P&F Lectionary Commentary: Palm Sunday 04/04/2004

Lectionary Commentary

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 19:28-40

This being Palm Sunday, it is hardly surprising that thetexts have quite evidently been chosen from those cited or suggested in the narration of the entry into Jerusalem the first day of that week, the last in the earthly life of Jesus. However, the ways in which they should be read are not all as straightforward as might at first appear to be the case. If we are to avoid the tragic misunderstandings with our Jewish brethren that go back at least to the Epistle to the Hebrews and Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho in our reading of the Scriptures, we must avoid what seems like common sense to many Christians who come to Isaiah and the Psalms from reading the New Testament. There is, of course, a place for a Christian reading of the Scriptures but it need not raise unnecessary hackles. We shall suggest some ways.

Isaiah 50:4-9a
We are again in Second Isaiah, which we have frequently visited this Lenten season. By now readers of these reflections are familiar with the general historical context of these homilies—the exiled Judeans in the city of Babylon whom the prophet urges to accept return to Jerusalem under the kingship of Cyrus the Persian. This particular text is one of four often signaled out as “Songs of the Servant of YHWH.” In these songs, more than in the rest of the preaching in Second Isaiah, there is an acceptance of the sufferings that accompany the ones who carry out the mission of God to the nations. They have been read by Christians at least since Justin in the Second Century C.E. as predictions of the mission and sufferings of the Messiah. It is not evident that this was their original intention when they were first preached, which does not disqualify this interpretation but does qualify its significance.

The first verse has the prophet speaking about what the Lord YHWH has done for him. From the Lord he has received a skilled tongue so that he can sustain the weary with a word. NRSV translates “the tongue of a teacher” but the qualification of the tongue is passive in Hebrew meaning the one who is taught and not the one who teaches. NRSV assumes a vowel modification in the text that is not necessary. In context, the prophet must sustain those who are to abandon their houses and fields and head across the desert toward a city whose condition after more than a generation of abandon they can only imagine. But it is not just the tongue that the Lord has sharpened but also the ear to listen to those who are taught, evidently the exilic community. I did not rebel against this calling put on me by the Lord (v 5). In the politically heated climate of Babylon at that time one can understand the real temptation of resisting the prophetic calling to preach one of the options being considered by the community, that of submitting to the Persians.

V 6 itemizes some of the pressures the prophet must face if he is faithful to his calling. The prophet of the saying announces his determination to endure the beating of the back, the beard being pulled out, the insults and spitting. Both pain and shame.

Vv 7-9 are an affirmation of the assurance of vindication, the sort of affirmation that is familiar from the psalms of lament of the individual in the Book of Psalms. In the end, if God is on my side I cannot lose. That is the prophet’s affirmation. This is going to be a struggle but the outcome is sure since he is carrying out God’s calling.

But, who precisely is the prophet who must carry out this contentious mission? In the first place, evidently Second Isaiah himself who must have faced serious opposition within the exilic community. But this is poetry, and poetry is often polyvalent. That is, its meaning is not just one but two or more at the same time. In the first line of the first “Servant Song” (Is 42:1) the protagonist of the song is called the “servant of YHWH.” In the first place, servant means minister, in the same sense in which Joab the general and Zadok the high priest were servants of David. It need not be a lowly calling, although it may be, as when the sons of Israel are servants of Pharaoh in Egypt and must do backbreaking labor at Pharaoh’s command. Our poem, Isa 50:4-9a does not call the protagonist the servant of YHWH but it follows the pattern of the other songs which do and is usually interpreted as one of a series.

In Second Isaiah the servant of YHWH par excellence is the people Israel as first announced in Isa 41:8. So we can hardly go astray if we read this poem about the prophet with a dangerous mission to refer to the nation itself, understood as the Babylonian exilic community as the Second Isaiah does in fact understand that nation. They must be ready to assume a dangerous role because the Lord is calling them to it and will sustain them. These two meanings—the prophet and the people Israel—are certainly originally intended by the composer of this poem.

