Matthew 21:1-17
Now they had come near Jerusalem and reached Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village before you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; release them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Son of Woman needs them.’ And they will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
‘Look, your sovereign is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that were going before him and the one following were shouting, saying:
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One!
Hosanna in the highest!”
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was shook, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and the tables of the moneychangers he overturned, as well as the station of those who sold doves. He said to them, “It is written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
but you all are making it a den of robbers.”
And they came to him in the temple, those who were blind and disabled, and he cured them. Now when the chief priests and the religious scholars saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the girls and boys crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry. They said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Sermon “In Christ”
Welcome to the most dangerous day of Holy Week, apart from Good Friday. Welcome, too, to a day on which we, once again, witness Jesus pouring out his love on behalf of humanity.
We begin Palm Sunday with the waving of branches and songs of joy, and we sing “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna.” It is a festive day, a day of rejoicing and the singing of children. It is not unlike the days we marveled at as children, when we first experienced parades. I grew up in South Jersey, near Philadelphia. Have you ever heard of the Mummers’ Day Parade? It is a wild, star-spangled, sequin-covered jamboree in which string bands march and dance through the streets and Philadelphians go wild. In fact, it is so wild, my parents never took us to it in person. We watched it on television. It was probably safer.
The parade in which Jesus rode into Jerusalem was hardly the Mummers’ Day Parade. But it was joyful, and it was hopeful. In their book “The Last Week,” theologians Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan wrote about two parades that were occurring on that day. One parade was the one we know so well, as Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. On the other side of town, a very different parade took place. In one parade, an itinerant preacher, healer, and wonder-worker, rode into town on, according to the Gospel of Matthew, both a colt and a donkey; that is about as strange and humble an entrance as you could hope for. On the other side of town, Pontius Pilate rode into town on a war horse. Jesus's triumphal entry consisted of people singing psalms such as Psalm 118, pilgrims eagerly climbing up the Temple mount to begin the Passover celebration. The entry of Pontius Pilate, on the other hand, consisted of a legion of Rome’s finest, both marching and on horseback, wearing armor as if for battle. In one parade palm branches were joyfully waved as people cried out “Hosanna!” In the other parade, weapons were held high. This parade was designed to intimidate the people of Jerusalem. This parade was designed to control and end anything that might smack of an uprising.
Rome always worried about Passover. It makes sense. Passover was the celebration of Jews’ liberation from enslavement in Egypt. It was a celebration of freedom by people who were living under occupation by Rome. That made it an emotional tinderbox which occasionally did result at an attempted uprising—one that was always, brutally, quashed. We need to understand this as Holy Week begins. We need to understand why the actions Jesus took on this day lit a fuse that exploded on Good Friday.
To be clear: there is no evidence that Jesus himself intended to lead an armed insurrection in Jerusalem. As always, he came in peace. But he came among people who murmured the word, “Messiah” in reference to him. After all, hadn’t he talked—many times—about a new kingdom, one in which God would reign? He also came among people who were singing, Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, and it was him they were talking about. He came among people who sang out “Hosanna to the Son of David.” Hosanna doesn’t mean “Praise God,” or “Hurray!” It means, “Save us.” “Save us, Son of David.” Jesus was on the radar of those who were alarmed by words like these, called out to a charismatic nobody with the right lineage, whose preaching and actions were attracting crowds by the thousands.
After his parade, Jesus went into the Temple, and he drove out those who were buying and selling animals for sacrificial offerings: cattle, sheep, and lambs. He flipped over the tables of those who changed money, which is to say, exchanged Roman coins for the coinage that was permitted in the Temple precincts… again, so that people could buy animals for the sacrifice. He even flipped over the tables of those who sold doves. Doves were purchased by the poorest of the pilgrims, people who could not afford a lamb.
Jesus was offended that the poorest of the poor were often unable to offer sacrifices in the Temple, because they couldn’t even afford doves. Families of day laborers, tenant farmers, and others living in the edge financially, simply couldn’t stretch their income that far. At the same time the Roman prefects and governors, as well as the religious elites, were living in ever-increasing financial comfort. Jesus was offended that participation in worship in the Temple was denied to those who couldn’t afford it.
After these actions—which were a strong, if not violent response to what he saw in the Temple—Jesus speaks to those who are hurrying away. He quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’” (Isaiah 56:7). “But” he says, now quoting the prophet Jeremiah, “You are making it a den of robbers” (Jeremiah 7:11).
And then, the people came to him: the blind, the disabled, all of those who had just seen what he had done and fully understood its relevance. They came to him, and he healed them. This is a detail in this story that is not present in the other gospels; it’s only here in Matthew. But this makes sense to me. There is no evidence that Jesus was a violent man by nature, but there is boundless evidence that he was a healer. It is somehow fitting that, in the aftermath of a moment of fury—even righteous fury—Jesus would move on to healing people, which was the heart of his ministry.
Of course, the commotion caught the attention of the religious elites in the Temple. They were deeply concerned about the fact that children, boys and girls, were singing out “Hosanna to the Son of David.” They were beyond concerned. They were angry. “Do you hear what these are saying?” they demanded. Jesus responded by quoting Psalm 8: “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?”
And then Jesus turns on his heel and leaves. He heads out of Jerusalem, going against the flow of the crowds now, as he seeks refuge in Bethany, he could find the home of his closest friends: Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.
I imagine Jesus exhausted. I imagine him sitting, possibly by a fire, and letting the tension and the fear of the day roll off his shoulders as he prayed. I imagine his friends offering him a meal and wine. Not much conversation, simply a place where Jesus could find a peaceful refuge, even if only for a short while.
The day we call Palm Sunday was, for Jesus, the second most dangerous day of Holy Week. According to scholar Nathanael Andrade,
…during his final pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Jesus and his followers engaged in Messianic preaching and aggressive activity in the Temple precinct. While small-scale, it had a recognizable potential to trigger a serious crowd disturbance and elicited a confrontation with the chief priests. These had an obligation to protect innocent pilgrims in the Temple from such danger, and they organized his arrest. Once that happened, Jesus’s activity at the Temple was volatile enough for Pilate to classify it as sedition. It was enough for Pilate to have him crucified. [1]
Jesus died protesting a system that was designed to harm the most vulnerable. He died for the people, women, men, and children, who flocked to him to hear his words, to sit at table with him, and to feel his healing touch. He died because the sin of the world was so great that someone who advocated for those people was automatically mistrusted by those in power. And we can look around us, in the year of our Lord 2026, and say, in the words of the great David Byrne, same as it ever was.
But the way of Jesus is love. Even in the face of injustice, love. Even in the face of cruelty, the quiet, deliberate pouring out of love as we are able—in acts of kindness, in acts of caring, in acts of generosity. Love, in our advocating for and walking alongside those Jesus calls “the least of these.” Love, even in the face of the powers and principalities whose way leads to death, even death on a cross. In all that we do, all that we have, all that we are, love.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Nathanael J. Andrade, Killing the Messiah: The Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2025).