"Blessed Is the King."

Luke 19:28-40

April 14, 2019

I.

For us, and in much of western culture generally, donkeys are often considered humble, stupid, and stubborn.  Another word for donkey is ass or jackass.  Those words are more used these days as pejorative epithets applied to people who annoy us, than to the actual animals.  We don’t encounter very many donkeys in our modern, urban setting.

But in Jesus’ day donkeys are valuable, useful, even essential animals.  They are in fact so highly regarded that donkeys and humans are the only beings for which a lamb could be substituted in sacrifice, and upper class Israelite nobility were known for riding white donkeys.  And there is the famous passage in the book of the prophet Zechariah about how the Messiah will come riding on a donkey.  Donkeys have a humility, but also a simplicity and dignity that we don’t really get.

Aside from his own feet, the only modes of transportation used by Jesus are boats and donkeys.  A donkey, possibly the one that early tradition says is in the stable, witnessing his birth, bears the infant Lord and his mother on the long journey to Egypt, fleeing from King Herod.  And now he requisitions a local donkey for his ride into Jerusalem. 

In addition to reminding the inhabitants of Jerusalem of Zechariah’s prophecy, a donkey would have presented a stark contrast to the big, spectacular, in-your-face, thoroughbred war horses that transported Roman officers around.  It would not have occurred to the Romans to be concerned about somebody riding a donkey into the city.  It would have been just another incomprehensible local custom to them.

But the people understand very well what is going on here.  They remember Zechariah’s words.  The king will come in a humble and non-violent manner.  Not only will he be riding on a donkey, but he will banish the weapons of war.  The Messiah brings peace, not by violence or conquest, not by force, but by peace.  As one great Christian of the last century says, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.”

Jesus’ pointedly riding on a donkey, when he could just as well have walked as he does the rest of the time, is what makes this a demonstration.  He’s not just coming into the city like everyone else.  This is a political procession, as we see as well in the participants chanting about how Jesus is “the king” and proclaiming “peace in heaven,” which of course is to be extended to all the earth.  And this is all happening just before Passover, the annual festival commemorating the people’s liberation from Egypt, the time when hope for independence was running hottest.  

In this way, then, the peace of God himself enters Jerusalem, the city of peace: a mass of people waving palm branches, laying their cloaks on the road, and shouting slogans, escorting the simple rabbi from Galilee riding on a donkey.  From Bethany, down the steep slope into the Kidron Valley, and up the steep pathway on the other side, into the Golden Gate, then the main entrance to the city of Jerusalem, and the gleaming white Temple.

II.

Along the way, some people who do get what is happening become quite alarmed.  These were members of the Pharisees.  They did not like what this looks like, a crowd proclaiming Jesus to be the king and Messiah.  It’s not so much that they were not on board with Jesus’ agenda — they weren’t.  But they were deeply fearful of what the reaction of the Romans might be, once they figured out what is happening.  Proclaiming someone a king who was not authorized by Rome was, well, sedition.  And the Romans were not squeamish about how much violence they could apply to a situation they considered a threat, or how many people died gruesome deaths in the process.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus has been continually dogged by members of the Pharisees.  The Pharisees’ main concern was for their nation and their religion.  Their rigid and thorough application of Jewish Law was mainly about preserving their nation and their religion at all costs.  They are only doing what the people learned so well during their time of exile in Babylon, over 500 years before.  The way to preserve their nation and religion in a time of oppression was by doubling down on the literal adherence to the Law.  That was the tried and true way for them to maintain their national and religious identity.

The anxiety of the Pharisees was that they felt Jesus was endangering the whole nation and their ancient religion by needlessly provoking the Romans.  So they pleaded with him to control his followers.  They wanted him to tell them to be quiet, or at least don’t proclaim him the king.  Maybe lose the symbolic donkey and walk in inconspicuously like a normal person.  He was drawing attention to himself and that was very dangerous.