But poems take on a life of their own when they are committed to memory or to paper. And new hearers or readers may well find meanings in them which were not intended by the author but which should be considered legitimate meanings of the text once it leaves the hands of the composer. Such is the Christian reading of Isa 50:4-9a. In it Christians see the fate of Jesus at the hands of the Roman soldiers the day of his execution. He was beaten, given a crown of thorns and mocked as a royal pretender. This beating and scorn is related to his calling in serving the people of Galilee and Judea teaching them to read their Scriptures in ways that would free them from guilt and pain, and free them from their demons. In so doing he had alienated the authorities at the Temple and raised suspicions among the Roman military authorities. So that, as with the prophet in Second Isaiah, Jesus also suffers pain and shame because he is faithful to the mission that God gave him.

This is a legitimate reading of the prophetic text. Not the only one, of course, but a legitimate one. Should one wish to apply the text to Stephen Biko who died in a South African jail for his defense of South African blacks against the indignities of apartheid this would also be a true reading. Or even an application to Mother Theresa who endured the indignities of a life of poverty in Calcutta in fulfilling the mission God gave her to the poor people of Bengal.

But for Christians on Palm Sunday, Isa 50:4-9a is a poem about Jesus, his mission and his passion. So we must read it.

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
This is a communal psalm of thanksgiving, as was Psalm 126, which we saw last Sunday. It is a liturgical celebration for a salvation wrought by God for Judah. It begins and ends with a call to worship YHWH for his “steadfast love” (chesed) (vv 1-4 and 29). The description of the situation of menace from which salvation was brought is in vv 10-14, and refers to the attacks of the nations on a first person singular, evidently the king. V 15 speaks of the salvation (yeshua`) the Lord has wrought by his strong right arm. So, this is originally a liturgy of thanksgiving for salvation from military invasions. The fluctuation from king to people which characterizes it and which will prove important for the Christian reading is quite natural in the liturgical context we can imagine. The salvation of the king is also the salvation of the people.

The procession described in vv 19-27 is the return of the victorious king who has been saved from his enemies and who now enters the temple precincts as a saved man to the shouts of joy of his saved people. “Open to me the gates of righteousness and I will give thanks to YHWH” (v 19). “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (v 24). V 19 is the call of the king and v 24 the joyful shout of the people. Then comes a prayer for further salvation, Hoshia`-nna, “Save us” (v 25), a prayer that has become praise in Christian worship through one of those mysterious linguistic transformations that nobody plans. They just happen.

The cry of v 26, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” is the cry of the multitude around Jesus at his entry into the city. It was never a mistake to understand this as a royal praise, for that it was in the original liturgy. At the entry of Jesus it means that the crowd affirms that this humble prophet from Galilee is the king through whom the Lord will bring salvation. The cries of Hosanna are both cries for help and songs of praise on the lips of the Jerusalem crowd.

Philippians 2:5-11
Everything indicates that in this passage Paul is quoting a hymn or poem that he himself did not compose. It has the regularity of lines one expects from crafted art work with words. It even has assonance and rhyme, not quite strict, yet identifiable (in the Greek).

But what is most remarkable about this poem is not its form so much as its content, a celebration of Christ. Christ is recognized as equal to God (v 6) who emptied himself to take on the shape (schema) of a human (v 7). This is in a nutshell the incarnation as it was later rendered a theological formula in the fourth-century debates! Paul writes to Philippi about 51 or 52, not much more than twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If as we have suggested he is here quoting a hymn already created, this puts the beginning of Christological reflection back very early indeed!

This means that in the first generation of followers of the way, Jesus was already recognized as more than human, a genuine presence of God in human form. And this is our Christian confession down through the ages! When Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus as king we Christians understand that kingship not to be a political affirmation, though it is that also, but a recognition of the presence of God in human form.

