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Lectionary Study - March 16, 2008

Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Matthew 21:1-11; Philippians 2:5-11

Matthew 21:1-11 is the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, as presented by Matthew.  But it is much more than simply that well-known story.  Matthew’s telling of the triumphal entry is only meant as preamble to a much larger story that is encapsulated throughout the entirety of the twenty-first chapter, but later acted out in chapters twenty-six and twenty-seven.  Matthew’s telling of the story of the triumphal entry cannot be fully appreciated unless it is seen through the lens of the remainder of the story as it continues throughout this book.  The clue that the triumphal entry story is not just the first eleven verses of Matthew 21 but is the entire story is found in connecting statements strategically placed throughout the story.  The story begins “When they had come near Jerusalem” (21:1), followed by “When Jesus entered Jerusalem” (vs. 10), then straightaway “Then Jesus entered the temple” (vs. 12) followed by “He went outside the city” (vs. 17), then “In the morning, when he returned to the city” (vs. 18), and finally “When he entered the temple” (vs. 23).  Only by the close of the chapter (vs. 46) does the “guided tour” end and the full story of the triumphal entry is completed.  So let’s look at that full story.

Matthew 21 begins with the actual story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem (21:1-11) and is immediately followed by the cleansing of the temple (21:12-17).  Both stories are really two sides of one story, and are very political in nature.  In the first, the act of riding into the city on a donkey with the crowds cheering Jesus and waving palm branches is a very intentional and clear political action.  This is so because it is a direct fulfillment of Hebrew scripture regarding the coming of the Messiah (Zech. 9:9; Isa. 62:11) and is the action used by the Davidic kings for their coronations (cf. I Kings 1:33).  The king-elect, riding into the city on a donkey, was the living symbolism that proclaimed by this act that this king would be a ruler of peace (shalom) and not of war.  So it was missed on no Jew of the time that Jesus was publicly declaring himself the Messiah.

Jesus follows this public declaration of himself as Messiah with the cleansing of the Temple.  In fact, the text tells us that he entered the city in the procession, went directly to the temple, cleansed it and then rebutted the arguments of the chief priests and scribes who resisted what he was doing.  Matthew is the only author who crowds these stories upon one another.  Although Mark has Jesus enter the temple at the end of his triumphal parade, he only has Jesus look around the temple as if he were sightseeing; it is the next day that he cleanses the temple.  Luke has Jesus conclude his triumphal entry by weeping over Jerusalem, and John concludes a previous section with Jesus entering Jerusalem.  The following Johannine story begins an entirely different section.  It is only Matthew that attaches the cleansing of the temple and the debate with Israel’s religious leaders to the story of the triumphal entry.

In cleansing the temple of its commerce, Jesus angrily declares, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers” (21:13).  Jesus’ anger and zeal for the purity of the temple picks up on themes from Isaiah (cf. 56:7) and Jeremiah (cf. 7:11) regarding the commitment of Israel as suffering servant for the temple’s sanctification (i.e., the world as it should be).  But making money and increasing the system’s wealth and power is all that these priests, money-changers and merchants are interested in and therefore it has become “a den of robbers”.

Further, it can be argued that this act of violence on Jesus’ part begat the violence that claimed his life – and was intentionally calculated by him to have that effect!  As long as Jesus simply confronted the Pharisees, Sadducces and scribes, they would be infuriated at him but they would not – in fact, could not – seek his execution.  When he committed this act of violence, Jesus had intentionally escalated the confrontation to a new level both in action and in locale (because this was sacred space) and he committed such violence against a far more powerful and formidable enemy – the Jewish priesthood!  With this combination, Jesus sealed his fate (which, likely, is exactly what he intended).

The story of the cleansing of the temple is followed by the story of the cursing of the fig tree (21:18-22).  The disciples marvel at this clear reversal of nature and ask how its withering occurred so rapidly.  Jesus’ answer is emblematic:

“Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to this fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,” it will be done.  Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive” (21:21-22).

