,,, and he sat on them
Yesterday was Palm Sunday, which, seeing that this is lectionary year A when our gospel readings are mainly from Matthew, we opened with our Liturgy of the Palms reading Matthew 21:1-11
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1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
5 “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
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Matthew quotes from Zechariah 9:9, the Greek language Septuagint (LXX) Hebrew bible:
9 Χαῖρε σφόδρα, θύγατερ Σειών· κήρυσσε, θύγατερ Ἰερουσαλήμ· ἰδοὺ ὁ βασιλεύς σου ἔρχεταί σοι δίκαιος καὶ σώζων αὐτός, πρᾳὺς καὶ ἐπιβεβηκὼς ἐπὶ ὑποζύγιον καὶ πῶλον νέον.
literally,
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; proclaim aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold, the King is coming to thee, just, and a Saviour; he is meek and riding on an ass, and a young foal.
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Naive, yea unto obtuse, Matthew does not see the parallelism in Hebrew poetic expression, so takes the Zechariah passage literally and creates the ludicrous image of Jesus sitting on and riding two animals at the same Time, a mother donkey and her foal, a colt.
Copying the event from Mark, Matthew is nevertheless captive to his agenda of proving Jesus' Abrahamic and Mosaic credentials to his, Matthew's, audience, a Jewish Christian church in crisis; and so to Mark's account (Luke's account does not do this, but simply uses Mark), Matthew inserts an OT (LXX) passage that he sees as messianic prophecy that he can identify with Jesus. We love Matthew, but he evidently is no Hebrew scholar or he'd see the poetic parallelism of the Zechariah prophecy.
The passage is ripe for discussion in an adult Sunday school class anyway. We commonly understand Jesus speaking of himself as Lord (the Lord needs them), but what Mark/Matthew actually convey is Jesus having his disciples say that the owner of the animals needs them.
If our common understanding were correct (Jesus referring to himself as Lord) this would be an interesting passage for theological discussion of how the gospel writer(s) mean for us to understand Jesus' understanding of himself. And in fact, shortly thereafter, when Jesus is questioned by the temple elders, it is clear that we are meant to see Jesus identifying himself with I AM, God of Moses and Abraham.
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As well as his triumphal entry story in this, Year A, we read Matthew's version of the Passion of Christ, which also goes to Matthew's lengths to cite OT passages that he, and likely many around him, regard as messianic prophecies about the long awaited and now imminently expected Jewish messiah. I do not want to go there this morning, as I'm too taken with the mental image of Jesus straddled across two donkeys, mother and colt, in order to fulfill prophecy, a strangely constructed understanding.
So -
RSF&PTL
T90