The entry into Jerusalem
Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29 NRSV text
Mark 11: 1-11 NRSV text
Here’s a puzzle. Why is the gospel passage traditionally known as “The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem” (as the NRSV heads this pericope), when Jesus only enters the city after all the commotion and acclamation has died down and finished? If anything, it’s a “triumphal approach“, but the actual entry into the city (v11) is extraordinarily anticlimactic: “Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve”. All that fuss and excitement – and by the time he actually gets into the city, the fuss has died down and it’s too late in the day to do anything more striking than to have a look around the temple and then head off to Bethany!
We’re back in Mark’s gospel again after an excursion into the world of John’s. The contrast in narrative styles and strategies is important. Mark’s gospel, we need to remember, is written like a dramatic play. At this point in his narrative, we arrive with Jesus at Jerusalem, the scene of the great, final conflict that is about to take place. This is the denouement – the unleashing of the storm that has been building with startling intensity and pace ever since the outset of Jesus’ ministry in Capernaum (1:21ff). Those earlier conflicts were played out against the backdrop of Jerusalem and the Temple, and we saw the fierce opposition Jesus provoked. The city extended its threatening hand deep into the margins of the Galilee. Now Jesus is bringing the fight to Jerusalem. It’s showdown time, and Mark signals its beginning with a suitably high-octane piece of street theatre: Jesus, a donkey, palm-waving crowds and a fevered outbreak of messianic political expectation. Let’s examine some of the elements of his choreography:
1. Political street theatre: The periphery vs the centre
The action, as we have noted, actually takes place outside the city – within sight of the city walls but still, significantly, outside them. We need to note the contrast between the activity outside the city and the non-events of the rest of the day (v11). Mark is drawing our attention yet again to the contrast between the reception that Jesus receives on the margins, among the ordinary rural people, and the reception he receives from Jerusalem as the centre of political and religious power. Those on the periphery hear his message of the kingdom and receive his ministry as Good News; those in the centre perceive it as threatening and maybe even demonic in origin. The crowds who shout “Hosanna!” (which comes from Psalm 118: 25 and is a cry to God meaning “Save now!”) are the rural peasants, rather than the urban elite of Jerusalem. These are not the city’s inhabitants. They are those who have cut palms (or is it straw?) “from the fields”. They acclaim Jesus as a Davidic king and messiah. By contrast, Jesus’ first interaction with the city’s inhabitants is to drive the moneychangers from the temple in the immediate aftermath of symbolically cursing the “fruitlessness” of the fig tree (1: 12ff). This leads directly into the conflict in the temple with the chief priests, scribes and elders, who demand to know by what authority Jesus is doing these things (1: 27ff). Those on the periphery recognise God’s presence in Jesus (“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”); those at the centre can only see Jesus as godless.
2. Political street theatre: the Mount of Olives and the final battle
Mark casts Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem as a march upon the city – the climax of Jesus’ “campaign” of confrontation. Jerusalem was occupied by a hated foreign power. The cry, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor, David!” is the cry of hope for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy, and therefore the overthrow of the Romans. This is political dynamite in the climate of the time. It would entail not only the overthrow of Imperial Rome, but the ousting of the collaborators – the Jewish ruling classes. It was a religious cry – “Yahweh, save NOW!” – and also and necessarily a cry of rebellion. Moreover, Mark wants us to understand that, if Jesus is indeed the leader of an imminent revolt, this revolution is not going to be one in a long list of failed popular uprisings that have ended in crucifixions. This one is the real thing!
He does this by placing the origin of the march “near the Mount of Olives”, a place associated in the early apocalyptic tradition with the final battle against the enemies of Israel in defence of Jerusalem: “I will gather the nations against Jerusalem to do battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered … Then Yahweh will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day, his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives” (Zechariah 14: 2-4).
Moreover, the procession itself recalls the military entry of the triumphant rebel Simon Maccabaeus into Jerusalem “with praise and palm branches … and with hymns and songs” (1 Mc 13:51). An additional factor that may have shaped Mark’s telling of the story is the striking parallels between Mark’s narrative and Menahem, who, during the Sicarii uprising, had led a revolt in the wake of the liberation of Jerusalem from Rome in 66, just a few years before Mark’s gospel was written. Menahem (according to the historian Josephus) “entered Jerusalem in the state of a king”. He went to the temple as a “messiah”.
One thing is clear: if we imagine Mark’s gospel being “staged” before an audience in the 70s, we cannot miss how politically loaded this episode is.
3. Political street theatre: the Liberator on an ass
For all the military imagery and echoes of the liberation-of-Jerusalem tradition, Mark employs another set of counter-imagery that is explicitly antimilitary. Ched Myers points out that over half of the episode is given over to the detailed instructions from Jesus to the “two disciples” in preparation for the procession. Jesus much earlier spoke of David getting what he needed for his military campaign (2:25). Here Jesus, like David, gets what he needs for his campaign (11:3). In this case, it is a lowly ass. Mark is here invoking the very different tradition, also present in Zechariah, of the Messiah who comes to Zion “meek, riding upon an ass” (Zechariah 9:9f).