Obviously, Jesus is seeking to stress the importance of faith as essential for God’s work to be accomplished.  To do so, he picks two radical and clearly-impossible actions.  With faith, you can reverse nature and wither a budding fig-tree.  With faith, you can move mountains and cast them into the sea.  Of course, he doesn’t mean this literally, as indicated in his last statement.  He is simply affirming, in the strongest possible language, that faith is essential to bringing about kingdom transformation.  Jesus’ battle with the organized and powerful religious, political and economic systems of Israel and of Rome is about to begin.  It has been foreshadowed in Jesus’ triumphal entry.  It has been radically escalated by Jesus’ cleansing of the temple that has taken the battle into the very citadel of the powers of domination.  He is about to make fools of Israel’s priests, Pharisees and Sadducces, exposing them for the manipulative, power-grabbing forces of domination that they are.  And the struggle between Jesus and the “Powers That Be” will only continue to escalate until they crucify him.  It is faith – and only faith that God is at work through this confrontation and will bring about God’s good for Israel and for the world that can enable Jesus to carry on such revolutionary action.  And that is the kind of faith that Jesus’ disciples must embrace, if they are to carry on that revolution and bring about the transformation of all humanity into the kingdom of God!  That is what Jesus is calling the disciples to through this acted-out parable of the withering of the fig tree!

But Jesus isn’t finished yet!  The next stories tell of Jesus’ direct confrontation of “the chief priests and the elders of the people” – that is, the Jerusalem clerical aristocracy.  It consists of three stories – Jesus’ handling of the questioning of his authority, the parable of the two sons, and the parable of the wicked tenants of a vineyard.

The questioning of Jesus’ authority is the first story (21:23-27).  The clerical aristocracy challenges Jesus by asking “By what authority are you doing these things?”  Like so much of their interactions with Jesus, they are laying a trap for him because if he says “My authority comes from God”, they will accuse him of heresy and have him stoned.  And if he answers, “By no authority but my own”, he can lose credibility with the crowd.

Instead, as he usually did, Jesus outmaneuvered them.  “I will also ask you one question,” he responds.  “If you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.”  They agree, figuring that between them, they can answer any question Jesus puts, and thus force him into a self-intimidating answer to their questions.  But they are not prepared for the question that Jesus asks!

“Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin”?  The priests and elders immediately discern the trap that Jesus has set for them.  If they answer his question, “John’s ministry (and the sign of his ministry, his baptisms) were of God”, Jesus would challenge them as to why they hadn’t believed but instead opposed him.  If they answered, “Of men”, it would reveal to the crowds the truth about them – that they didn’t really believe in God at a personal level but only used religion as a way of controlling and dominating the people.  Their answer would reveal them for what they really were – and such a revelation would cause them to lose all credibility in the eyes of the people and, consequently, would end their domination.  Their response would reveal them for what they really were.  They couldn’t chance that.  So they took the only alternative open to them – “We do not know!”  And Jesus justly replied, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things!”  Jesus had won!

This is more than a story about how Jesus outwitted the chief priests and elders.  It is also a story about the capacity of the people to shape and dominate the powers, if they chose to do so.  Jesus had nothing but his own wisdom and the people on his side.  And with the skillful use of the former and (in essence) the threat of the withdrawal of popular support, Jesus brings defeat to the clerical aristocracy.  So it is a story about how to use power for the common good!

It is also a story about the uncovering of the real agenda of the religious establishment.  It was not to seek truth.  It was not to seek God.  And it was not about the building of the Shalom Community with its concomitant redistribution of wealth and power.  It was about the subtle exercise of dominating power in order to destroy Jesus’ credibility.  It was about the maintaining of the status quo with the clerical aristocracy in political and economic control.  And thus it is all about the threat of these selfish and self-serving systems being exposed to the masses.  That is what makes this story such a powerful story – because it both reveals the world as it truly is, and how God’s people can astutely exercise power for the good of that world.  Therefore, it is a most powerful story!

The second story of Matthew’s trilogy of Jesus’ confrontation of the Jerusalem clerical aristocracy is the parable of the two sons (21:28-32).  In this story, Jesus tells a story of two sons – one who refuses to do what his father asked him to do but then later does it, the second who agrees to do it but never does.  “Which of the two did the will of the father?” Jesus asked.  “The first,” the priests and elders responded.  Then Jesus voiced the intent of this story.

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him” (21:31b-32).

The tax collectors and prostitutes originally said “no” to God, but when God revealed Himself in a new and powerful way through John (and, implied, through Jesus), they were both needy and receptive enough to perceive what God was doing and respond.  So they eventually did say “yes”.  On the other hand, Jesus is saying, “you priests and elders have said “yes” to God all along, but in reality were motivated by your lust for power and wealth and your need to control and dominate.  So when God came more clearly and more powerfully to you through John and through me (Jesus), you couldn’t be open to this new revelation.  You had too much at stake in your commitment to domination.  And so it has become clear to all that your “yes” was really a “no” all along”.

