Staging, Scripting, and Performing an Entrance
Liturgy of the Palms, Year C
Written by Kent McDougal
Art: “Entry into the City” by John August Swanson
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The deeds of God mark our time.
It is Passover time and God’s people make the yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate God’s deliverance. Like them we live under the powers of empire and continue in our hope of being fully delivered from the principalities and powers.
Today we accompany a large crowd of Jesus’ disciples, joining him in his Pascha pilgrimage. In submission to the will of God, he goes to openly announce to the ruling powers that he is the One who will, “Deliver us from evil.”
Today, we join Luke near the climax of his story of Jesus. The One who was born a king, the One who has powerfully proclaimed the kingdom of God through his words and deeds, is about to pay an official visit to his capital city of Jerusalem.
Staging an Entrance
Jesus, the Son of God, has been commissioned by his Father and empowered by the Spirit to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord; to bring the reign of God. Beginning in Galilee, Jesus has proclaimed: “The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the good news!”
He has been pairing this announcement of God’s good news with miracles and parables for around three years. But now the kingdom that is at hand comes! Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the capital city currently occupied by Roman imperial power.
And what better time to talk revolution to a people occupied by a foreign power than a sorta Jewish fourth of July? It’s Passover and the city overflows with pilgrims gathering to remember their liberation from Egypt and to hopethat God would do it once again.
But it’s with this very hope that Jesus has already run into trouble with his own disciples. They have placed their hope in Jesus as Israel’s King. But after three years of ministry with him, they continue to misunderstand what that will look like, both for Jesus and for them as well.
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus has repeatedly told them the kingdom will come through his death & resurrection, but this makes no sense to his upwardly mobile triumphalist followers. If after three years they don’t get it, is there any reason to think the crowds in Jerusalem will?
Of course, various versions of this problem are still with us today. Many of us sign on with Jesus and proceed to impose our hopes and agendas on him. Today Jesus carefully stages his entry into Jerusalem to addresses a particular version of this problem.
Indeed, Luke spends more time telling us about the specific preparations for staging this event than on the event itself. But then again, triumphal entries have always been elaborately staged events.
A triumphal entry was a parade for an army after a victory in war. The people gathered along the main road and entrance of a city to welcome home the troops and exalt their victorious leader as their savior.
The leader, most often the king, road at the head of these processions on his mighty war horse and behind him marched his army parading their weapons of war. Bringing up the rear, the spoils of war and prisoners of war were put on display for all to see.
Jerusalem has seen more than one triumphal entry, so for Jesus to stage one as he enters the capital is an unmistakable political act. He is staging his arrival to be acknowledged as their victorious king who liberates them from their enemies and establishes God’s kingdom again.
But this will be a triumphal entry with a twist. In fact, it’s best to call Jesus’ triumphal entry a parody of triumphal entries. Jesus’ triumphal entry on an ass intends to make one of the world rulers' and their notions of power and might.
Scripting the Entrance
Jesus finds a perfect script for his prophetic parody of a triumphal entry in the writings of the prophet Zechariah (9:9-10). Here he finds Zechariah anticipating a triumphal entry into Jerusalem as well.
The prophet calls Jerusalem to shout for joy at the arrival of God’s victorious king. But this coming king, while victorious, quite oddly has not fought and won a war against Israel’s foes.
As in the Exodus, Zechariah describes how God himself will come and liberate his people. So, the king who comes is not a warrior, but the recipient of a victory won by God. The king’s role is to take up this gift of victory and rule the people in humble obedience to God.
So rather than arriving on a war horse, this victorious king rides triumphantly on a humble foal of a donkey into God’s victory. He comes not on a tank but a tractor because he comes into his kingship peacefully and comes to bring a kingdom of peace.
Zechariah says the peace this king brings will demilitarize Jerusalem, allowing her to live up to her named destiny, “Jeru-shalom,” the City of Peace. Then God’s dominion of peace will spread from the “City of Peace” to the ends of the earth – what some people call Des Moines!
This is the script Jesus puts into play upon his entrance into Jerusalem today. It provides him with a way to claim he is indeed Israel’s King. At the same time, it makes it clear that he is not the kind of King they are expecting.
This explains why Jesus goes to such lengths to sequester the colt of a donkey. By riding Zechariah’s donkey rather than a war horse, Jesus signals Zechariah’s entire script. He is indeed God’s king, but he will establish God’s kingdom of peace – well, peacefully!
This peace will not only come to the City of Peace but flow to the ends of the earth, bringing peaceful regime change to the nations of the world. That’s the reason we are attending to this text today. This scripted ride into town has everything to do with our town too.
But can we see our king riding humbly on a donkey? Or do we, like Israel, find ourselves living by other scripts with alien notions of power that only make sense of “the real world” in terms of kings with war horses and presidents with fighter jets?
Jesus' script is a renunciation of every script of redemptive violence we live by – whether written by the nation state or by a “gamer,” by Hollywood or by a Christian nationalist. Victory and security through violence and death are exposed here as the work of the powers of darkness.
Jesus’ script for his parody of a triumphal entry questions the shape of our hopes and our everyday actions. What kind of power will change our lives and world? What kind of King will deliver us from evil? Who do you trust? Who will you follow?
Performing the Entrance
On Sunday, churches around the world will march around with palm branches, performing the triumphal entrance that Jesus has staged and scripted for us. Today Jesus mounts the foal to bring the kingdom and our adulation mounts! We join those spreading their cloaks and palm branches on the road to welcome our king.
We are joyful just to the extent we know that our lives and world are still in need of salvation. So, like Israel gathered for Passover, we gather today not only to remember God’s salvation but also to hope and pray for God’s salvation in Jesus Christ to come again.
We too are pilgrims on our way to Passover/Pascha/Easter. And so we take up the lines of number 118, a pilgrimage Song in Israel’s hymnbook. We cry out to God today, “Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
But as Holy week proceeds, will we continue to perform Zechariah’s script with Jesus? Like the disciples in Gethsemane, the church must watch and pray because it is tempted to fight or flee rather than follow. Do we not pray because we do not think we are tempted?
This next week the power to serve once more confronts the power to be served; the power of giving confronts the power of grasping; the power of the holy martyr, the war hero; the script of redemptive love goes head-to-head with the script of redemptive violence.
And as you know, on Friday we will once again see Jesus make a full and final renunciation of all triumphalism as the powers that seek peace through violence and death do their best to put an end to God’s Love and Life.
But Jesus rides on a donkey into God’s victory through suffering love. His defeat will be God’s triumph. The Father with the Son in the bond of the Spirit will love the world to death, with a love that is stronger than death, and so triumph over the powers of sin and death.
So where will we be? Will we fail to pray and so end up watching Jesus die from a distance? Will we be a community of followers or a mass of onlookers? We must follow Jesus in the way of the cross if we are to see the terrible beauty of His cross.
Those who would follow Jesus to a Good Friday cross are called to forsake their lust for the power to face down evil with evil. Instead, we openly confront the powers of darkness with the disarming love of the Crucified and so participate in the victory of God.
In other words, “Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus…He humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him a name that is above every name...”
This is the triumphal entry of the One who has come not to be served but to serve. That he comes to serve makes him no less a king, indeed it makes him the King of kings. So let every knee bow & every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father!