Two contrasting images from Zechariah, echoes of rebel liberators – and a counter-image quite explicitly distancing Jesus from them. Mark is playing with his audience. Imagine being in the situation of watching a thriller unfold, and trying to predict what happens next. We’re caught in the throes of the “Will he/won’t he? Is he/isn’t he?” debates. What does Jesus intend to do? Is he about to start the revolution? Will he restore the Davidic monarchy? Is the Temple about to be liberated?
4. Political street theatre: the kingdom of David or the Kingdom of God?
That Jesus is a messianic claimant is clear throughout the gospel. That his “march on Jerusalem” is a provocative act, heralding a final showdown with the authorities is equally clear. Throughout the gospel, the question that has been raised is what sort of Messiah Jesus is. Mark, in his narrative of the approach to Jerusalem, faces us with another, related question: what sort of king is Jesus? This is the question that will obsess Pilate at Jesus’ trial. While the Council want to know whether Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One”, the only question that interests Pilate concerns kingship, and he cuts directly to the chase: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (15:2)
With the “Hosanna” cry of the crowds, Mark brings together two dominant traditions in contemporary messianic politics. The first is the messiah-liberator tradition, rife in Galilee and which Jesus has resisted. Now he brings restorationism to the fore: the restoration of the Davidic monarchy under a Davidic king.
Temple, king and messiah (Psalm 118)
This is precisely what is happening in the Psalter. “Hosanna” comes from Psalm 118: 25 – the second of our Lectionary texts. Walter Brueggemann has pointed out that, in their post-exilic editing, temple/Torah psalms are paired with royal psalms at crucial points, as these came to express messianic hope. So we have, for example, Psalm 1 (Torah) next to Psalm 2 (royal); Psalm 18 (royal) followed immediately by Psalm 19 (royal), and Psalm 118 (royal) alongside Psalm 119 (Torah). The point is that the restoration of kingship goes hand in hand with the restoration of the Temple. “King” and “Messiah” become parallel, related hopes.
The cry “Hosanna” is used in 2 Samuel 14:4 and 2 Kings 6:26 as a cry for help in addressing kings. Psalm 118 was used liturgically as the Feast of Tabernacles and Passover. “Hosanna!” could be used to address pilgrims or famous rabbis, but as a greeting or acclamation, rather than a cry for help. At Tabernacles, branches were waved. These branches were known popularly as “hosannas”.
As we watch Jesus approach the city, therefore, with Zechariah echoing in our heads, we are meant to wonder whether this is the longed-for event: the overthrow of Rome and the restoration of the Davidic monarchy. Is this Jesus’ political quest? Is this what he meant when he spoke about the Kingdom of God? Is Jesus the “Son of David”?
At this stage, we are given no answer – only clues within the stage directions and script! The Zechariah 9:9 framing makes it clear that Jesus is not about to start a military uprising. He is not about to enter the city and fight for the temple-state. Jesus will go on quite explicitly to deny that this is his programme. He is not the Son of David (12: 35ff) and the temple will, in fact, be destroyed, rather than becoming the centre of a new monarchy (13: 1-8). The Kingdom of God is not the same thing as the kingdom of David!
Secondly, the anticlimax of 11:11 deconstructs the sense that Jerusalem is the centre of Jesus’ intentions. He doesn’t come to restore Jerusalem but to challenge the powers centred there. Although it is tantalisingly unclear as to who exactly Jesus is and what his programme is, one thing is clear: the people on the periphery are closer to the answer than the people who ought to know best – the religious leaders and people of Jerusalem.
5. Reading ahead
Jesus is the Messiah and he is a king. It is not popular expectation – or even the Jewish scriptures – that will define these terms, however, but the Way of the Cross. Jesus is a revolutionary and a rebel. He is a liberator. Once again, it is the Way of the Cross that will define these terms. He is a rebel because the proclamation of the Good News challenges the political and religious powers of his day. In that sense, he stands firmly with the rural peasants and against the urban elite. The religious purity system that shuts the poorest out is contrary to the character of the very God it supposes it worships. Like all false gods, it will be swept away. Rome proclaimed that Caesar is king and god. It, too, will be swept away – as will all powers ranged against the Kingdom of God.
Ironically, unthinkably and unimaginably, the means by which God will accomplish this is through the very solution that the authorities employ to solve the “problem” of this upstart who stands at the gates and challenges their authority: the Way of the Cross. God isn’t as limited and parochial as to aim only at the restoration of the Davidic temple state: God’s got the whole world in view!
Amen.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Lawrence,
Thanks as ever. I’m no Greek scholar but feel I should point out that according to Tom Wright the word for ‘colt’ in verse 2 does not necessarily refer to an ass or donkey and can just as well be used for a horse. Mark doesn’t seem to want to emphasise the humility bit and if we didn’t have Matthew we wouldn’t have the Zechariah image.
Keep up the good work!
