. everything.
James Duke, a commentator, says it this way: “the Jesus who enters Jerusalem was and always is a challenge to this world’s powers and principalities—not merely a spiritual challenge but a political challenge as well. His cause is not the same as that of the Zealots or any violent insurrectionists, that of some aspiring political party, or that of a legislative or executive agenda. Nevertheless, this “king Jesus” is a threat, both to the power elite and the fickle multitude. Jesus did not come “in triumph,” was not crucified and raised, and communities of believers in him did not emerge, in order to leave the ways of the world as they were.”
We get a taste of that Jesus-shaped upheaval when he arrives in Jerusalem at the Temple.
The money changers, the people selling doves, the folks whose tables were flipped—they were not only taking up space in the court of the Gentiles, which was meant for people from all over the world to be able to come and worship God – but some sources suggest that their prices were exploitative. For those who were poor and didn’t have animals of their own to sacrifice, the law says you could substitute doves. So these merchants would sell doves at a steep markup, profiting off of those who didn’t have much to begin with.
This likely wasn’t the first time Jesus saw all of this happening. He’d been in the Temple before. But it was one of the last times he would see the inside of the temple before his death.
Jesus’ humility is on full display, but so are his compassion and his justice. And for Jesus, all three of those things are inextricably linked. That’s the sort of King we have. Humble. Compassionate. Just—and unapologetically so.
And when we look closely, this is both comforting and unsettling.
When the crowds cry ‘Son of David, save us!’, they are thinking of a literal king. They want someone to sit on a throne where they can see him, and tell them exactly what to do. They want someone to step into an already well-defined role and do it well.
But Jesus is not interested in the boxes we’ve created for him. Jesus is going to do what Jesus is going to do, and there is not a thing we can do to stop him. Jesus cannot be distracted or dissuaded from what’s coming.
I am not unaware of the irony in proclaiming Jesus as the good and just king just the day after millions of people across the globe participated in protests titled “no kings.” I spent four years in college studying International Relations, looking at political leaders of every type from across the globe, so I am WELL AWARE that kings are not always fantastic human beings.
Kings, Queens, Dictators, Presidents of every nation under the sun are more often than not arbitrary, unpredictable, selfish, ridiculous. That’s how we wound up with the United States in the first place, right? Because a king abused his power and the people rebelled.
And that’s why describing Jesus as ‘king’ makes me a teeny bit nervous. Because that word has been corrupted by thousands of years of politicking and power-grabbing and abuse.
Even King David, described in Scripture as a man after God’s own heart, fell victim to the trappings of his office.
Did y’all know that Israel was never meant to have a king in the first place? Several generations passed between the Exodus and when King Saul was appointed, and he was only appointed because the people demanded from God a king, like their neighbors had. They, too, wanted someone they could see, to sit on a throne and tell them what to do. They wanted someone to hold the power for them, so they didn’t have to worry about discerning for themselves what was right. God warned them that it would end badly, but they didn’t care.
But Jesus refuses to be that sort of king. Jesus is single-minded in his pursuit of redemption for the whole world, but he will not micromanage, nor will he be micromanaged.
Throughout his whole ministry, Jesus has asked more questions than he has given answers. Jesus has taught and healed and yes, he’s flipped some tables and made some fuss—but all the while, he’s been working to restore us.
To restore our sense of who God is and what God asks of us. To pour out God’s steadfast love into each and every heart, to bind up the brokenhearted and cure the sick and bring justice to the oppressed and set the captives free. Jesus spends his time helping us see the image of God in ourselves, and in one another, so that with the help of the Holy Spirit we can know what it is God would have us do.
Jesus shows us what a king SHOULD look like, so that we can trust that when we cry out ‘save us! we can trust in our deepest of hearts that the King of Kings, who is humble and compassionate and just will hear us, and will save us.
This is the good news, y’all. Thanks be to God. Amen.