This human Jesus humbled himself to death, and death on the cross. It is important to have an idea of what crucifixion meant. The capture of Jerusalem had not yet occurred, and Jews were not yet really familiar with crucifixion as they would become. Josephus claims that during the campaign to capture Jerusalem, for a time the Romans crucified five hundred people daily on the perimeter of the city. The people within the city could see from the walls the bodies hanging on the trees around the city, where they were slowly devoured by dogs and birds. It was a way of humiliating those who dared to defy Roman authority.

Crucifixion was the highest punishment (suplicium maximus), and was reserved for subversives who threatened Roman order, often disobedient slaves. Its sting was not so much the infliction of pain. In fact often the subversives were not crucified until they were already dead from the tortures they suffered. Crucifixion was the ultimate humiliation, the naked exposure of one’s decaying body for public scrutiny.

Jesus, says the hymn, humiliated himself to crucifixion! “Therefore” God exalted him highly (huperupsosen) and caused all creation to be submitted to him as the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is remarkable primitive affirmation of Christian faith, one that we can still affirm today. In the context of Palm Sunday it is this last exaltation by God (v 9) that is to be celebrated. The Friday of the crucifixion has not yet arrived. Of course, this means that the extent of the exaltation is not yet manifest. That must await Easter. The glorification of Palm Sunday is just a lesser glory than that of Easter. But Christians who live after Easter celebrate the entrance to Jerusalem with the crowd that did not yet know cross and exaltation, joining our knowledge of the greater glory with theirs of the lesser glory of what at that time must have seemed like a political action.

Luke 19:28-40
According to the account of the synoptic gospels, Jesus did not enter into Jerusalem without some preparation. These preparations involved at least getting a beast for him to ride into the city at the head of a procession of his friends and followers. Vv 30-35 suggest that the owner of the donkey knew Jesus and was expecting him, though it is not clear that the two envoys knew this. Although one might think that a donkey is a modest beast for a royal personality it is the only time we hear of Jesus mounting any beast in spite of the long trips he took, exclusively on foot. This entry was thus signaled as out of the ordinary. This was to be a show for the people of Jerusalem and the pilgrims who were in the city for the feast of Passover.

Before leaving the Mount of Olives across the valley from Jerusalem to the east, the disciples threw their cloaks on the donkey and helped Jesus up onto it (v 35). As they left the Mount of Olives and crossed the valley into Jerusalem people saw them coming and took their garments to spread in front of him to make a royal carpet or a modest imitation thereof. And they began to shout, probably prompted by the disciples, the words of Psalm 118, “Blessed be he who comes in the name of the Lord.” In the psalm this cry refers to the king who returns from victory.

The whole scene is an imitation of the entry of generals or emperors into the city of Rome known at the time as parousias, “comings.” As we read it, it is rather an anticipation of the Parousia of Jesus Christ in glory that we today call the Second Coming (not a biblical expression). Luke is the only Gospel of the four that does not report that the crowds rang out with the cry of Hosanna. I frankly do not see what significance this omission has, but it does stand out.

This procession ought to be seen as a political statement. And it was so that it was understood by some Pharisees who were standing by and by the Romans who must have prepared then and there to capture him when the occasion arose. To the protests of the Pharisees Jesus responded by saying that the city would be totally destroyed because “you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (v 44).

Supported by the surging crowd, Jesus entered the temple and drove out those who were selling there (v 45). This act is an astounding statement. The sellers were most necessary to provide the lambs required by pilgrims who came from afar. Jesus evidently intends to begin a new order politically, probably by eliminating sacrifices in the temple, the most likely meaning of having no sellers there. One can understand the fury of the chief priests and their decision to have him killed (v 47). Probably, the Romans who watched from their observation towers came to the same conclusion.

The Palm Sunday entry was a political statement. After the cross and the resurrection it reads differently. In later theological jargon Jesus was fully man and fully divine. Palm Sunday is the fully human making a political statement that, after Good Friday and Easter, will be read as a statement of faith. Our celebration must somehow recognize both elements in this remarkable story.

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