Mark 10 & 11
What did I sign up for when I agreed to preach on Palm Sunday?!
I confess: celebrating Palm Sunday always feels a little awkward to me, standing on this side of those events where we can plainly see what comes next. Having heard so many times Jesus’ explanation of what must follow the parade, I can’t seem to wave the palm with any enthusiasm. The whole event feels like an empty gesture – almost a mockery. Perhaps I am not alone in feeling this awkwardness about Palm Sunday: perhaps other adults here know this feeling, perhaps young people and even some older children do as well. Maybe that is why we induct the youngest among us to re-enact the hosanna parade for us. Maybe we are taking advantage of the fact that they haven’t yet seen (in the way adults see things) what comes after the parade.
It all seems so clear now, what was to happen and why it had to happen. “It was so Jesus could become our Passover lamb,“ or, “It was so that God could establish His upside down kingdom in our world,” or, “It was so God’s could make clear Her preferential option for the poor.” We have it all figured out now, don’t we – huddled in our little camps, clutching our small doctrines? Is it really all the clear? Should it to be? Have we made no place for mystery in our deepest selves? Are we just too clever for wonderment now? “Hosanna – save us!” indeed! May we have ears to hear anew, may our eyes be opened again and ever moreso in this age and the one to come.
[Pause]
Surely it was all a horrible blunder, a gross miscalculation, wasn’t it? One big fat “woops!” for Team Jesus. There was no reason to keep calling out “hosanna” – “save us.” He had no intention of saving anyone; not in the way they meant it anyway. And all the royal pomp and parading: what a farce – he had no intention of sitting on any throne, at least not one in this world (or at least not anytime soon). Who gave all these poor partiers the impression that he was going to take up David’s throne and liberate them from their Roman overlords?
It certainly could not have been Jesus, right? Just a short time earlier he had explained to his disciples exactly what was to happen there. But they did not have, to use Mark’s phrases, ears to hear, or eyes to see. James and John reacted absurdly by trying to position themselves ahead of the other 10, securing seats at Jesus’ right and left in his “δόξα”, in his “glory.” It isn’t clear exactly what sort of “glory” James and John though Jesus was about to obtain; but it is clear they had not truly heard what Jesus had just said about his own suffering and death. They do not understand what they are going to Jerusalem for.
I like to work my way backwards and forwards out from any text I’m trying to understand in order to see its context and what connections the writer is making for us. As I read outwards from the Hosanna parade in at the beginning of Mark 11, it wasn’t hard to notice that it is actually Bartimeaus who starts the victory parade towards Jerusalem. He is the first to call Jesus “Son of David” – a designation meaning much more than merely someone who is a descendant of Israel’s second king, David. “Son of David” is a euphemism for “the messiah” – the one who would defeat Israel’s oppressors, restore Israel’s monarchy, and reign in peace over Israel and world. Why else did the crowds travelling to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover so sternly demand Bartimeaus’ silence when he shouted out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”? This is a crowd already on edge, as Mark puts it: “the disciples were astonished at his words, while those who followed were afraid.” Now this blind beggar is declaring that this perhaps slightly unbalanced itinerant rabbi is the Messiah?! Shut up! Someone will hear you and we’ll all be in trouble!
Their objection to this man’s declaration would only have been more resolute if they knew that his name was Bartimeaus which Mark translates for his readers, “Son of Timeaus.” It doesn’t seem too likely that many of Mark’s readers would not have known that “Bar” is Hebrew for “son of.” So the translation is probably not so much for explanation as it is for emphasis. Mark wants us to really notice that this man has a Hebrew-Greek hybrid name, Bar-Timeaus. I wonder what that means! And moreover, that the Greek part is Timeaus, who some and perhaps many of Mark’s readers would remember was the name of the title character in one of Plato’s treatises, who delivers Plato’s most important cosmological and theological theories in which observation – sight – is the foundation of knowledge. And when Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants, he says directly, without all the gamesmanship of Jesus’ own disciples, “I want to see.” Mark is contrasting Jesus’ disciples, who want positions of glory, with this mixed-ethnicity man who just wants to be able to see what is.
Notice too that when Jesus called for him, Bartimaeus threw his cloak aside before approaching Jesus. Why did he throw his cloak aside? Did he suddenly have a hot flash? He put aside his cloak – more to the point, removed it from his own body, as a sign of respect as he approached a king. Perhaps to reveal that one is unarmed, or perhaps as a show of humility in removing one’s best garment, people would remove their cloaks sometimes when approaching a king. This is exactly what the crowds did very shortly afterwards, following Bartimaeus’ example as they spread their cloaks on the donkey and on the ground before Jesus. Those who had no cloak cut branches from the surrounding f
ields and laid them on the processional path. The removing of cloaks and making a path out of them in the presence of the king was not unheard of in Jewish tradition: it happens in 2 Kings 9 with king Jehu for example; and the practice was know to the Greeks as well.
Perhaps you are now thinking of the legend of Walter Raleigh doing the same for Elizabeth I. Or maybe you are remembering a certain Stella Artois beer commercial which I was tempted to show here. The temptation passed.
