Mark 11:1-11, 15-19
As they approached
Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent
off two of the disciples with this instruction: “Go to the village straight
ahead of you, and as soon as you enter it you will find tethered there a colt
on which no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it back. If anyone says to you,
‘Why are you doing that?’ Say, ‘The Rabbi needs it, but will send it back very
soon.’ ” So they went off, and finding a colt tethered out on the street near a
gate, they untied it. Some of the
bystanders said to them, “what do you mean by untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and
the people let them take it. They brought the colt to Jesus and threw their
cloaks across its back, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on
the road, while others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the
fields. And everyone around Jesus, in front or in back of him, cried out, “Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our God! Blessed is the coming reign of our ancestor
David! Hosanna in the highest!” Jesus
entered Jerusalem and went into the Temple precincts. He inspected everything
there, but since it was already late in the afternoon, He went out to Bethany
accompanied by the twelve.
Then they went on
to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the Temple and began driving out those engaged in
selling and buying. He overturned the money changers’ tables and the stalls of
those selling doves; moreover, he would not permit anyone to carry goods
through the Temple area. Then he began to teach them: “Doesn’t scripture say,
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples’? but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”
The chief priests and the religious scholars heard about this and began looking
for a way to destroy him. At the same time, they were fearful because the whole
crowd was under the spell of his teaching. When evening came, Jesus and the
disciples went out of the city.
I
know that we revisit these events every year at Palm Sunday. My hope is that an
off-season exploration can help us see the event s differently, sans the layers
of celebration and adulation. When the gospel of Mark was written, the
liturgical year was not yet set, and the annual observations of Palm Sunday and
Easter were years from being established. The authors of Mark’s gospel included
these events not only because of their historical importance in telling the
story of Jesus’ life, but also because they are integral to telling the story
of bringing about the Kin-dom of God in this world.
A
note here on bibliography. Marcus Borg gives a compelling but brief overview of
these events int eh book we have been using, “Conversations with Scripture.”
But the definitive and comprehensive consideration of the this material in Mark
is “The Last Week” by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Written in response
to the erroneous and theologically-bereft movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” the
book examines in detail chapters 11-16 of Mark’s gospel. These chapters walk
through the events of the last week of Jesus’ life day by day. Borg and Crossan
show that the Gospel fo Mark tells a radically different story than did Mel
Gibson. Theirs is the landmark commentary for this material, in my opinion.
While we are going to be brief in our consideration of this material, I
heartily recommend “The Last Week” for everyone to read.
The
first episode is best known as “The Triumphal Entry.” On Palm Sunday, the
Church uses this event to greet Jesus as the King of Kings with loud “hosannas”
and waving palm branches. (Interestingly enough, no account of Jesus’ entry
into Jerusalem mentions palm branches at all.) Hymns like “All Glory, Laud and
Honor” are sung as if Jesus really paraded into Jerusalem actually wanting to
be proclaimed as the king of Israel. But a lot more is going here than we
learned in Sunday school.
Sometimes
we tend to read these stories with the idea that first they did this, and they
went and id that, and then another thing happened. But a close reading shows us
that something completely different from happenstance is taking place. The “triumphal
entry” is the farthest thing from an incidental occurrence. Borg tells us, “Jesus
has made elaborate pre-arrangements. His riding into the city on a colt is not
incidental or accidental, but deliberate and intentional. As my mentor George
Caird wrote over forty years ago, this is a pre-planned public demonstration.”
(CWS p. 91) This is public theater. In
today’s parlance, this is a Jesus led flash mob.
That
being said, this is no mere moment of entertainment. Jesus is using the public
arena to say something. This is a parable in action. Remember that at the beginning of the gospel
Jesus comes not to proclaim himself, but to proclaim the advent of the Kin-dom
of God. And that is precisely what Jesus is doing in this piece of political
theater, proclaiming the nature of God’s Kin-dom.
The
content of the drama comes from traditions of the Prophets, specifically from a
reference in the book of Zechariah:
“Look! Your ruler comes to you:
victorious and triumphant,
victorious and triumphant,
humble, riding
on a donkey,
on a colt, the
foal of a donkey.
The ruler will
banish chariots from Ephraim
and horses from
Jerusalem;
the bow will be
banished.
