Mark 11:1-11

The Prophet in Jerusalem

Throughout his active ministry in Galilee Jesus had illustrated the presence and nature of God’s Kingdom. Particularly through his healings he had shown its inclusivity, its offer of wholeness and its potential abundance. Through his exorcisms he had pin-pointed, and shown himself stronger than, the evil embedded in the corrupt religious and social structures of the culture. He had eaten with sinners, and challenged the general interpretation of Sabbath celebration.

He had exercised a truly prophetic role, but more through actions than through words.

In Jerusalem he would work no miracles. He continued his prophetic activity, but this time mainly through a series of symbolic actions that could perhaps be better categorised as “prophetical theatre”:

• his entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey
• his shutting down all activity in the temple
• his cursing the fruitless fig tree
• his Last Supper with his disciples.

Prophetical Theatre in the Tradition

Jesus’ adoption of the technique of prophetical theatre followed a long line of precedents in the tradition, among them:

• Hosea’s action in marrying, and then reconciling with, a prostitute to express God’s relationship with Israel (Hosea 1.1ff.)

• Isaiah’s action in preaching naked over three years to express the way Assyria would despoil Egypt (Isaiah 20.1-6)

• Jeremiah’s action in hiding a loincloth and burying it to express the corruption of Judah and its pending punishment (Jeremiah 13.1-11)

• Ezekiel’s action in breaking a hole in the wall and climbing out through it dressed as an exile to express the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of its citizens (Ezekiel 12.1-16)

Mark 11:1-11 – Jesus Enters Jerusalem and the Temple

Jesus built a rich symbolism around his entry into Jerusalem. In many ways this was the moment he had been long anticipating. For the disciples, however, it was an occasion of trepidation. They were not at home in the capital, and there had already been confrontations up in Galilee with scribes who had been sent from Jerusalem. Jesus had largely ignored the priests in the rural areas, but Jerusalem was the priestly stronghold, and the chief priests, under the Romans, were the social and religious authorities.

The annual feast of the Passover was near, and pilgrims from Galilee in their hundreds would already have been pouring into the city and camping out around its outskirts. For the authorities this was a dangerous time. A mood of frustrated religious and social patriotism was in the air and Galileans had a reputation for volatility and unpredictability. Many of the Galileans would have had some experience of Jesus, even if brief, and the expectations that some of them had of him would have been high. The evil spirits had frequently drawn attention to his unique holiness, and even if most of the rumours about his identity had focused on his prophetic role, many people anticipated action of some sort.

Bethany was on the far side of the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem. Bethphage was about half way between them, facing Jerusalem. The intervening distances were short.

Mark told the story in an enigmatic, mysterious way, calculated to give a sense that the events had an inevitability, pre-ordained and even perhaps ordered by God. It was his creative way of highlighting the significance of the event that would follow. From other comments that Mark would soon give, it was obvious that Jesus knew the area well. He was certainly no stranger in Bethany and its surrounds. This was not surprising. Many Jews would have visited Jerusalem annually, particularly at Passover and other major Jewish feasts. In this, Jesus would have been no exception. 

Aware of the mood of the moment, Jesus sought to give meaning to it. He enacted symbolically a prophetic image drawn from the writings of Zechariah.

Zechariah’s Hopes

Zechariah had worked among the Jews who had returned to Judaea, nearly five hundred years before Jesus, after enduring fifty years of Babylonian exile. Their aim had been to resettle their depopulated homeland and to reestablish themselves under their own religious and political leadership. The Babylonians had effectively destroyed the former regal line, and an alternative kingship had failed to eventuate. Against a background of demoralisation, Zechariah had looked forward to the advent of a future king, but one strikingly different from any their ancestors had known: a humble peace-maker, yet one whose influence would extend around the whole known world.

To emphasise his insistence that this king would be a humble peace bringer, Zechariah had pictured him entering his Kingdom mounted, not on any splendid war-horse, but on the small foal of a donkey.

This kind of king was not what the political firebrands of Jesus’ time were hoping for. They wanted someone who would throw off the choking yoke of Roman imperialism, whether embodied directly in the person of Pilate, the Roman governor of Judaea, or in Herod, the puppet king in Galilee.

Perhaps sensing the mood of many of the pilgrims, Jesus chose to directly counter all militaristic aspirations by evoking the image of Zechariah’s peace-bringer. Conscious of his own mission as herald of the Kingdom of God, Jesus chose to allow himself to be seen as the focal point of God’s intervention. Indeed, if God’s Kingdom was to be seen as definitively present, he was prepared to see himself not simply as its herald but as its embodiment.

As noted above, to give meaning to his mission, he adopted the medium of what today might be called “street-theatre”.

The crowd accompanying Jesus was evidently coming in with him from the surrounding countryside. They were the pilgrims, generally from Galilee, camped out around the city waiting to celebrate the feast. They were the ones who knew him. They were also, as peasant farmers, the ones who felt most the crushing effects of Roman taxation. They were the excitable ones, susceptible to invitations to insurrection. The more politically accommodating Jerusalem citizens were not party to this procession.

Psalm 118

The cries of the crowd were taken from Psalm 118, though the reference to the “coming Kingdom of our ancestor David” was their own addition..

(The Hebrew word “Hosanna” translates “Lord, save us” or “Lord, give us success”.) 

Psalm 118 as a whole was one of a series of ancient psalms sung to celebrate the annual ritual entry of the Jewish kings first into the city and then into the temple. 

It was the last of the group of six psalms known as the “Hallel” psalms. Over time these came to be traditionally sung by pilgrims to Jerusalem as part of the liturgy of great festivals (including the Pasch) as they entered the temple to thank God for victory and renewal of national life.

In this case, the crowds saw the hope expressed in the psalm about to be realised in Jesus.

For the people, the temple, “the Lord’s house” resplendent on Mt Zion, was the quintessential centre of God’s presence and action. The echoing chanting of the Levite choirs, the sumptuous vestments of the priests, the beauty of the surrounds, the experience of many (particularly those of the Diaspora) of having reached at last the goal of their lives, would have stirred strong passions of devotion and warmth in the hearts of the devoted.

The crowd’s reference to the coming Kingdom of our father David was understandable, in the light of the psalm’s origin, but it was an interpretation that would be clearly rejected by Jesus (12:35-37), referring as it did to a restoration of the Davidic monarchy. God’s Kingdom, represented by Jesus, was vastly different.

Mark presented Jesus’ entry into the temple as something of an anticlimax. Jesus chose simply to allow the enthusiasm to evaporate. 

Next >> Mark 11:12-14