So now the miracle of Bartimaeus receiving his sight has emboldened at least some of the crowd to join in the messianic declaration. But what is Jesus’ role in all of this? Is he just humouring Bartimeaus and the rest; passively allowing them their harmless delusion? Hardly, Jesus is the one who ordered up the donkey after all. And a brand new one at that, just as was prophesied in Zechariah 9:9: “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The donkey was a perfectly acceptable royal mount in those days, both human kings and deities were depicted as riding donkeys; though a Roman military commander would more likely ride a horse. Jesus is clearly encouraging a Messianic interpretation of his coming to Jerusalem at Passover, the occasion of deliverance from former overlords. The crowds are now shouting and parading in full expectation that this miracle worker will take up David’s throne and vanquish the current overlords.
Their commitment to their newfound Messiah doesn’t seem to run very deep, though: the Roman authorities don’t even bother to quell this nascent uprising. Reading Mark carefully, the impromptu messianic parade seems to take Jesus to Jerusalem, but not actually into Jerusalem. The crowd seems to have disappeared and Jesus enters the city alone and quite anticlimactically: “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went back out of Jerusalem to spend the night in Bethany with the Twelve.” That’s it. No revolution, no throngs of hopeful supporters, no action of any kind, really – and this in a gospel that has fewer sermons and parables and more “immediate” action than any other. But on this occasion Jesus enters the city of God and simply observes. He looks around. He sees it for what it is. And then goes out of the city for the night. What must he be wondering about? What decisions is he making? What has he signed up for?
Moving to the third and last scene we’ll watch today, we find Jesus and the disciples returning to Jerusalem the next day and now we get some action. He goes directly to the courtyard of the temple where there is a currency exchange and an animal inspection centre. You see, when you brought your animal to be sacrificed in order to have a sin forgiven or to restore ritual purity, the animal had to be without blemish; but by whose standards? Apparently some priests were rejecting a large percentage of animals brought by worshippers. Conveniently, they happen to have a large collection of acceptable doves which you could obtain . . . for a price. If that wasn’t corrupt enough, there was also a black market currency exchange in operation in which people using Greek and Roman currencies would have to exchange these for Jewish currency at rates very much to the advantage of the currency exchangers; all of this being done with the blessing of the priesthood. On Passover weekend with Jews coming from all over the empire, these currency extortionists were about to make a killing.
Jesus anger is stirred and, for the only time in his recorded life, Jesus uses physical force, at least against some tables. Finally some revolutionary zeal! Perhaps this is the messiah after all . . . look at him cleaning the house of those corrupt, ruthlessly violent Romans . . . except that’s not what he did at all. He gave a licking to his own people, cleaning house in the Jewish temple, not the Roman praetorium. Jesus does not seem to understand his role as the Son of David. In fact, he is causing his prophesy of his own death to come true; and not at the hands of Roman resistors to his rule, but at the hands of some of the leaders of his own people who feared his influence over regular folk.
Jesus acts to restore economic justice for worshippers being ripped off by their own religious leaders. But why does he stop there? What about Roman oppression of all the people of Judah? Where is Jesus’ preferential option for the oppressed here? One word and the Romans could be vanquished by legions of armed angels or miraculous wall collapses, or earthquakes . . . or another Passover angel of death.
But here Jesus seems to have no serious quarrel with his own Roman oppressors. How strange.
It seems that, all along, Jesus has been staging some sort of political theatre that none of his disciples understood and that is not easy to fully account for even from this side of those events. Is he mocking the vanity of earthly monarchies in an ironic farce? Is he actually claiming the throne of his father David, only in some cosmically redefined form? It seems he may be doing both. Jesus’ realm has begun to do something new in the realms of the earth. Jesus challenges “the powers,” and yet does not always enter into conflict with the ones we most expected him too. Jesus directs his most personal challenge within his own family. So his kingdom has begun to reshape this realm, and yet his throne is somehow not of this of this world.
But surely that is not all there is to it. Jesus journey is surely about more than defining the jurisdiction of his kingdom. Jesus has been trying to get his followers to see something they that no one seems to be able to grasp. There is some powerful mystery at work in the gospel of Mark, and it seems it is not those closest to Jesus who are the first to begin to see it. It seems there is some sort of blind faith required to see and hear whatever it is that is so wondrous. Perhaps we are right after all to ask those with the most unbridled faith among us, our children to do the bulk of the hoping for us, leading us in the hosanna parade, while we with more encumbered faith prepare for what comes next.
What did the crowd that accompanied Jesus to Jerusalem think they were signing up for when they shouted their Hosannas? What was the wonder they saw? What did the disciples think they were signing up for when they left everything to follow Jesus? What mystery were they beginning to perceive? What did those who witnessed his holy rage and heard his teaching in the temple think he wanted them to sign up for? They wondered at his teachings. Do we still have room for wonder?
What sort of “glory” is Jesus really about to obtain? Are your eyes open for it? Are you looking for it in the courts of religion and power in your world? Are you keepi
ng an eye out for it on the road to somewhere else? Is it to be found among your own kind, or among others? Do we have eyes to see and ears to hear? Are we ready to enter Jerusalem with Jesus, this week? On Friday will we come in wonder, or have we got it all figured out already.
As we walk further with Jesus into this week, may the events of his life and death, unfold in new ways right before our eyes. May we discover the mystery Mark wants us to keep searching for. May we wonder at Jesus. Jesus challenges us to sign up to walk with him in wonder, in mystery, and into . . . ?