Therefore, the result of your refusal to be receptive to God’s work in your midst is that these supposedly evil and scorned people – the tax collectors and prostitutes – will enter God’s kingdom ahead of you.  And that is because you have chosen to shut yourselves out!  It is a most profound and damming statement!

Matthew then completes this collection of stories that concludes Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem through a story that wraps up the whole message presented in each of the previous stories.  This concluding and summarizing story is the parable of the wicked tenants (21:33-46).

Jesus tells of tenants of a vineyard who are responsible for it as leased property.  They are not owners but managers of the vineyard, responsible for it being profitable to the true owner.  But instead of perceiving themselves as tenant-managers, they act as if they were the owners.  They refuse to pay the owner the profit or rent due to him for the use of this land.  What will the owner do to get these tenant-managers to use this property as the law requires?

The owner sends servants to the tenant-managers, assigned with the task of collecting the rent that is due him.  Instead, they meet with consistent and total refusal on the part of the tenants to pay.  In fact, those tenants escalate the struggle by beating and stoning them and then even kill one of the servants.  So the owner sends another delegation who receives the same harsh treatment from the tenants.  Finally, the owner sends his son, saying “They will respect my son!”

Well, they don’t!  Instead, the tenants seize and kill the son, thinking that by doing so they will get the owner to abandon the vineyard and they will inherit it.  But that is not how the owner chooses to act.  Rather, the owner comes himself to the vineyard, ends the lease, takes the vineyard from the tenants and punishes them severely.

The meaning of the parable is transparent – and the chief priests and scribes knew it!  The vineyard is Israel, God is the owner, and the tenants are the religious-political-economic leaders of Israel.  Instead of caring for the nation, these elite saw it as their own possession, and beat and killed any prophet who came from God to call them to accountability.  Finally, God sent his Son, but they killed him.  “Therefore,” Jesus concludes, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom”.  The lesson, not lost on the religious establishment, caused them to “want to arrest Jesus, but they feared the crowds, because the people regarded him as a prophet” (21:46).  But, despite the religious elite’s reaction, the truth which Jesus spoke was not ignored.  That elite will be brutally punished for their insubordination of the true owner – God.  The kingdom will be taken from them – as it was in 70 AD with Titus’ conquering of Israel and in 134 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed and the nation scattered.  The “vineyard” will go to the people – to the peasants – who will build the Jubilee kingdom with Christ as its liberator!

So Matthew witnesses to the passion and resurrection narratives in chapter 21.  It now remains for that witness to be acted out in Jesus’ trial, scourging, crucifixion and resurrection.  But here, the story has been told!        

Isaiah 50:4-9a is the third of the four “Servant Songs” in Isaiah (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13-53:12).  In this song, the speaker fills the role of the servant, and the audience is Israel – and especially those Jews who have fallen away from God.

In this song, the servant’s words reveal him as the prophet who speaks truth to the Israelites, confronting them in their lethargy and depression in the midst of Babylonian exile.  He speaks the word of the Lord to them (vss. 4-5), calling them to become as a nation and as people those whom God created them to be.  The servant describes himself as the one chosen by God to receive God’s word and then to reveal it to the exiles, so that they might be re-energized and work to form society as God intended it to be.

There will be those among the Israelites who will hold positions of power, and who will oppose both the words of the servant and his ministry, the prophet declares.  In their hatred of him and of his proposed reform of their systems, they will attack, persecute and physically harm him.  “I give my back tot those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (50:6).                 

But in spite of the direct opposition of those holding political, economic and religious power, God will sustain the servant and stand by him.  That sustenance will enable him to be both single-minded and uncompromising in his commitment to God and Israel’s redemption.  Thus, he will be able to accept his suffering with stoicism, and that suffering will become transformative for those who see and respond lovingly to it (vss. 7-9).

One can see how this servant song, as well as the others contained in Isaiah, would have sustained and encouraged Jesus, as he faced into the inevitable consequences that would inevitably occur because of the action he and his disciples took that first Palm Sunday morning.

