A Roman cross was one of the most humiliating and painful ways to die. Reserved for making lawbreakers into public spectacles of Rome’s authority. Typically, someone crucified would die slowly from suffocation.Each breath became a choice—lift your body against pierced feet in searing pain, or feel your lungs strain for air. All this while being naked and on display for the gawking public.  Utter objectification and dehumanization.  Someone gruesomely moved from image bearer of God to a mere symbol of brutality.

Palm Sunday—with all its fanfare and tension—feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. Can such a dichotomy of feeling and perception be possible?  I wonder if Jesus and his disciples felt the same.

On Thursday evening, he celebrates the traditional Passover meal with his disciples, taking symbols that are ingrained in the fabric of his people and giving them new meaning. In a Passover meal, there would be four cups of wine, each representing promises given by God to the Hebrew people in Exodus 6:6-8.  Four expressions of redemption…

Palm Sunday seems like such a strange turn of events in the narrative of Jesus’ ministry. Previously, he had worked pretty hard at staying under the radar.  But here, he shifts gears and steps onto center stage…riding a donkey. There are so many interesting things happening in this passage. Jesus pre-arranges transportation into Jerusalem with locals from a nearby village. Not a horse, but a donkey and its colt. Odd. He’s so close to Jerusalem. Why get a donkey at this point…unless he had a message and he wanted to be noticed. As a typical Jewish teacher, he was taking this pivotal moment as a chance to use his every move to teach; everything planned and choreographed.

A donkey was not only a common service animal in first century Israel, it had quite a long history in the Hebrew Bible. Donkeys showed up all over the place in the Torah, the history writings and in the prophets.  

One story that may have come to mind for on-lookers of this scene can be found in 1 Kings 1:33-38 when Solomon uses David’s donkey to ride into Jerusalem as the rightful king while Adonjah, a usurper, tries to impress with a triumphal entry on a war horse.