Thomas J Parlette
“Thrown into an Uproar”
Matthew 21: 1-11
3/29/26, Palm Sunday
On April 4th, 1865, the Civil War was ending, and news of the fall of Richmond was spreading through Washington DC. Public buildings throughout the city were illuminated in celebration.
“It was indeed glorious,” said Benjamin Brown French, the commissioner of public buildings. “All Washington was in the streets.” French went to his Bible and turned to Psalm 118. He had the 23rd verse of that Psalm printed on a cloth, in enormous letters, and raised it on the Capitol building: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”
Celebrations continued through April 9th, Palm Sunday that year, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va. In Washington, guns were fired in salute, to commemorate that glorious day. The euphoria of the Union victory was felt throughout Holy Week in 1865, with crowds taking to the streets in celebration.
But the nation was thrown into an uproar when tragedy struck on April 14th, Good Friday, when President Lincoln was shot while attending a play at Ford’s Theater. The president was taken to a house across the street, where he lay dying. Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts appeared at his bedside and kept vigil through the night. He was one of the few people present when Lincoln died on the morning of April 15th, and later wrote a eulogy for him. (1)
A remarkable turn of events. From triumph to tragedy in the course of a week. From celebration to mourning in just a few days. One day, the citizens of Washington were celebrating in the streets. And a short time later, they were lining up for a massive funeral procession for President Lincoln.
There is an eerie similarity between the events of Holy Week, 1865 and the events around Jerusalem in Jesus’ day.
We know this Palm Sunday text well. We’ve grown up with the parade and the palms and the joyous shouts of “Hosanna.” Yet this is a text that reeks of irony. The very same crowd that enthusiastically welcomed Jesus on Sunday, would be calling for Jesus execution on Friday. As Diane Chen has put it, “the excitement changes from cheers to jeers as the winds of circumstance shift.” (2)
Matthew is keenly interested in showing how Jesus fulfills scripture with everything he does and everything he says. That’s why Matthew includes a rather confusing detail in his story. He notes that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey – as we have come to expect – but also on a colt, the foal of a donkey. So how does Jesus do this exactly? He is some kind of a rodeo cowboy or maybe a circus performer standing astride two animals at once? That doesn’t seem likely or in character for the humble Jesus we have come to know.
No, Matthew deliberately includes that detail so that Jesus fulfills the words of the prophet Zechariah, in Chapter 9, verse 9, when he writes: “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.”
So that’s why Matthew includes that odd detail in the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.
It’s also important to note that there are two important characters in this story that we often overlook. First, there is the character called “the crowd.” Matthew refers to the crowd quite often in his gospel, they function like a character. In this story, the crowd refers to the people travelling with Jesus, to his entourage, it refers to all the people, men and women, who have followed him since Galilee up to Jerusalem. Look at the text carefully and you will see that the crowd are the ones who spread their cloaks on the ground and cut branches from the trees. The crowd went ahead of him shouting “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna!”
The other character at play here is “the city.” All the residents of Jerusalem were in an uproar, they were in turmoil about this man’s arrival. They were already on edge because the High Holy days were coming and the Romans typically would crack down hard to keep people in line with so many visitors filling the city streets. The city, in turmoil, was asking, “Who is this?” In asking that question they were showing their anxiety that the Romans would not take this mock royal procession well, and they would all pay for it. “Who does this guy think he is, does he know what he’s doing, does he know the risk he is taking?”
The crowd offers an answer to the city thrown into turmoil – “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
The word translated as “uproar, or turmoil, or stirred,” is probably best translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message when he says, “the whole city was shaken.”
The word used here is “seio”, which means “tremble.” You might recognize that it is the root word for our word “seismic,” used to refer to the rumblings of an earthquake. It is fact “seio” is the word used in connection to the earthquakes that occur at Jesus’ final breath on the cross. The same word appears at the empty tomb when there is a violent earthquake and an angel of the Lord appears and sits on the rock that has been rolled out of the way. (3)
That’s the kind of shaking and trembling and turmoil going on in Jerusalem when Jesus enters the city. The Lord shows up, and it is an earth-shaking event, throwing the whole city into an uproar.
So what’s this uproar all about?
Well, first of all there was the risk that Jesus posed for the whole city. The wrath of Rome might come down upon them if this royal parade of his were seen as some kind of a threat or an insult to foreign occupants of the city.
But there was also the fact that Jesus was presenting himself as a very different kind of King. He was deliberately choosing to fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy about a humble king entering the city, not the conquering kind of ruler that would have arrived on an impressive warhorse instead of a lowly donkey. This was a king who was not focused on power and military might. This was a king that came with a sense of humility. A king who would show later in the week, that he had come as a servant and not a ruler.
Hymnwriter Delores Dufner has written a hymn that is widely sung on Reign of Christ Sunday, but it also fits very well as a Palm Sunday hymn as well.
“O Christ, what can it mean for us to claim you as our king?
What royal face have you revealed whose praise the church would sing?
Aspiring not to glory’s height, to power, wealth and fame,
You walked a diff’rent, lowly way, another’s will your aim.” (4)
On September 26th – 27th, 2015, Pope Francis made a stop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to headline the World Meeting of Families. That event is remembered for several notable highlights:
1. The Pope celebrated Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
2. He spoke on religious freedom in front of Independence Hall, using a lectern that had once been used by Abraham Lincoln.
3. And he visited prisoners at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, where he sat in a chair made by inmates.
But the image that people remember the most was the car the Pope used. Much to the delight and curiosity of the public, the Pope chose to ride in a tiny Fiat for a pope-mobile, rather than the fancy limousine, decked out with every imaginable security feature, that had been provided for him.
Like Jesus on his borrowed colt, the Pope demonstrated that humility and simplicity best suited his leadership style and, more profoundly, the mission of his calling. Riding in his Fiat, he created his sense of uproar and turmoil as he frequently hopped out of the car without any advance warning or planning, to talk to people and bless children. (5)
He embodied the same message that Jesus brought to Jerusalem at this beginning of Holy Week. This week is not about power and might. It’s about service and sacrifice. That’s what we will see together as we journey toward the cross this week.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. “The Death of Abraham Lincoln”, United States Senate Website, www.senate.gov. Retrieved from Homileticsonline, 3/5/26.
2. Diane Chen, Connections, Yr. A, Vol. 2, Westminster John Knox Press, 2019, p115.
3. Audrey West, Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 2, 2010, p. 157.
4. John Rollefson, Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 2, 2010, p. 157.
5. Diane Chen… p. 114.
