Lenten Campaign 2025
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In Luke’s Gospel, which the Church reads during its year-long cycle C, Jesus heads to Jerusalem relentlessly, tirelessly, unstoppably, on his mission to establish his kingdom. On Palm Sunday, at the beginning of Holy Week, the long journey is over and he finally arrives.
Starting with the donkey he rides into the city on, he conquers as the king of peace.
Jesus was not the first king to enter Jerusalem. But the other kings’ entrances were totally unlike his.
In the Old Testament, we hear about King Nebuchadnezzar entering and destroying the Temple, five centuries before Jesus.
You can imagine King Nebuchadnezzar draped in gold. He buried his father in gold plates and famously built a giant golden statue for his people to worship.
Second Kings Chapter 24 describes how Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army besieged Jerusalem for years, driving it into horrifying poverty. Finally, in the year 586, “The king of Babylon … carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon, king of Israel had made, as the Lord had foretold.”
Maybe that’s the gold that made the statue Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow before.
King Nebuchadnezzar installed a new king of Israel, King Zedekiah. Later, when King Zedekiah refused to pay a tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, he killed Zedekiah’s sons in front of him and then gouged out Zedekiah’s eyes so that the last thing he would see was the death of his sons.
This is power according to the world.
Jerusalem saw two more military rulers enter the city after that.
Alexander the Great entered Jerusalem in 329 B.C. as a giant man wearing a plumed helmet atop an enormous white war-horse. Seeing this great man who conquered the world from Greece to India, the city leaders quaked with fear. He demanded taxes, and got them, but he spared the city — perhaps because his teacher, Aristotle, taught him to admire monotheism.
Roman general Pompey the Great entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C., possibly in the war chariot he is often depicted in. He massacred thousands of Jews who attempted to defend the Temple, then captured the city and entered the Temple’s Holy of Holies, desecrating it, but taking nothing.
Each of these ancient pagan kings came to Jerusalem dressed for battle and had their way with it. But then Jesus entered around the year 33 A.D., unarmed, riding on a donkey, and Jerusalem had its way with him.
Yet it was Jesus, the man of peace who was killed by Jerusalem’s leaders, not the triumphant men of war, who had the lasting victory.
We tend to think of Jesus’ donkey as a sign of humility — but it is actually a sign that he is an even greater king.
The Gospels cite the prophet Zechariah’s prediction about the Messiah king’s entry into Jerusalem. Zechariah says: “Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! Behold: your king is coming to you, a just savior is he, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Why a donkey? Because this ruler “shall banish the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem,” says Zechariah. “The warrior’s bow will be banished, and he will proclaim peace to the nations.”
In fact, archeologists have found ancient arrowheads in the style of the Babylonians buried in Jerusalem. But Jesus didn’t need weapons. He had something more powerful.
As Psalm 20 puts it: “Some boast of chariots, and some of horses; but we boast of the name of the Lord our God.”
The prophecy of Zechariah also proclaims that the donkey-rider will have a kingdom greater than Alexander’s or Caesar’s: “His dominion will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” He even says how this will come about — “by the blood of your covenant.”
Holy Week each year tells the tale of how he establishes that covenant and wins that dominion.
He doesn’t do it through violence, but sacrifice. He doesn’t force himself on people, he serves them. Jesus conquers through the one power able to overcome death: Love.
