The inverted royal procession
Readings: Mark 11. 1-11
Imagine the scene. It’s like Wales have won the world cup and the team are coming through the streets of Cardiff. Like mardi gras or carnival. The streets are packed, the atmosphere is electric, excited chatter, cheering, singing, joyous noise. It’s the most joyous and triumphant parade, and who is at the centre of it? A man riding on a young donkey.
Mark presents Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as the climax of his ministry, the moment has arrived as he reaches the capital. Like the other synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke, Jesus only arrives at Jerusalem now. But Jesus, as an observant Jew would have travelled up to Jerusalem 3 times a year for the various festivals. Indeed John’s Gospel records him being there three times. But never like this, never in parade, in public with all eyes on him. The synoptics are right to emphasise it by ignoring the other times, it serves as a crescendo to everything which has come before.
It would have been quite the sight, pilgrims would have been pouring into the city for the festival of Passover, coming from all over the place. And this orderly train of people working their way into the city suddenly changes into a joyous procession as they realise who is in their midst. Word has got about, Jesus has started to be more explicit about who he is, and now here he is, riding on a donkey. The fact that he’s riding anything at all is significant, Jesus walked everywhere, as did most people in his day. Moreover you’d be expected to walk to Jerusalem when on pilgrimage, so he would have been really conspicuous riding along. Something significant is happening here.
You see whilst we when imagining this sort of procession think of a carnival parade or a team returning having won the cup, the imagery would have sparked a very different picture for those there, that of a King. Whether riding into the city he had conquered to see it for himself, or arriving back in the capital with all the spoils of war in his train, this is a royal procession and it signifies one thing. Victory. In the political climate of first century Jerusalem with a pretender King on the throne and ruled over by Rome this was like laying a powder keg down.
But this is no ordinary royal procession. The fact he’s on a donkey is our first clue, the second more subtle clue is who makes up this crowd. Lets start with the second. Normally such a procession would be made up of the King’s army, his charioteers, his troops, his bannermen. Instruments would be being played. It would have been a display of might and of extravagance. But Jesus isn’t surrounded by a military force, he’s surrounded by peasants and children, the ordinary folk of his people. Jesus doesn’t bring a conquering force, he’s surrounded by the ordinary and the poor.
Along with that we know that the mark of honour for those who are important is often that their feet don’t need to touch the ground like the rest of us. Whether dignitaries in the ancient world or celebrities in our own day having the red carpet rolled out. Alexander the Great when he entered Babylon 300 years earlier as conqueror arrived to the road carpeted with flowers and garlands. They’d set up at intervals on both sides silver altars heaped not just with frankincense but with all manner of perfumes. And as Jesus arrives in Jerusalem something similar happens, those he is surrounded with want to honour him and yet they have nothing but what they have brought for the festival, and so onto the road go their cloaks and coats, branches they have cut from the fields, and palms.
And of course Jesus is riding a donkey. The fact that no-one has ridden it before, Jesus tells us so but also the fact it’s not wearing a saddle so they have to throw their cloaks over it, is significant. The King’s horse would only ever be ridden by the King. So it’s alluding to his Kingship. Another reason could point to the fact that this donkey has been set apart for a purpose, this purpose. Most of all though it’s a clear allusion to the prophecy of Zechariah chapter 9 ‘Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey’. Jesus is fulfilling Scripture.
So there’s all of this significance revolving round this moment. The King rides into the city in great procession. But it’s also significant in how it doesn’t live out how we might expect that to look, in the peasant crowds instead of marching armies. In the donkey rather than the war horse. In the cloaks and palms rather than flowers and burning incense. And the way it isn’t how we might expect is the key to what is going on here.
For Christ comes as conquering King, yet does so not as one who will send his people to conquer, who will send them to die for him, but as the one who dies for his people. The King doesn’t send his people off to be sacrificed in some war upon the altar of his ego, instead he lays down his life, pours out his life upon the altar of the cross to save and redeem his people. His conquest will not be over human forces but over sin and death and hell. And his conquest will not look like victory, it will look like failure, look like death. Christ is a King yes, but also a servant as we shall see clearly on Thursday.
And he comes not as one who comes to a people he has conquered, whom he has won through force, coercion or power. He doesn’t come with the intimidation of military might but rather is welcomed by a people who rejoice to welcome him, who rejoice to give him praise. He hasn’t come to win a people by force, instead he has won their hearts and minds by who he is. This is not a King, not a god who will force their submission or ours, subdue us under him, but rather one who, once we get a good look at him, we freely submit to, declare as Lord and King because of who he is and what he has done.
And he comes as one who accepts our meagre offerings. These crowds did not have banners to wave, no flowers to carpet the road, no incense to burn. So they lay out their cloaks as a makeshift carpet, pull branches from the trees to wave and lay down. And Christ accepts these meagre honours, as though they were highest praise. In Luke’s account of this when the Pharisees demand Jesus stop their shouting and singing he replies ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out’. He accepts their praise and offerings, this is a God who looks not on the outward appearances, but instead looks at their hearts.
So what to make of this impromptu and ramshackle procession which despite these things is infused with such joy and life and celebration? The King has arrived in Jerusalem. Yet this King has come to serve rather than be served, who will not send his people out to die but will die for his people. Who draws people to himself not by power nor intimidation but because of who he is and his love for them. Who accepts even our meagre offerings of praise and worship as though they were great clouds of incense and heaps of gold.
My brothers and sisters, this is our God, this is our King. One who is gentle and humble of heart, who receives us as we are, and by his dying and rising transforms us into who we were created to be.
Amen.