The Triumphal Entry

I'm not going to write about Palm Sunday as much as use the descriptions by the four Gospel writers to show the differences in what they saw and what they wrote.

1. Matthew, Mark and John all note the praises of the people shouting "Hosanna," whereas Luke leaves out that mention, but reports the rest of what the people shouted. In case you find the words familiar, we sing them in Communion liturgy.

2. The procurement of the donkey was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in Zechariah 9:9. All report on the donkey, but only Matthew and John explicitly state what prophecy was being fulfilled, and John's version differs from Matthew, even though they're both quoting Scripture.

3. I knew I read it somewhere, but it took me awhile to find it--Matthew 21:10 states that the people didn't know who he was, which I found interesting for the great welcome they gave anyway. John suggests that the crowd had accompanied Jesus from the raising of Lazarus, which could explain their delirious celebration of his presence.

4. Luke adds the detail that the Pharisees were present and not pleased with the reception, as shown in Luke 19:39. Even better is Jesus' response in Luke 19:40:

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

Luke then added greater detail of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41-44. I find this detail interesting for no other reason than  that this implies that either Luke himself was present (a very real possibility, although don't quote me on that) or had access to an eye witness. Matthew and John also would have been witnesses, but chose not to write about it.

5. John adds an extremely important detail in John 12:16 when he writes:

At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the book of John, he gets to the end of the story fairly quickly--we're only at chapter 12 of a 21-chapter book, and he's already writing about the last 50 days of Jesus' ministry. He hasn't even written his best stuff yet, which I'll comment on when we get there, because it's important and gives us great hope for us today, but John wanted to make clear to his audience that the disciples (and we have to assume John as well, because he doesn't say otherwise) still hadn't quite figured out who Jesus was. They knew he was the Messiah, but they were still completely in the dark as to what that meant.

From a triumphant entry on a Sunday to a gruesome death on Friday--quite a turn of events, but Jesus knew what was going to happen and still went. The fact that the four Gospel writers had slightly different accounts of the activities on this day is irrelevant in the end, because this was but one event of many that would occur during Holy Week.

Scott