[ p. 155 ]
THE restful night in Bethany must have driven away the fears that had haunted the apostles for days. They seem to have awakened to a happy morning; and when their Master announced his preparations for entrance into the city, they set about in bright anticipation of a joyous festival.
It is not easy to determine exactly the meaning of the Palm Sunday entrance. It may be that Jesus wished to throw down the gauntlet to his enemies, to make it impossible for them to ignore him; this would correspond with his action in cleansing the temple on the following day. Or some have supposed that Jesus, this once, in the effort to give the nation one more chance, allowed himself to meet the expectation of the people and to bend to their wishes. If so, he had in mind an ancient writing, which told how the Messiah should come to Israel—a king, riding on a royal beast; but not a warrior king, a man of peace. For this reason, he sent two of his friends into the neighboring village of Bethphage and told them to bring the ass and the colt they would find tethered at the entrance to the village. Warrior kings rode on horses; when kings went on peaceful errands, they went on asses.
[ p. 156 ]
All this seems a little stilted, an approach to the dramatic quite unlike Jesus. It is much more probable that he made the preparations for his entrance into Jerusalem in a quiet way, though preferring not to go quite so simply as on his teaching journeys. The crowds that greeted him made the entrance more of a spectacle than was his intention, and afterward his disciples remembered that one of the old prophets had written about the coming of the King in words that were singularly appropriate to the events of this day.
So Jesus and his followers began the journey to Jerusalem. The Twelve forgot their fears in their rejoicing over the welcome he received. Everyone in Jerusalem had seen or had heard of Jesus, and all wondered if the great teacher and miracle-worker—to them the more important matter—would come to the feast. The religious leaders also wondered, but for a very different reason. They had come to the conclusion that here was a dangerous man. To all their other reasons for hating him, there was added now the fear that if he rode long on this wave of popularity the people would sweep him into rebellion against Rome and to an assertion of national independence. That, of course, could end only in failure, and then they would lose their place and nation. Very subtly the High Priest, who had reasons of his own for hating Jesus, argued that it was best that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation perish—unconscious, of course, of the meaning later to be placed on his words. “Indeed, yes,” said one of the apostles afterward; “not for this nation only, [ p. 157 ] but to gather together into one all God’s dispersed children.” Caiaphas spoke better than he knew when he said that Jesus should die for the people; his official position as High Priest gave his words prophetic meaning.
So the priests plotted, while the people rejoiced. On Jesus moved toward Jerusalem, up the road, around the brow of the hill. Other pilgrims joined the company. Still others, anxious to see the Galilean prophet, came out from Jerusalem to meet the party, as, indeed, they often met other companies coming up from various parts of the country. Meeting him, they waved palm branches. [1] Soon some enthusiasts began to throw down these branches to make a carpet on which the prophet might ride; others tore off branches from the trees and cast them before him; this soon became general, after the custom of those who would welcome a king. Then some took off their cloaks and spread them in the road. Meanwhile, unconscious of its deeper significance, they sang their psalm, “Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom that cometh, the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” [2]
[ p. 158 ]
So they moved on. The disciples felt that at last his cause was laying hold on the nation. They forgot their former misgivings. They were sure that great and glorious events would follow this glorious day. They hardly knew what they expected, but at any rate they felt that it would be a mighty triumph for him. After all, his trip into “the enemy’s country” was not turning out badly! With happy hearts, they joined the singing crowd. They were full of anticipations of the coming glory.
Then a sudden hush. The gladness went out of their faces, the joy was stilled in their hearts, they looked at one another in amazement: the Master was crying! Evidently he had no illusions; he knew that this wave of excitement would soon pass. They had just turned the brow of the hill and before them lay Jerusalem with its turrets and towers; and he burst into tears at the sight. He saw the city and he saw its future fate; its eager crowd of pilgrims and their real spiritual state. This which was their day of opportunity was passing and its coming had been in vain.
“If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come unto thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in [ p. 159 ] on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” [3]
How closely these words recall his similar words of tender grief, which show how even in his stern denunciation of the people he was still full of love and longing for them: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.”
The triumphal entry occurred in the late afternoon, and when Jesus reached the temple it was almost dark. But, says Mark significantly, before he returned to Bethany, “he looked round about on all things.” [4] What he saw was far from edifying. W T hen the Old Testament prescribed sacrifices, it laid down strict rules about the condition of the animals that might be brought to the altar, and the rabbis had further elaborated these rules. Since animals fulfilling such conditions were not easy to obtain, the chief priests had undertaken breeding and selling ritually pure beasts and birds. This, in itself, was laudable, but the results were sad. As every sacrifice had to be inspected by the priests before it could be offered, animals not furnished by the chief priests were liable to rejection; so a monopoly was created which enabled [ p. 160 ] the chief priests to charge any price they pleased. Moreover, certain dues could be paid only in a special coinage minted by the same chief priests (“temple currency”) and they fixed its rate of exchange to suit themselves. The people naturally hated this state of affairs bitterly, and “den of thieves” was perhaps the lightest epithet applied to the temple market. [5] To Jesus this market was offensive for a further reason as well. Into the great outer court of the temple Gentiles were allowed to enter freely; it was supposed to be a place for their devotions, so that the temple could truly be called “a house of prayer for all peoples.” But the chief priests had actually installed the market in this court; in this way they had no rent to pay and their profits were still further increased. That the noise of the animals and the loud bargaining of the merchants made prayer impossible meant nothing to them. Such was the situation—yet nobody saw precisely what could be done about it.