Philippians 2:5-11.  This passage, along with I Corinthians 13 and Psalm 23, is among the most famous and beloved poems in the scripture.  Whether it was written by Paul the Apostle or simply “borrowed” by him as an already well-known poem about Christ, we do not know.  But we do know that it is one of the most powerful statements in the scripture of what God chose to do both for us and for all humanity.

The poem divides into two relatively equal parts: verses 6-8 proclaiming Christ’s humiliation, and verses 9-11 celebrating his exaltation.  It begins “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”, and then launches into the poem.  The poem’s larger context (vss. 1-5) is on the importance of Christians being of the same mind with one another, and his recognition that one cannot have unity without humility.  That is, that which enables people to be united with each other and committed to the common good is their willingness not to be first nor to be always right.  He then, in essence, says, “That’s the way Jesus was.  And if humility was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good enough for us!”  To demonstrate the depth of humility that lay in Jesus, Paul then presents this poem.

“Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (vss. 6-8).

Before the incarnation, Christ had both a “form” and a status equal to God.  The word “form” doesn’t mean that he is “like God” in appearance, but that he was divine – what centuries later the church fathers would call “God of Very God”.  But, though he was fully and totally God, Christ did not see that relationship as “something to be exploited” (or, in other translations, “grasped”).  Jesus was not trying to become God; he already was God.  But his love for humanity was so profound that he did not cling to his privilege of being God, “but emptied himself”.

Jesus relinquished his heavenly status, Paul is telling us, in order to return our world and humanity itself into the world as God intended it to be.  He “emptied” himself or “made himself nothing”, and he did so in three ways.

·        “Being born in human likeness” -- Christ becomes a human being, so that he is not just “similar to” other human beings, but is himself uniquely human as God created humanity to be (that is, before the Fall);

·        “taking the form of a slave” – Christ not only deprived himself of his exalted status to become a human being, but assumed the lowest possible human status – that of a slave;

·        “becoming obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross”.  Not only was Christ, in becoming human, willing to face the reality of death that being human requires.  Christ was willing to submit to the Father’s will by both living a life of obedience, but carrying out that obedience in the death prescribed for disobedient and rebellious slaves – crucifixion!

"Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (vss. 9-11).

God’s grateful response to Christ’s commitment to and acting out of total obedience to him and love for humanity is that God exalts Christ.  He is restored to the glory he voluntarily relinquished so that humanity might be returned to society as God created humanity to be.  Humiliation is replaced with exaltation; obedience is replaced with glory; servanthood is replaced with power.  Christ’s very act of “emptying” himself becomes the means that makes humanity’s salvation possible and the world transformable.  Now, all humanity will bow the knee in homage to the servant-king.  All the systems and powers of the world and even of heaven and the underworld – political, economic or religious – will confess Jesus as Lord.  God will be glorified because Christ chose to “empty himself” and to take upon himself “the form of a slave”!   

Philippians 2:5-11 is a magnificent poem of the depth of the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for the world.  And it is consequently the most powerful of examples in motivating each of us to act humbly as we seek to build the Body of Christ with our brother and sister Christians.  But why would this scripture be used as the epistle lesson in the lectionary for Palm Sunday?  Would it not be more appropriate to use it for Good Friday or even Maundy Thursday?

Not really!  It is most important to use it on the day we celebrate the Triumphal Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.  And the reason why it is so important is to remind us that this entry was not for the purpose of bringing acclaim to Jesus or initiating the overthrow of Rome and of the Jewish clerical aristocracy.  If that were its purpose, then it had already miserably failed.

But that was not the purpose for the Triumphal Entry.  The purpose of that entry was to declare that Messiah had come – the Messiah who was not to be a conquering warlord but a humble monarch seeking to build a kingdom of shalom.  The purpose of that entry was to proclaim that it was the Son of Man who was entering Jerusalem as its Lord -- the One who had come to stand with and for the poor and who was standing over against the systems, calling them to accountability and acting as their judge.  The purpose of that entry was to announce the coming of the Suffering Servant – the One who would suffer and be persecuted, be tortured and die both for the people and systems of Israel – and therefore the people and systems of the entire world. 

The purpose of that entry was to initiate the final week of Jesus’ life, as he moved relentlessly toward that humiliation when God-in-the-flesh would “become obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross”.  For the law of God is that the way up is down, the way to victory is the way of defeat and the death of the Almighty One becomes the means for the liberation of each person and system whom God would call!

Copyright © 2008 by Partners in Urban Transformation