39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Luke 19:28-40 relates the story concerning the royal entry into Jerusalem. The source is the material unique to Luke in verses 28, 39-40, and Mark in verses 29-38. We find the story of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in all four gospels. Luke makes interesting changes in the account of the entry into Jerusalem he received from Mark, even though the basic structure remains the same. The story is filled with images evoking both Old Testament themes and secular, semi-militaristic rituals of the Roman Empire. The text reveals an abandon appropriate to the full release of tenacious hopes and ancient trust in the God who will redeem the people. The text is a Christophany, a manifestation of the Christ.
Luke provides a unique explanation of the setting. 28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
Luke adapts Mark 11:1-11 to his purpose. He received from Mark a combination of two stories. One story is about the sending of the disciples into the city. 29 When he had come, meaning Jesus and his disciples have just come up from Jericho and through a desert area, near Bethphage and Bethany, two small towns just on the eastern slope at the place called the Mount of Olives. Zechariah 14 specifically recalls that the coronation march for the divine warrior‑king begins at the Mount of Olives. In Jewish tradition, this is the place where the triumphal entry of the new messianic ruler of the city will start. Before Jesus enters the city, he sends his disciples ahead of him on a special mission. Jesus sent two of the disciples. The first royal image is that of Jesus dispatching the disciples. The point is that the messianic King's humility extends beyond the simple beast of burden scorned by the Roman overlords of Judea, reaching even to the innocent, immature offspring of such an unassuming beast. Jesus' gesture of self-effacement is a repudiation of the faster-greater-better spirit of his age. True kingship, the King of Kings quietly proclaims, is humility.[1] Jesus 30 said, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” The first Old Testament text that influences this passage is Zechariah 9:9, where daughter Zion/Jerusalem receive encouragement to rejoice, for its king comes triumphant and victorious, humble, and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. The second royal image is that of commandeering an animal for personal use was a prerogative of the Roman occupiers, and of a king of Israel. Riding a donkey into Jerusalem follows Zechariah 9:9, explicitly cited in Matthew 21:4-5. The sixth day of creation is the creation of human beings and beast, so that at this crucial time, the story mentions the presence of the beast as well.[2] To Western eyes, the donkey is a humble animal - very "un-kingly." However, to the ancient Israelites, it was the animal of choice for hill country chieftains like David. Horses, though runners that are more powerful and more exotic as imported features of advanced chariot armies, tend to be vulnerable when forced to participate in battles on rocky, uneven ground. The royal animal of Israelite Kings, therefore, was a mule or a donkey, who could be relied upon not to break a leg while racing up to higher ground. Jesus' entrance into the city on a donkey, therefore, was not a humble rejection of royal symbolism, but a direct reference to the inauguration of David's original son, Solomon. It was the first ceremony of inauguration for a Davidic ruler, and through Jesus, it was also the final such ceremony. 32 Therefore, those whom Jesussent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They said, “The Lord needs it.” The second story concerns the actual entry into Jerusalem. 35 Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. A third royal image in this passage is that of the crowd throwing garments on the road before Jesus. The actions next taken by the disciples and the people are symbolic of the authority of Jesus. In II Kings 9:13, the people perform a similar gesture just before they proclaim Jehu king, destroyer of Ahab’s dynasty and claimant to the throne of the Northern Kingdom. In Zechariah 9:9, the divine warrior‑king mounts up and rides into the city‑‑just as Jesus himself now prepares to do. Symbolizing the portrayal of Jesus as the Savior of the common and ordinary people, a large crowd assembles and spreads their cloaks on the road. Other people cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. We might contrast this account with the reception of the Queen of Sheba by Solomon in I Kings 10:1-13 and the acclamation of Jehu as king of Israel in II Kings 9:13. Mark's text clearly intends to draw a parallel between the actions of the messianic warrior‑king Zechariah prophesies and the actions of Jesus, the still‑secret, messianic, Prince‑of‑Peace king. Scholars have also noted that these details would have given a visual message familiar to Gentile readers as well. There are elements here that are equally at home among the traditional victory processions of Greco‑Roman warrior‑kings. The large citizen escort, accompanying hymns or chants, symbolic acquiescence in the new ruler's authority, and a concluding temple ritual: All were part of pagan‑political events familiar to the Greco‑Roman world.
