Palm Sunday – Year A
March 29, 2026
Gospel Lectionary Text
Matthew 21:1-11
21:1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples,
21:2 saying to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.
21:3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, 'The Lord needs them.' And he will send them immediately."
21:4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,
21:5 "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."
21:6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them;
21:7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.
21:8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
21:9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
21:10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?"
21:11 The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."
Context
Welcome to Palm Sunday. This week, the crowd shouts, “Hosanna! Hosanna!” Next week they’ll shout, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” At the center of this drama is more than a stage prop carrying Jesus into Jerusalem. The donkey is the icon of the church, bearing Christ into the world.
Brian Zahnd observed that capital cities around the world often have statues of what he calls “some dude on a horse.” It’s usually a conquering hero astride a stallion, reins in one hand, sword in the other. It’s a symbol of imperial ambition and the fearsome violence required to achieve it. But no capital city, not even Vatican City in Rome, has a statue of a dude on a donkey.
If the donkey were a mascot, it might rank somewhere near “Sammy the Slug” at UC Santa Cruz. Hardly the stuff of intimidation. Slugs don’t exactly strike fear into the heart of opponents. And neither do donkeys. Their power lies elsewhere. And that’s the point.
In this week’s text Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east (via the Mount of Olives) on a donkey. And while the text doesn’t explicitly say this, most scholars agree that at the same time, Pilate would have been entering Jerusalem from the west, on a warhorse, leading Roman soldiers in a military procession. This was an annual show of force to quell any messianic uprisings that were often inspired by the Passover feast. It’s like a showdown between Sammy the Slug and the Nittany Lions.
The classic theological conundrum has always been whether God can be all-powerful and all-loving at the same time. But what if God’s power IS love — the long-suffering, burden-bearing love of a donkey that bears Christ in humility and peace? A love that showcases mercy, not sacrifice? What if that is the only power God knows — the only thing powerful enough to transform a human heart?
So which is it, donkey power or horse power? Go mighty donkeys… (and slugs)!
Question
This week Jesus enacts the promise of the Messiah who will bring peace to a people in "turmoil." That peace is symbolized by donkey-power, not horse-power. Horse-power is power over, perfected in might. Donkey-power is power under, perfected in weakness. How does that answer the question, "who is this?"
Reflections
What I Want, What I Need
By Angelika Gier |
As I sit with the news from around the world each day, I see blatant power plays, control, disruption, and crisis. We have heard about wars between countries—something I’d only read about in history textbooks. I never imagined living in a world where wars would once again become a present reality. Alongside this, there have...
The Way of The Donkey
By Rev. Sarah Wiles |
Jesus’ life and death fell smack dab in the middle of the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. This was a 200-year period where the empire largely enjoyed “peace” — but it came at great cost.
Enough
By Ben Robinson |
In our Lenten journey we are nearing the cross, the place where Jesus will make visible that to which we are blind and change the way we see forever. We will see the excluded one give birth to a new kind of community that is scapegoat free.
Ishmael, Isaac, and Palm Sunday
By Ojii BaBa Madi |
Between 1979 and 1981, twenty-nine young black people fell victim to a serial murderer in Atlanta, Georgia. I don't know any of their names. I do have the name of JonBenét Ramsey indelibly sketched in my mind. Unlike the black children in Atlanta, JonBenét was a white American child of promise; thus, obsession with the...
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
The Donkey (Sojourns in the Parallel World)
by Denise Levertov
We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension—though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal—then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
—but we have changed, a little.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Prayer of Discernment:
The spirit of the Lord is upon us because She has anointed us to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. We pray this in the name of the Father who is for us, the Son who is with us, and the Spirit who unites us all in the never-ending dance of love.
Amen.
