AS THEY APPROACHED Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”
4They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,
“Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
10“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!”
“Hosanna in the highest!”
11Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.
Original Meaning
JESUS’ ENTRY INTO Jerusalem marks the end of his avoiding crowds and his secrecy and the beginning of open confrontation with opponents in the temple. Day One of his Passion Week begins with the crowd greeting his dramatic arrival on a coronation animal with cheers as they hail the coming of David’s kingdom (11:1–10). The scene ends when Jesus makes a brief reconnaissance of the temple (11:11). The next day is given over to his dramatic action in the temple, which is sandwiched by the cursing of a fig tree (11:12–25).
On his third visit to the temple he fends off challenges from various opponents. The high priests ask by what authority he does such things, and Jesus only responds with counterquestions and an ominous parable (11:27–12:27). The Pharisees and Herodians collaborate in trying to trap him with a loaded question, whether he thinks it right for a people belonging to God to pay taxes to Caesar (12:13–17). The Sadducees then pose a mocking question about the resurrection (12:18–27). When he answers them well, a sympathetic teacher of the law questions him about the greatest commandment (12:28–34). Jesus then returns to the theme of David’s kingdom, shouted out by excited pilgrims as he entered the city, by offering a riddle about David’s Son (12:35–37). To the crowd’s delight, he intimates that the Messiah is greater than David and that the Messiah’s kingdom will be greater than David’s kingdom. He then condemns those teachers of the law who cloak their impiety with holiness and profiteer from the plight of widows (12:38–40). The temple scenes conclude with Jesus’ observing a widow who contributes all that she has for her living to the temple coffers (12:41–44).
The episodes centered around the temple begin when Jesus enters the city from the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. He directs his disciples to fetch a colt and shows his supernatural foreknowledge by predicting precisely what they will find: an unridden male colt, tied up, close to where they enter the village. He also warns the disciples that they will be challenged when they try to take the colt. The answer they are to give, “The Lord needs it,” is the same justification for David’s eating the consecrated bread—“when he and his companions were … in need” (2:25). Jesus impresses the animal as a king would who is entitled to whatever he needs; but, unlike plundering kings, Jesus will return the animal immediately.1 The disciples obey at once, and everything takes place as Jesus said it would.
Jesus orchestrates a grand entrance into Jerusalem that departs significantly from his previous patterns of movement in the Gospel of Mark. He has walked everywhere else in his ministry except for the times he crossed the lake in a boat. The decision to complete this last stage of his journey to Jerusalem riding on an animal “looks like some kind of claim to authority.”2 The animal he chooses has never been ridden, which makes it suitable for a sacred purpose and worthy of a king.3 The colt that is bound and must be untied (11:2, 4) also alludes to Genesis 49:10–11 and Zechariah 9:9, passages that were interpreted messianically. Jesus enters Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah.
This staged arrival in Jerusalem also deviates from Jesus’ previous attempts to avoid calling attention to himself. His magnetic power and miracles made his desire to keep a low profile next to impossible. Nevertheless, he consistently tried to elude the starstruck crowds, whose excitement threatened to turn his mission into a carnival. He hushed those who tried to champion his name without fully understanding what he was sent to do. He also dampened the aspirations of those who saw only visions of sugarplums and glory and who could not see that the signs along the way were pointing to Golgotha and death on a cross. What occurs now is a complete reversal: Jesus encourages public rejoicing by his provocative entrance. Myers goes so far as to call it “political street theater.”4 His actions encourage the crowd to blazon his name jubilantly from street corners and rooftops. Passover crowds tended to be expectant during this season that celebrated Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, but they will be sadly mistaken if they expect Jesus to mastermind some military coup.
Mark reports that the disciples saddle the animal with their own garments, and the crowd strews the way with their garments (as a crowd did when Jehu was anointed king; 1 Kings 9:12–13). Jesus’ followers and those pilgrims caught up in the excitement of the moment also line the streets with leaves and branches (or cut straw) and fill the air with a chorus of “Hosannas” (meaning, “Save us!”) and with beatitudes. This street choir chants one of the Hallel (thanksgiving) Psalms (Ps. 118:25–26). Ironically, Jesus enters the city from the Mount of Olives with the Hallel ringing in his ears. He will later depart for the Mount of Olives to pray in torment after he and his disciples have sung a hymn, possibly a Hallel Psalm, at the close of his Last Supper.
The excitement generated by Jesus’ arrival ends with somewhat of an anticlimax when he enters the temple, only to look around and leave. Mark raises the readers’ expectations that something grand will happen, but nothing does. He tells us that “it was already late” (evening; 11:11). Late for what? Did time run out on Jesus before he could do anything; or is time running out for the temple? This colorless ending to Jesus’ dramatic entry into Jerusalem depicts more than meets the eye. It sets the stage for what will happen on the next day, and its true significance can only be filled in by the Old Testament. Jesus does not tour the temple as a tourist, dazzled by its glittering gold, glistening white marble, and gigantic stones.5 Nor does he visit it out of pious reverence; he offers no prayers or sacrifice. Jesus has identified himself as the Lord who requires a mount (11:3). He now enters his temple as prophesied by Malachi 3:1–2, a passage Mark has quoted in the Gospel’s prologue (Mark 1:2):
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty.
