“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet. … Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey's colt to the choice vine, he has washed his garments in wine and his vesture in the blood of grapes” (Gen 49:10-11).
These are the words of a blessing pronounced by patriarch Jacob over his son Judah towards the end of the Book of Genesis. Judah received a great blessing from his father, and a prophecy. The royal line will not come from Reuben, the first-born, but from you, and you will prosper.
Donkeys were the traditional mounts of tribal chiefs. In those days, you were very rich indeed if you could tether your donkey to a vine. The animal would graze on the leaves and on the precious grapes while you were away, but you clearly could afford not to care. You were very rich indeed, if your winepresses were so full that the juice of grapes splashed not just on your feet, but all over you, head to toe, as you trampled upon them, so that your garments looked as if they were washed in wine. Just as streams of milk and honey flowing through the land, these images – of a colt tethered to a choice vine and of garments washed in wine – had a firm place in the Hebrew imagination. They were part of how the Messianic age was thought of, part of the dream. And so, as we contemplate Our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we seem to be getting mixed messages. You could easily argue, from the Scriptures, that there was very little humility in what Jesus did. In fact, it should perhaps be seen as downright provocative. This is precisely how the Pharisees and the Temple authorities read the situation. Where is Jesus's humility, if even his mount, a donkey, can be seen as an emblem of power, as a symbolic claim to the throne of Judah? Consequently, is Palm Sunday truly a kind of crowning of Jesus's public ministry, a high, soon to be followed by the great low of Good Friday, followed by the greatest of all highs, Easter Sunday? Humanly speaking, that is the most obvious way of looking at it. Are we on a spiritual rollercoaster with the Lord during the Holy Week?
And yet what was it to Jesus to enter Jerusalem as a tribal chief of Judah, we may ask? St Augustine asked himself the exact same question: “What was it to the Lord to be king of Israel?” And he answered: “that the Son of God, equal to the Father, the Word through whom all things were made, willed to be king of Israel was a matter of condescension, not advancement; a measure of his compassion, not an augmentation of his power. For the one who was called king of the Jews on earth is the Lord of the angels in heaven” (Homilies on John 51:4). This is very much in line with St Luke's Gospel, which we have been reading this year. In Luke, Jesus had already been proclaimed king by his Father in heaven. So here we have the King of the Ages lowering himself to assume the kingship over Israel. In fact, Jesus had been on this downward trajectory from the very beginning of the Gospel, from the moment Mary said “let it be done to me” and a tiny embryo appeared in her womb. He was born to die for us. It was an unthinkable step down for the Word of God to become a human being in the first place. Then he took another step down by leaving his grace-filled home, his mother Mary, to become a public figure, to meddle with the crowds, with us – even if this public figure was the greatest prophet and wonder-worker in history. Today we catch him, as it were, making a further step down from that, entering Jerusalem to take up his reign over the people there. This stage would last only a few days, but it was highly significant. And we have just heard what happened afterwards. Jesus hit and went through the very ground on which we stand on; he dived headlong into the abyss, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross” (Phil 2:8). But let us not go there yet, let us wait for Good Friday. Today is Palm Sunday.
Soon, at the Last Supper, Our Lord would utter words preserved for us only in Luke's Gospel: “You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom” (Lk 22:28). What are we to make of this? The Church urges us in today's liturgy to commemorate the Lord's entry into the city "by following in his footsteps". How are we supposed to do that? We should participate in the liturgies and meditate on the Passion narratives, of course, but, perhaps more importantly, we should enter anew this kingdom assigned to us by Jesus himself. What is it? It is surely what we call our vocation. It consists of the people we are called to live with and to love, of concrete places, of our mission in this world, our particular church community, our family, of the work we are called to accomplish in this life. I think that today the Church asks us to radically re-enter our own life, in other words, leaving all fantasy and speculation behind, to embrace the reality around us, to take responsibility for it, to take up reign over it, knowing full well what it means. Jesus showed us the way. Our vocation is our cross, to reign is to serve and to die for. Let us re-enter today our own Jerusalem then, joyfully following in Our Lord's footsteps. Let us make an effort to reconcile ourselves again with our personal cross.
DSP