Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-august-18-2025
Mark 11:1-11
The Triumphal Entry
1As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples,2 saying 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. 3 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’”
4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it.8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those 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 heaven!”
11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.
The triumphal entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem — and the modern observance of Palm Sunday that’s based on that story — are among the most cheerful events of the Christian faith. In today’s church, we sing hymns about children greeting Jesus with songs and flowers, and we think about him writing by on a cute little donkey. On top of that, Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, with Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, both of which are somber occasions. So that sort of emphasizes the cheerfulness and the positive energy of the triumphal entry.
But over the last few years, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about how threatening Jesus’ triumphal entry must have been to the Jewish leadership. It seems that Jesus had made the leadership uneasy throughout his earthly ministry, but the triumphal entry seems to have “freaked out” the leadership to the degree that a life-or-death confrontation was all but inevitable.
A lot of the details of the triumphal entry would have had deeper meaning to the high priests, the Pharisees and the Sadducees than they do to us. And most of the deeper meaning would have added to their sense of menace – to their sense of loss of control over the religious and political situation.
First of all, in the story Jesus enters the city riding a donkey. It had been foretold in ancient prophesies that the Messiah would come riding a donkey. So to the leadership, the sight of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey would have made it plain that he was no longer hiding his identity as the Messiah. And having such a large part of the population accept this identity would have been like fingernails on the chalkboard to the leaders.
It would also have been very threatening to the leadership to hear that the crowd lining the roadway was crying out words of praise and lines from scripture that showed they recognized that Jesus had come with divine authority. We remember that the people were yelling, “Hosanna!” But it’s important to remember that “Hosanna” is Hebrew for “Save us, please!” Since the religious leadership considered itself to represent the interests of the people, hearing those people cry out for salvation to someone else would have been deeply disturbing.
And the people in the crowd were also shouting about their hopes for the restoration of King David’s kingdom. We know the ancient prophesies said the Messiah would be born into David’s family, and that Jesus was considered to fulfill that prophesy because his earthly father Joseph was a descendant of David. So the fact that the crowds were calling for the restoration of David’s kingdom suggests that word had spread that Jesus was in fact descended from the household of David.
The one part of this story that always grabs me is that the people in the crowd started spontaneously taking off their cloaks and laying them on the road for Jesus to ride over. In the ancient Middle east, this gesture was a way of symbolically laying one’s very life at the feet of the person passing by. So even though these people didn’t quite grasp the full significance of what was happening before their eyes, they still somehow knew in their hearts that Jesus was a figure of highest spiritual power. It was revealed to them that this humble servant-rabbi deserved the greatest reverence. So the gesture with the cloaks was a deep emotional and spiritual response.
That must have been very disturbing to the Pharisees and the Sadducees too. As influential as they were in traditional Hebrew society, nobody took off their clothes and laid them in the street in front of them when they walked through Jerusalem.
Those of us from the Reformed part of the church, as Presbyterians are, tend to be very rational in our faith. We think of following Jesus as a process of learning doctrines – of coming to understand and accept ideas like salvation by grace through faith, the authority of scripture, substitutionary atonement, and even (God help us) predestination. But we tend to miss out on the part of the life of faith that involves encountering Jesus in deep and profound spiritual experiences that touch and warm our hearts. And that’s a shame, because the scriptures make it clear that those who actually did encounter Jesus personally found themselves powerfully moved by the experience. Even those who just saw him riding by on a colt felt a desire to lay their very lives at his feet. And in the centuries since, many of his followers who have engaged deeply in prayer and meditation have encountered Jesus in similarly life-changing ways.
That profoundly personal experience of the faith can be very threatening to those who don’t experience it. That probably helps to explain the overt hostility that the religious leadership manifested toward Jesus from the time of his triumphal entry.
It strikes me that having this reading come up on our list provides us all with a chance to invite Jesus to make a ‘triumphal entry’ into our hearts and minds right now. Maybe it invites us to open ourselves to the power of a genuine encounter with Jesus, one that still tends to make us cry out what they cried out on the road outside of Jerusalem that day: “Save us, please!”
Let’s pray. Lord, we remember that when Jesus entered the city, encountering him touched the hearts of those who saw him, and threatened those who were focused on their own power and privilege. By your Spirit, let us encounter him in new and personal ways, in ways that will move us to lay our lives at his feet, too. Amen.
Grace and peace,
Henry
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