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.”
Jesus enters the temple to inspect it, and the next day’s events reveal that he comes not to restore it but to pronounce God’s judgment on it.
Bridging Contexts
THE JOYFUL ENTHUSIASM and the colorful procession of admirers who greet Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem seem to offer an auspicious beginning to his visit. The reader might hope that Jesus’ dire predictions about what will happen to him in Jerusalem are perhaps wrong.6 The excitement, however, only temporarily screens the looming catastrophe that Mark has prepared the reader to expect. Exuberant joy will turn to bitter weeping; triumphant exultation will turn to cowardly panic.
The crowd is mistaken in their acclaim. They treat Jesus’ approach as a triumphal entry and shout nationalist slogans about the restoration of the power and glory of the Davidic kingdom: “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” They are right that Jesus comes as a king, but they expect a typical monarch, who will establish a temporal empire. Their mistaken presumption that he is entering Jerusalem to purge the nation of foreign domination and to resuscitate the ancient glories of Israel leads to the premature festivity. These false hopes are dashed as he surrenders tamely to those who come to arrest him (see Luke 24:21), but a new and greater hope will be resurrected.
The entry is not triumphal. Jesus does not enter Jerusalem on a white charger. He does not brandish a series of war trophies, and a train of captives does not trail behind him. In fact, within the week, Roman guards will lead him out of the city as a defeated captive. Consequently, Jesus does not share the disciples’ earthly fantasies of glory. He appears in the city, as he had forewarned three times, to suffer and die, not to set up a rival kingdom to Caesar. He comes as a king who will be crowned with thorns, enthroned on a cross, and hailed as the chief of fools. His entrance points to a different kind of triumph than the one envisioned by the crowd, one that will be more powerful than any Davidic monarchy and more far-reaching than the narrow borders of Israel or even the Roman empire.
In bridging the contexts, one needs to make clear that while it is appropriate to greet the Messiah with rejoicing, we cannot forget that he has not come to set up some grand earthly kingdom. The crowds hail him without understanding his purpose. While many sermons have been preached on the fickle crowds—hailing him as a king one moment and crying “Crucify him!” the next—it is more likely that Jesus’ followers incite the crowd’s enthusiasm with their cheering. One should not forget that the disciples are the ones who prove the most fickle. Shouting nationalist slogans is hardly appropriate for what Jesus will accomplish in the next days. The scene portrays the disciples still hoping for a glorious earthly kingdom in which they can reign with their Messiah on thrones.
Contemporary Significance
MANY CHURCHES CELEBRATE Jesus’ grand entrance in Jerusalem as Palm Sunday, with children in the congregation excitedly waving palms. The next Sunday Christians celebrate Easter and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Most of the worshipers in attendance on these days do not come to any special services commemorating the events of Jesus’ Passion during the week. Consequently, they miss the suffering in between. They may get the false impression that Christianity moves from one celebration to another or that Easter somehow “erases rather than vindicates the cross.”7 Mark’s Gospel, more than any other, brings out Jesus’ enormous suffering. The author bears witness to his terrible loneliness amid the deafening applause. If we hail Jesus, we must hail him as the one who comes to die for our sins, not as the one who comes to bring us glory. We must hail him as one who gives his life for the kingdom of God, not as the one who sets up the kingdom of David.
The crowd shouts “Hosanna! Save us!” thinking that Jesus has come to save them from their political enemies. What we need most is for him to save us from ourselves. Human nature and aspirations change little over the years, and this incident reveals that we still need saving from at least three things. (1) We must be saved from a petty nationalism that divides the world into tiny enclaves set over against one another. Jesus does not come to fulfill anyone’s political agenda. As our judge, he may condemn it as he did the temple in Jerusalem. Amazingly, people still drape Jesus in nationalist flags and assume that he not only endorses their political slogans but will work to accomplish them. The one who comes to Jerusalem comes as the king of the entire world and dies for all people. His people will not be confined to any one nation and his sacrificial love will reach beyond all national borders and races.
(2) We must also be saved from a mercurial faith that abandons Jesus at the first sign of trouble. Jesus does not welcome cheers from throngs who will not pray with him in dark Gethsemane or go with him to an even darker Golgotha. He can little use those Christians who show up once a year when the cheering starts around Easter. He needs those who will endure to the end, even when faced with unspeakable suffering.
(3) We must be saved from foolish expectations of glory so that we can see God’s power truly effected on the cross. God does not win by sending armies into bloody battles but by sending his Son to the cross. As a king who gives his life for others, Jesus reigns with a kind of power that earthly kings cannot match.