Meditation based on Mark 11:1-11
(and inspired by Jan Richardson)
given at Central Congregational Church on Palm Sunday 2012
After the donkey and her colt,
After the procession,
After the waving branches and the road covered with coats,
After the hosannas and the Hallelujas and the cheering, noisy crowd,
After Jesus entered through the gates of Jerusalem,
After all of this, only Mark, in a few bare words, tells of how Jesus went into the temple, looked around, spent so much time that when he was done it was already late, so he left.
Just left.
He didn’t teach. He didn’t preach. He didn’t heal, or confront, or challenge. He didn’t mix it up with the priests and the scribes. Jesus simply looked around, and left.
Went back out of Jerusalem, back to Bethany where he started the day, and where he seemed to be staying.
And at the end of this day, the crowds seem to have disappeared – leaving Jesus to walk back to Bethany with only the twelve by his side.
It’s an oddly quiet, and anti-climactic ending to the story. What began like a procession and a celebration, became more like a pilgrimage.
And in between the fierce energy of the first part of the story with the preparations and the process, and the quiet, subdued quality of the end is the temple of Jerusalem – the holiest of places for the Jewish people, central to their religious practice and identity.
It’s a place that must have also held a lot of memories for Jesus. The gospels differ in their account of how much time Jesus spent in the temple in Jerusalem. More than likely he made the Passover pilgrimage to the temple every year with his family, so perhaps he had sweet memories of attending those celebrations with his family. And it is to this place that Jesus returns on this day when he is greeted at the gates of Jerusalem like a king.
When Jesus walked around the grounds of the temple, I wonder what he saw? Did he see himself as a boy, running up the steps with Mary and Joseph? Did he see, as the Gospel of John says, himself at age 12, deep in conversation with the teachers? Was he remembering, as the Gospel of Matthew tells it, Satan taking him up to the top of the temple and urging him to jump so that angels could catch him?
We’ll never know, of course, but Mark, I believe, gives us a clue in the verses that come next. Mark tells how, the very next day, Jesus leaves Bethany again, in quite a mood. He curses a fig tree that had no fruit to feed him, storms up to the temple, overturning the tables and chairs of the merchants and money-changers as he went, indicting those who turned what should be “a house of prayer for all the nations” into a den of robbers and thieves. And the crowd, according to Mark, watched him, spellbound.
And, according to Mark, this was the last straw. In Mark it was this act at the temple that made the chief priests and the scribes afraid of him, had them looking for a way to kill him.
I think we can guess what Jesus saw that Palm Sunday at the temple by what he did the next day. Jesus looked around at a place that should have been a place of worship and prayer, a place where God’s love and compassion for the people shone, a place where he would feel at home, and close to God. But what he saw was corruption: common people, the poor, overcharged and swindled of their money to feed a temple structure that gave them little or nothing in return.
And I imagine Jesus looking around, seeing all this, and knowing, in his heart, what must be done – what he needed to do. The temple system was corrupt, infected, sick – and it needed a different type of healing. No gentle treatment would do – what was needed was something more radical – like debriding a wound – clearing away the dead tissue, draining infection – to expose healthy tissue underneath so it could heal.
But such healing is painful – and looking around the temple, knowing what must be done, I think Jesus knew what the reaction of the temple authorities would be, I think he knew the cost – and that he would be the one to pay it.
And so, it was a somber Jesus who walked back to Bethany that evening with the twelve. I imagine the scene around the dinner table that night. The disciples around him, clueless as usual, excitedly recalling the events of the day – the faces of the crowd, the celebration. Planning for the future. They were finally in Jerusalem, now something’s really going to happen. I mean – what a welcome!
But Jesus, unusually quiet, smiling a little, perhaps, at their enthusiasm, but not participating. Eating his meal. Planning his next move. Seeing where it would lead. Praying in his heart that God would give him the courage and the strength to do what must be done – to see this job through to the end. It’s a time in between – a liminal space – between the celebration and the betrayal, between the journey to Jerusalem and the journey to the cross and beyond. And Jesus would have prepared for it as carefully as he prepared for his entry into Jerusalem – riding on a donkey’s colt.
The tone at the end of this story in the gospel of Mark is bittersweet. The crowd shouted, “Hosanna” – “Save us” – but they didn’t know what they were asking for. Tomorrow he would begin to show them, begin to teach them, and as the week progresses – they would see the cost. Tomorrow he would travel again the physical path, cross the threshold into Jerusalem, but it would be much different because this time he would be crossing the threshold that would lead him to the cross.
But that night, in the time in between, after the branches had been put down, and the shouts of “Hosanna” and “Halleluja” had long since vanished into the air, Jesus took a different journey, a pilgrimage through an inner landscape, a sacred path of prayer and preparation, so that when the sun rose on the new day, he would be ready to set his feet on the next path God had set before him, no matter how hard it would be. So he would be ready to do what must be done – tomorrow.
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