Churches celebrate this event on Sunday. That fact may divert us from the truth of the type of day this was for Jesus, his disciples, and the city they entered. Some biblical scholars have suggested that the procession into Jerusalem took place on Monday.[3] Of course, what day of the week it took place does not really matter, except perhaps from the perspective of the people who rejoiced when Jesus rode into the city. If it was Monday, it was a weekday, not the Sabbath, which, for Jews, was sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Thus, it was certainly not a “holy day” in the religious sense of the term. Further, if it was Sunday, it still was not a holy day, a religious day, like Sunday is for us. Sunday would have been like our Monday, the first day of the workweek, the day after the Sabbath rest. It was time to sweep the stoop, open the shop, wash the clothes, go to the market, repair the oxcart, get the bread in the oven, deal with matters left over from the previous week that they had set aside for the Sabbath and so forth. Besides, there was the Passover coming in a few days. Lots to do! Regardless of the actual day of the week, for the people who greeted Jesus as he rode into the city, it was a Monday type of day.
Is God interested in the marketplace? Does God care about the public arena, about the world of work, about trade, professions, law, government, education, and industry? Many Christians seem to operate on the everyday assumption that God is not. For too many, God cares about the church and its affairs, about getting people to heaven, but not about how society and its public places conduct themselves on earth. The result can be a dichotomized Christian life in which we invest most of our time that matters (our working lives) in a place and a task that we think does not really matter much to God, while struggling to find opportunities to give some leftover time to the only thing we think does matter to God: evangelism. Yet, the Bible speaks comprehensively about the human marketplace. The Old Testament word was “the gate,” the public square where people met and did their business together. God is intensely interested in this world of human social engagement and activity, this world where we spend most of our time. Work is God’s idea. Genesis 1-2 gives us our first picture of the biblical God as a worker — thinking, choosing, planning, executing, evaluating. So when God decided to create humankind in the image and likeness of God, what else could humans be but workers, reflecting in their working lives something of the nature of God?[4]
37 The fourth Old Testament allusion in this passage is one that only Luke makes. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began in their enthusiasm to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen. Testifying to the great acts of God is something that Israel traditionally did as part of their covenant renewal ceremonies. Moses, before he begins to give the law in Deuteronomy, spends several chapters describing what great deeds God has done for the nation. Similarly, Joshua, Samuel and Solomon also list God’s deeds of power prior to charging the nation to renew their covenant with Yahweh (Joshua 23-24; I Samuel 12; I Kings 8). The covenant that God established with David’s house, however, was an eternal promise of adoption, whereby the king of the covenant people would be considered the adopted son of God (II Samuel 7:14). Thus, the relationship between the people and the Davidic royal house involved renewal of three covenants, those between God and the people, between God and the king and between the people and the king.
Christians have a strange reference point for the great deeds of the Lord. The world is full of dangerous monsters that we would like someone to slay. The Romans were powerful oppressors. At least Israel could point to deliverance from Egypt. Yet, Christians go back to the way God was present Jesus. He does not slay the monster his Jewish brothers and sisters wanted slayed. He was a king, yes, but what a strange king he was. He appears as a king without armies, without legal power, and without earthly power. He lived as a man of love, forgiveness, grace, and peace. Yet, in the last week of his life, he handed himself over to religious and political authorities. He did not seek the power, wealth, and prestige of position in this world. He chose the peculiar path to which his Father called him. The destiny of his life was not a throne, but a cross. This path the church proclaims as the great deeds of the Lord. How strange indeed. Do we dare trust the one who followed this path?
His journey to the cross shows just how far God will go to show us the love God has for us. One of the metaphors the New Testament uses to explain this derives from the business world. Think of our lives as on loan from God. Think of our sin as the way that we refuse to re-pay the loan. We are in default. Yet, the Son takes our sins on himself, and satisfies the debt through his love for God and love for others that each of us owes and can never pay. Jesus pays it all, to make peace between God and us.
The crowd 38 sung in the words of Psalm 118:25-26, a second Old Testament text that influences this passage, “Blessed is the king (Luke identifies the figure the Psalm refers to as “the one…”) who comes in the name of the Lord! Luke adds a phrase not in the Psalm. Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” A poet composed the psalm for pilgrims to Jerusalem.
We then read of an encounter with the Pharisees that only Luke records. 39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” Jesus’ concluding statement to the Pharisees echoes Habakkuk 2:11. Luke ends his account with a clear indication that Jesus intended the crowd to understand this royal symbolism. The Pharisees obviously know what the symbolism implies because they urge Jesus to silence the crowd. Should the Romans come to understand the symbolism of the occasion, the whole crowd could be in danger, in addition to Jesus himself. Here at the last, Jesus wanted to show himself to Israel as their true king - more like David than like Herod, but a king, in truth, beyond any they had known before. However, in the days to come he would once again refuse any claim to earthly kingship, and follow instead, the peculiar path of his own destiny that led, not to the throne, but to the cross.
The text raises the question whether this is a portrait of an earthly king, one from whom Jesus has come to release creation. In fact, the way Luke selects the elements in his portrayal of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem suggests that Luke understands Jesus to be standing in a distinctly different line from these earthly kings.