Jesus, however, saw very clearly what could be done. The next morning, armed with a whip and followed by his disciples, he headed a raid that overthrew tables, scattered merchandise, and drove the larger animals in panic out the temple door. The crowd cheered with joy and joined—we may be certain—in the good work. The chief priests were helpless; they knew their unpopularity, and they knew that to use the temple police at such a moment would be suicidal. [ p. 161 ] There was nothing to be done but to let Jesus have his way. [6]
On the next day, however, feeling that they must do something, they tried a peculiarly futile move. They sent a formal deputation to ask Jesus: “By what authority do you do these things? Who gave you this authority?” As the official and supreme heads of Israel’s religion, they thought they had a right to an answer; perhaps they believed that they could force Jesus to make a public Messianic claim. But he, looking at them in righteous scorn, asked: “By what authority do you question me? You claim to be the chosen interpreters of God’s will ? Interpret it, then! Tell me, what was John the Baptist’s authority?” In confusion they replied that they did not know. This utterly discredited their claims. If, when brought face to face with the searching message of the Baptist, they could not tell whether it was true or not, they proved that their opinions on religion were worthless. Jesus, therefore, curtly refused to talk any further with them.
This was defiance, deliberate and calculated. Jesus had come to Jerusalem to force the issue, and any chance of compromise was now tossed to the winds. If there had ever been any hesitancy among the chief priests about Jesus’ faith, the last shred of doubt was now destroyed. All they waited for was an opportunity [ p. 162 ] to seize him, and such an opportunity was bound to come soon.
The other events of the last few days, consequently, merely marked time while the final storm was preparing to break. Jesus went on teaching, more or less as he had always done, though with an added sharpness against the religious leaders, and his encounters with various classes of questioners have no specially crucial significance. In two instances he met opponents whom he had not found in Galilee. In Jerusalem—as was not the case in the north of Palestine —direct tribute to Rome was paid, and certain “Herodians” tried to trap him into pronouncing it unlawful. As these men were the only Jews who defended the Roman rule, they were quite prepared to denounce him to Pilate as a traitor. [7] The Sadducees, aristocrats who rarely left Jerusalem, asked him a frivolous puzzle-question about marriage in the resurrection—and decided then to leave Jesus alone. The only significant occurrence in Jesus’ teaching is his question to the Scribes about the nature of the Messiah: how can David’s Lord be called David’s son? In this question we see the reflection of his faith in his own destiny.
Our First Evangelist, perhaps a little too dramatically, makes Jesus’ ministry conclude with a collection of almost every denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees that Jesus ever uttered. Mark and Luke, more appropriately, give as his final public words his praise [ p. 163 ] of a poor widow who had cast all her living—two pitiful “mites”—into the temple treasury.
At last the hour arrived when Jesus knew he was leaving the temple and his teaching forever. He had done his best, but he had been unable to prevent the coming catastrophe, so blinded and selfish were men’s minds. As he passed out, some of the disciples praised the beautiful building and, sadly, he told them explicitly of what must now inevitably come to pass. Our three “synoptic” Gospels insert at this point appropriate summaries of all his teaching about the future, including what is known as the “little apocalypse,”[8] which warns his followers of the conduct to be pursued when the catastrophe is at hand. When they see “the abomination of desolation”—the standards of the Roman armies—approaching, they are to flee without a moment’s hesitation. A man standing on the housetop must descend by the outside ladder, a man working in the fields must leave his outer garment lying where he left it; the only safety is in flight. All this actually took place. When the war which led to Jerusalem’s destruction broke out, all the Christians abandoned Palestine and fled across Jordan to a city called Pella, where, themselves in safety, they watched from far off the destruction of that Jerusalem which Jesus had called to repentance—and which had refused to listen and had crucified him.
John, the only Evangelist to tell us of these palm branches, explains that they were brought out from Jerusalem (St. John xii: 13.) He calls them “the branches of the palm trees”; probably we are to understand palm branches used at the Feast of Tabernacles in September, which Jews kept in their houses for the ensuing year. Jerusalem is so high above sea level (just about 2,600 feet) that the palm does not grow anywhere in its neighborhood. ↩︎
St. Mark xi: 9-10. It should be observed that in St. Mark—the oldest account—the crowds do not hail Jesus actually as the Messiah, but rather as a prophet who has predicted the near coming of the Kingdom. This would, in fact, be the attitude of most of the people, although Messianic acclamations here and there (as in the other Gospels) would have been inevitable. ↩︎
St. Luke xix: 41-44. ↩︎
St. Mark xi: 11. ↩︎
Incidentally, as to this the Pharisees sympathized thoroughly with the people; the chief priests and the Pharisees detested each other. ↩︎
Habitually, of course, Jesus condemned the use of force and trusted to the eventual power of God’s truth to conquer. But in dealing with such hardened hypocrites as the chief priests, force was the only possible weapon. ↩︎
Pharisees appear also in the scene, but they would have approved Jesus’ answer. ↩︎
St. Mark xiii: 6-8, 14-20, 24-27. ↩︎