The Lord’s answer, is to say, over the commotion, that if his people were forced to be silent then “the stones would shout out.”  In other words, if the people can’t peacefully sing and chant, all this energy will find another outlet.  If non-violence is suppressed, then people often turn to violence.  They might start throwing stones to express themselves.  

It remains a common activity of oppressed people with no options: to use whatever they have at hand to communicate their despair, rage, and pain.  They throw stones, as hopeless and suicidal as it is, to throw stones at a Roman soldier, or these days a tank.  It is something that Palestinian children are routinely arrested for today.

At the same time, Jesus is suggesting that what is really going on here — the Messiah of God entering the holy city — is of such cosmic importance that all creation, even the ordinary rocks on the road, are vibrating with joy at the coming of the Redeemer.

III.

At some point in this procession, probably very early when he has a spectacular view of the city across the gorge, Jesus stops and starts crying at what he sees.  Because he knows what will happen.  He knows that the fate of the city is sealed and the city will be destroyed with great and heartless violence.  “They will not leave within you one stone upon another,” he says.  If only the city would recognize him now, when he brings peace!  If only the city would choose to follow his life and teaching of compassion, justice, blessing, healing, and love.  Then maybe the tragedy that struck about 40 years later, when the Romans did finally demolish the whole place with great loss of life, could have been averted.

We don’t have to have Jesus’ divine omniscience to know the future.  Scripture witnesses over and over to a basic fact of history.  Idolatry spawns injustice, and injustice invites disaster.  The idolatry here is found in the attitudes of people who imagined themselves to be the least idolatrous people ever: the Pharisees.  They, along with the other leaders of the people, thought they were worshipping God as strictly and faithfully as possible.  But they were really worshipping their nation, their religion, and their own status, wealth, and power.  

Their idolatry manufactured social injustice in the form of the exclusionary, unequal, diseased, fear-based, crippling, judgmental, and repressive society in which they lived.  Jesus critiques the religious side of this at some length in Matthew 23, railing at scribes and Pharisees for their toxic hypocrisy.  The Lord makes a point of lifting up, welcoming, and empowering the people the leaders rejected, scapegoated, and punished: women, lepers, the sick, the poor, “sinners,” children, and foreigners.  

In his ministry of healing and liberation, feeding and inclusion, Jesus seeks to reverse the rampant injustice around him.  He seeks to reestablish the true worship of God, in which we love God “with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might… and our neighbor as ourself.”  Thus he negates the idolatry that placed nation, or religion, or race, or law, or wealth, or power, or anything else ahead of the single-minded loyalty due to God.  

And the first thing he does when he gets to Jerusalem is to drive the merchants and the commercial interests out of the Temple.  He purifies the Temple of the mercenary parasites who reduced it to a marketplace.

If we are going to avoid the fate of Jerusalem, and the fate of every civilization that fell into idolatry and injustice, we’re going to have to love God with our whole being — body, soul, and spirit.  That means we’re going to have to follow Jesus in his ministry of inclusion, healing, forgiveness, compassion, non-violence, and love for all.  Not as a chore we undertake grudgingly; and not as something we do purely to avoid catastrophe.  But as an act of love and joy and peace; as a fulfillment and expression of our true nature. 

IV.

Because that is his ministry.  The good news is that Jesus reveals the truth of God in himself.  When he comes through that gate into the city, riding that donkey, surrounded by people high on the hope he gives for a new kind of life, he is telling us that it doesn’t have to be this way.  We do not have to live by greed and violence.  We do not have to suffer the dire consequences of an existence characterized by idolatry and injustice.  We have another option.  

For we have a different king.  One who is able to awaken us to the truth that God has placed in our hearts.  One who is able to heal us of our infirmities, and make us whole.  One who is able to bring God’s shalom into our world, bringing us together in compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and love.

Jerusalem would turn against Jesus in a matter of days.  But we retain the power to turn towards him, towards our future, towards our destiny which is eternal life, and sing with them.  We have the advantage of knowing that Jesus is about to give his life for the life of the world, setting all free from the power of death.  Therefore, we have all the more reason to sing and indeed to shape our lives around the song: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

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