A processional entry of a personage like Jesus into the capital city would also recall the Roman triumph of a victorious general surrounded by his conquering troops. The troops would sing songs in praise of their leader, just as do the disciples. Like the returning hero, Jesus heads for the temple of his God. However, there are also notable differences that the first-century listener would notice. Unlike the returning hero, Jesus wears no crown. Jesus’ crown comes later. Yet, we can see here in this welcome a fulfillment of the heavenly situation of the will of God being done on earth, as it is heaven.[5]
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their book The Last Week, say that on that Sunday people in Jerusalem would have witnessed two processions, not one — the Pilate Procession and the Jesus Procession. The Pilate procession for the Roman governor and his accompanying military force coming into the city from the west provided that military deterrent during the festival. According to the contemporary historian Josephus, when Pilate first brought Roman troops to Jerusalem from Caesarea some time earlier, he committed an unprecedented violation of Jewish sensibilities by allowing the troops to bring their military standards and busts of the emperor into Jerusalem by night and set them up in the temple. A massive protest demonstration in Caesarea’s stadium forced the removal of the standards, but only after the Jews used tactics of nonviolent mass resistance, lying down, and baring their necks when Pilate’s soldiers, swords in hand, surrounded and attempted to disperse them. Josephus also speaks of protests that broke out on another occasion when Pilate appropriated temple funds to build an aqueduct for Jerusalem. On this occasion, Pilate had Roman soldiers, dressed as Jewish civilians, and armed with hidden clubs, mingle with the shouting crowd and attack the people at a prearranged signal. The soldiers killed or hurt many. The Jesus procession was on the east side of the city. Jesus sent his disciples to get a colt, which we assume was a small donkey (Mark is not specific). When the disciples secured the colt, Jesus rides it down the steep road from the Mount of Olives to the Golden Gate of the city, with a crowd of his supporters shouting “Hosanna!” — a Hebrew word that mixes praise to God with a prayer that God will save his people and do it soon. They spread their cloaks on the colt and cut branches from the surrounding fields — actions that they did only in the presence of royalty. Borg and Crossan see the Palm Sunday parade as a pre-planned political protest, and a look at the context seems to back that up. The symbolism of a ruler riding on a donkey would not be lost on those putting their cloaks in the road, for they would have remembered the words of the prophet Zechariah: an image of a king coming into Jerusalem with shouts of joy from the people. He is “triumphant” and “victorious” — words that Romans and other imperial leaders would have embraced — but he is “humble” and rides on a donkey instead of a war horse (Zechariah 9:9). In fact, continues the prophet, “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem.” This king is not a conquering hero who uses weapons of mass destruction, but one who will break the power of military might with humility, justice and a “peace” for all the nations (Zechariah 9:10). Jesus’ parade is thus an intentional parable and statement of contrast. If Pilate’s procession embodied power, violence and the glory of the empire that ruled the world, Jesus’ procession embodied the kind of rule that God was ushering in through Jesus’ ministry of healing, his message of good news and, ultimately, his sacrificial death on a Roman cross. Pilate and the empire he represented were the most powerful force in the region on that Sunday. Jesus provided a puzzling contrast.
The cumulative effect of these changes is to deny that we are to consider Jesus’ kingdom in any way was a secular, militaristic kingdom. Jesus comes as a pilgrim whom the crowd hails as a king. He is preparing for his destiny. Though entering as king, it is clear he is not a political ruler. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem depicted here in Luke 19:28-40, is richly evocative of Old Testament passages related to kingship in ancient Israel. There are at least five separate images from the Old Testament echoed here which call to mind the coronation of Israelite kings and the divine covenant between God and the royal representative of the Israelite people.
[1] (see David R. Bauer, "Matthew," in the Asbury Bible Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992]).
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.1 [41.2], 180.
[3] “Chronology of the Holy Week and resurrection appearances in the gospels.” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX Nashville: Abingdon, 1995, 704-705.
Crossan, John Dominic. “Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem? A Holy Week reflection.” HuffPost, March 31, 2012, updated May 31, 2012. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
Doig, Kenneth Frank. “The triumphal entry on Palm Sunday,” New Testament Chronology, Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990, chapter 20. nowoezone.com. Retrieved September 22, 2018.
Parkinson, James and Ernie Kuenzli. “When did Jesus enter Jerusalem?” The Herald, heraldmag.org. n.d. (but URL says 2012). Retrieved September 22, 2018.
[4] —Christopher J.H. Wright, “Saints in the marketplace: A biblical perspective on the world of work, TheOtherJournal.com, September 29, 2010. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
[5] Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.3 [51.2], 446.
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