March 20, Palm Sunday (Luke 19:28-40)
/Bethphage (“House of the Unripe Fig”)
This is where the Palm Sunday walk begins and the probable general location where Jesus’ disciples procured the donkey (Mark 11:1-14). The fourth-century pilgrim Egeria mentions a church here and in the middle of the current nineteenth-century church stands a square podium from which the builders of a Crusader church pictured our Lord mounting said beast (they evidently had in mind European horses rather than Palestinian burros!). The beautiful paintings on the mounting stone are original. The wall murals are twentieth century. Especially intriguing is the one above the altar. Who is the shrouded figure? In my opinion it is Death, but art is art because it begs interpretation.
Intriguing historical questions, which cannot be answered with certainty, abound regarding the event we call “Palm Sunday.” Did “the cleansing of the Temple” take place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as described in John’s Gospel? Has Mark (followed by Matthew and Luke) telescoped events into one “Holy Week” for literary or liturgical purposes? Did the event take place on more than one occasion? Was the historical setting actually Sukkot (the Feast of Booths/Tabernacles) when Jews parade with palm branches shouting “hosanna” culminating in the sevenfold Hoshana Rabbah, the “Great Hosanna” (“hosanna in the highest”?). More clear is the significance of the event. Ezekiel had prophesied that when the presence of God left the Temple it took up residence on the Mount of Olives (11:23) until it returns to the Temple from the Mount of Olives (43:2-5). Zechariah 14 foresees that on the eschatological Day of the Lord “his feet shall stand on” the two-hilled Mount of Olives which will be cleft in two (v 4). By the time of Jesus, any Jew could tell you that when the Messiah manifests himself and the Kingdom of God it will be on the Mount of Olives. Jesus knew very well what he was doing: by having his disciples borrow this animal and riding it over the Mount of Olives in fulfillment of the prophetic “Lo, your king comes to you...humble and riding on a donkey” (Zech 9:9) he was making a messianic statement. He also knew what it would elicit: adoration from the locals around Bethany and Bethphage, a perceived threat to the Jerusalem High Priestly establishment, and an accusation of sedition by the Roman government.