Lectionary blog for April 5, 2020
Palm Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-9; Psalm 31:9-16;
Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 21:1-11, 26:14-27:66
As we prepare to celebrate Palm Sunday, and then to mark the week leading up to Jesus’ execution, I offer a plea to let the Scriptures speak on their own terms. We need to see how Jesus, especially in the Gospel of Matthew, relies on referencing passages to make points for his disciples. The author of Matthew, in turn, makes sure that the readers and hearers of the Gospel account know that Jesus’ life, ministry and death (and resurrection—but that’s for at least a week from now) are all informed and unfolding according to Scripture.
In the beginning of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Jesus insists that his disciples borrow a donkey and her colt. He intended to ride the colt into Jerusalem as an explicit claim of being the messiah, and about what kind of messiah he would be. Jesus purposefully called to mind the prophet Zechariah, who proclaimed:
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).
In so doing, Jesus certainly wanted the crowds to know that he was the righteous messiah, but also that he was lowly and humble. Jesus frequently brings up a passage of Scripture to call to mind the surrounding lines. In Matthew 11:2-6, for example, in response to John the Baptist, who asked if he was the coming one (who would save him from prison), Jesus quoted Isaiah 29 and 36. He pointedly skips over the parts of those chapters that mentioned freeing people from prison. By referencing well-known Scriptures, Jesus essentially said that he wouldn’t be freeing John from prison.
That’s why Jesus said that blessed are those who do not stumble on account of him. According to the conventions of Jesus’ purposeful invoking of Scripture in Matthew, when he rode on the young donkey, he almost certainly meant for his interlocutors to call to mind how the passage from Zechariah continued:
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit (9:10-11).
The crowd may have riled up turmoil within Jerusalem (Matthew 21:10), but Jesus had performed Scripture in such a way to assure the people that he was a peaceful messiah who came to bring an end to warfare.
If we read into Matthew’s passion narrative, we see Jesus purposefully referencing Scripture. In foretelling how his disciples would fall away that night, Jesus quoted Zechariah again, saying, “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.” The larger context of those words comes from Zechariah 13:7:
“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is my associate,”
says the Lord of hosts. “Strike the shepherd,
that the sheep may be scattered ….”
Jesus was calling to mind, prior to his prayer in the garden later, that God had planned what was coming, but that his impending capture and execution didn’t mean he was somehow not from God. The Zechariah passage recalls a time when God acted against someone who served God and with whom God was close. If God had struck a faithful, intimate shepherd causing the metaphorical sheep to scatter previously, God was about to do it again.
In this light, I wonder if Jesus wasn’t giving his disciples some sort of permission to flee. Jesus didn’t belabor the point, but merely said he would meet them again in Galilee. It is only natural that sheep scatter when the shepherd is struck. At least in this Gospel, Jesus said his disciples wouldn’t run away because of the crowds or because of their own fear, but because of Jesus, himself (Matthew 26:31).
Lastly, I wonder at how Jesus recalled and used Scripture during his capture, sham trials and execution. His last hours prior to his horrible death were filled with mocking, abuse and derision, in addition to all the physical pain (Matthew 26:67-68; 27:39-44). Jesus died quoting psalms (Matthew 27:46, Psalm 22:1). But during his humiliation and mockery, was he thinking of Isaiah 50:6 as he was being beaten and spat upon? Was he thinking of Psalm 31:11-13 when he became an object of reproach, dread and slander; when he felt forgotten and his body was broken? I don’t think these passages were originally written about Jesus but, as God’s words, they were a resource for Jesus when he suffered. The people of God have always cried out to God in their distress. Reading their stories in Scripture helps us, and helped Jesus, to know that we do not suffer alone.
As this week moves Jesus from triumph, to mockery to suffering and death, it is important for us to examine Jesus’ relationship to Scripture. God’s words were an ever-present source of comfort, inspiration, guidance and instruction for the Word-made-flesh. With Jesus, may we come to treasure God’s holy words as a resource for us when we are hurting.