Lance
Lance,
You’re right – a colt could be a young, unridden horse, and there is no explicit reference to the Zechariah image of the liberation of Jerusalem by a king on a donkey. I’m not sure, though, what symbolic significance an untried pony might have; it would mean that the animal that Jesus rode on would be completely incidental to the rest of the drama – the royal Davidic King material. Jesus on a warhorse or Jesus on a donkey (echoing the humility of the animal as a contrast to the exalted significance of the rider) seems to me to be the choices that would do justice to what is likely to be Mark’s symbolic shaping of the narrative. I go for the latter. Yes, Mark is at no pains to emphasise humility – but the Zecharaiah image is of a liberator, for all the humility of the donkey!
I’d go with the notion that Matthew makes explicit what is here in Mark.
Thanks for the comment and good wishes – I’ll echo them in return!
Lawrence
Thanks, Lawrence. Something to add, though : a lot of stress on Messiahship here, but in the next section to vs28 we have a very significant discourse on the Temple as the barren fig tree, on the Temple mount and all on it as having no power over those who have faith, and (most radical of all) the investiture of a new temple in the Jesus community where God’s forgiveness is mediated not through Temple ritual but as people forgive one another. The authority that is questioned (vs28) is the <priestly authority to forgive sins (cf vs15:58).
Claiming Messiahship – as you say, a political claim is offensive to Roman imperial authority, but not ‘blasphemy’ as suggested in 15:64. Claiming the high priesthood might not be so difficult for Pilate, but would entail blasphemy – claiming God’s authority to forgive sins.
Quite why Mark doesn’t spell out the Christian claim to be the new Temple (or, as Margaret Barker has persuasively argued, the restored first Temple) is a bit curious, and may be to do with his non-Jewish Christian audience; he majors instead on redefined Messiahship – a political hot potato in the Roman world given when Mark’s Gospel is composed.
Dick, thanks for the comment. Personally, I think the key has to do with the fact that Mark is written pre-70. That Jesus condemned the Temple and pronounced its impending doom seems absolutely clear: his remarks to this effect are used in evidence against him. But that seems, in Mark’s gospel (which is probably reflecting accurately what actually happened in his ministry) to be related exculsively to Messiahship and the Temple opposition to his message of the Kingdom (and, by extension, to his distinctive view of God). If Jesus saw the Kingdom about to be established, all opposition would be removed.
It is Luke (writing after the Temple’s destruction in AD 70) who quite explicitly develops a theology of Jesus as the New High Priest, his death as the end of Temple sacrifice, and the Church as embodying the Temple process of sacrifice and forgiveness.
In other words, I don’t think the restored Temple theology is Mark’s. I think this reflects (as you’ve suggested) that Jesus saw the Temple functions of forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration being relocated within the new relationships within the messianic community.
Hi, again. I’m perhaps being a bit slow, but I don’t understand the 2nd half of your first paragraph : can you explain it in different words?
It seems to me Mark is saying that, for those that have faith, the Temple institution has no remaining weight – they can let it go. The Kingdom is arriving, the Temple is now redundant, not worth fighting for. I’m gradually coming to the view that Jesus was not a Messianic claimant so much as a Temple-deposer – and I think we see it here. By bearing all the ‘fruit’ in his ministry – the ‘fruit’ that the remote Temple claims to have a monopoly of – he is fundamentally and explicitly undermining its authority by ‘delivering its goods’ out in the rural heartland, dangerously beyond their reach. That is far more insulting and threatening than any political takeover bid to run the existing institution. It was that sort of popular loss of respect/authority that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall – as Pink Floyd sang : “the ship of fools had finally run aground”. It’s that sort of bypassing of the Church’s rôle by (secular) others who claim to – and often can – ‘do it better’ that causes such anxiety for those of us still wedded to the institutional church.
It’s an off-the-cuff thought, but the messianic ride from the Mount of Olives seems to sort of dissipate at the city wall, as if to say “Oh, why bother? It’s not worth it; it’s dead already.”
Dick, I think that Jesus, in Mark’s gospel, is clearly about Messiaship – hence the sigificance of the Messianic Secret motif. What I was trying to say is that Jesus comes to the Temple to enact and proclaim that the God whom he calls Abba is not the same God as the god of the Purity System, centred in the Temple. The Temple has become corrupt – the sorce of opposition to the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. I think this is Mark’s focus. The Temple, like all other opposition to the Kigndom, will be swept away – because it has aligned itself with that opposition.
I think this is Mark’s theological focus vis-avis the Temple, rather than the later Lukan theology of sacrifice and priesthood in the wake of the Temple’s destruction.
I agree with you about the importance of his ministry being the fruit that the Temple ought to be bearing and clearly isn’t. That comes out clearly in the continual stress of ‘he taught as one having authority, not as the scribes’. That is what provoked the Temple opposition. The political importance is not an attempt to take over the Temple, but in announcing the Kingdom – which means the end of Roman hegemoney as well as the hegemony of the Purity System. It meant Jesus could be denounced as a revolutionary and executed by Rome as one.
I like your off the cuff thought. Personally, I read Jesus as being particularly canny: he stops outside the city because it is safe for him to enter only during the daylight and when there are large, supportive crowds to protect him from the authorites’ plans to snatch him (enter Judas, stage left, offering information for money about where to get him at night).