The ruler will
proclaim peace for the nations;
the empire
stretching from sea to sea,
from the River
to the ends of the earth. (Zech. 9:9-10)
Jews in Jerusalem would likely have recognized the
reference when they saw Jesus riding into the city on a donkey. Certainly the
well-trained religious scholars would have made the connection. Jesus rides
into Jerusalem under the nose of the Roman garrison proclaiming a radical kind
of peace. The Kin-dom of God is the kin-dom of peace. It is an image of the
present world in Jesus’ time turned upside down. And remember that the gospel
was written in an intensified time of strife with the Roman Empire. Jesus’
political action took on additional import in Mark’s own day. Jesus’ political
action was a visible attempt at Reconstructing the Hope that he world really
could change for the better.
Borg
spells this out: “As a political symbolic act, it was both protest and
affirmation. As protest, it was an anti-Roman act for Rome was the empire that
ruled the land with the instruments of war. As affirmation, it symbolized a
different vision of life on earth: the kingdom of God of which Jesus spoke, and
which his followers heralded as he rode into the city. That kingdom is about
peace and non-violence—not just internal peace, but the alternative to
domination systems imposed by violence and the threat of violence.” (CWS, p.
91)
The
next day, as Mark tells it, Jesus’ altercation with the money-changers in the
Temple has about it the same air of theater. After driving the people out of the
Temple forecourt, the statement that Jesus makes again references the Prophets.
In verse 17 Jesus says: “Doesn’t scripture say, ‘My house will be
called a house of prayer for all the peoples’? but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”
Borg tells us that the first phrase comes from Isaiah. The second phrase comes
from Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 7:11 the Temple is described as a den of robbers
because of the violence done to the people under the hypocritical shadow of
Temple worship. Jesus uses the phrase to decry the collaboration between the
Temple and Rome. It is not an accusation against the money-changers or
dove-sellers. (CWS p. 94)
Every
day of that last week, Jesus led his followers into Jerusalem and publically
acted out the faith he was teaching. And precisely here is where I believe
Jesus’ teaching is different from most other wisdom traditions. Like those
other traditions Jesus taught about an internal transformation, a new birth of
the heart and spirit. But he also taught that the world in which we lived could
also be transformed. The external reality in which we live and move and have
our being is also the reality in which the Spirit of God is at work. In
Jerusalem, Jesus takes all of the teaching, parables, and prayers into the
public streets and puts them on display. In many ways, it was these public
displays that set in motion the machinations that led to Jesus’ execution.
Nonetheless,
we have to realize that one of the answers to the overused question, “WWJD?” is
that Jesus takes it to the streets. Which is why we as Jesus’ 21st
century followers have a difficult case to make when we want our religion to be
personal but not political. To follow Jesus’ own example means that we have to
tend to both our internal growth and transformation and to participate in the external, political
evolution of God’s Kin-dom in our complicated political world. We are called to
live a life of piety and prayer but just as much we are called to live that
faith in the public arena. A retreat center in Pennsylvania sums it up
succinctly: Picket and Pray.
This
is the public discourse that embodies the idea of “Reconstructing Hope.” Mark’s
gospel was written in the middle of a war which was devastating the life
especially of the peasants (doesn’t war always do that?). The authors of Mark’s
gospel believed that the story of Jesus made a different, more likely they
thought it made all the difference. It was for them the preeminent example that
it was not military might or power or money that could change the world. That
change would come from the justice and love taught and embodied by Jesus. They
proposed that hope was not dead. But a hope based on overthrowing an occupying
army by military might was shattered. Hope that strength could overcome
strength was vanquished. Hope in a
messiah who could outwit and overpower Israel’s enemies was crucified. Hope
needed to be reconstructed. Jesus’ public actions in the last week of his life
were the beginning of that reconstruction. That is why Mark included them so
dramatically in this gospel.
SCUCC has had a dynamic history with
this kind of public, hopeful reconstruction. The Walk was this kind of in-world
action. In the 1960’s, the call for integration and civil rights was also of
this ilk. The concept of finding God in culture is an affirmation of living our
faith in that same culture. This Sunday's Crop Walk is itself part fund-raiser, part public symbol of hope and solidarity.
I
can envision drawing a comparison between a contemporary flash mob event and
what Jesus did. Maybe we can create our own flash mob for Sunday morning!
Certainly the flash mob at Chik-Fil-A that Brad Wishon participated in comes to
mind. Occupy Wall Street and its permutations are an ongoing public theater
event. These scriptures invite and challenge us to take our faith to the people
and to the streets. The window which is our anchor image reminds us to look at the
world the way God does. The heart of that concept is that God is looking at the
world. Hopefully, God will see us out there, too.
Anchor: The window through which we see the world as God does.
Frame: following Christ takes us into the world where we work
for its transformation
Thread: Let Me Be Your Servant? though Reconstructing
Hope really comes into play here
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