“Part of the Crowd” 
March 29, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
It is Palm Sunday! Hosanna, Blessed be the King, Indeed. Now let me reorient us. We have just spent Lent in the worldview of the gospel of John with its layers upon layers upon layers of signs and conversations. Today, we reenter the world of the gospel of Matthew. So, let’s remind ourselves what we know of this gospel.
In Matthew, we know that we are in a very Jewish context. Matthew often uses the phrase, “this took place to fulfill” some Scriptural (ie, Old Testament to us) reference. And there is such a phrase in the reading for today. We also remember that it is in Matthew that the Wise Ones come from afar—with the indication that this good news is not just for the chosen people, but goes out to all the world. And it is in the closing of the gospel of Matthew that there is what is often called, the great commission, Jesus saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
The events of Palm Sunday occur in all the gospels. Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding on an animal. There are crowds of some kind welcoming him, spreading cloaks or branches on the road, shouting praises. But as is often the case, there are also differences between the gospels. And I’d like us to focus on two peculiarities in the Matthew version of the story. They focus on what Jesus is riding, and what the crowds shout about him.
Let’s start with that word of the prophet that is quoted in Matthew. Although not named, the prophet in question is Zachariah and he says in chapter 9, verse 9 (you might recognize these words from Messiah) “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Something you may not know, is that this prophecy, like so many others, and like the psalms, is written in a type of poetry, where one emphasizes something by repeating it right away using different words. Thus, riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey, is understood to mean that this king is riding on one animal as he comes, victorious and triumphant. And that is how Mark, Luke, and John present the situation.
Did you notice that our reading from Matthew has two animals that Jesus is riding? It’s not possible that Matthew, our Jewish expert, would not know that poetry repeats an idea again and again. And it’s not as if some scribe could have mistaken something—because these two animals are interwoven into the story. When Jesus sends the disciples ahead to find his transportation, he mentions a donkey and a colt with her; “untie them and bring them to me,” he says. (And if anyone asks, say, “The Lord needs them.) So the disciples do so, and bring the donkey and the colt and they put cloaks on them and Jesus sits on them.
It seems almost comical. Have you ever seen someone sit astride two animals? It conjures up those circus riders who stand with one foot on one horse and the other foot on another! This isn’t what Jesus is doing. Why is Matthew making such a big fuss about these two animals?
Not to belabor a point, and not to get into too much of the weeds—I’ll just share that the word Matthew uses for donkey is not the word used by the other gospels. So where does Matthew get his word? From Genesis 49, from the blessing that the patriarch Jacob gives to his son Judah when he is blessing the twelve tribes.
Hmmmmm. We might remember that Matthew starts out his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus. He lists all those names (including 5 females—a good thing to remember as we celebrate women’s history month)—and what do you know, Jesus comes from the line of Judah, who begets (after many years), David—as in King David, and then after many more years, Jesus is born. In Genesis, (which is in the Torah, the part of the Scriptures that were read every single year) we hear that “the scepter 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.” Aha. Matthew is expecting his Jewish audience to go—where have I heard that word for donkey before? Oooo. That’s in the blessing of Judah, the ancestor of David. Jesus is riding on THAT type of donkey.
So maybe in Matthew’s mind, Jesus was riding on two animals. He was riding on the actual donkey, the colt, the foal of a donkey, as he does in all the other gospels. But Matthew also sees that he is riding on a symbolic donkey at the same time. A donkey, the one named in Genesis. A donkey that was part of Judah’s blessing. A donkey that tied Jesus to the very beginning of God’s people. A donkey that foretold kingship.
And to underline the point, Matthew has the crowd shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
In the other gospels they shout, “Blessed is the king, or blessed is he, who comes in the name of the Lord.” Only Mark mentions David, and he says, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David” (focusing on the kingdom of David not necessarily a descendant of David). Matthew is the one to insist that Jesus is in the line of David, who was in the line of Judah, who was blessed to be ruler over Israel forever. Here is the Messiah, Matthew is implying, the one they have been waiting for. The one who fulfills all the prophecies—from Genesis to Zachariah.
As we stand at the beginning of Holy Week, the Palm Sunday shouts have an ironic bent to them. As part of the crowd on that day, would we too have been shouting whatever chant had started up? And who started it? Was it the disciples? Did people really know what they were saying? Or did they just get caught up in the frenzy of the moment? Hosanna to the Son of David! The Messiah is here!
If you have ever been to a large rally, as some of you might have been yesterday, there are these chants that get started somewhere, and it then takes on a life of its own. Do you always think about what is being chanted? Have you ever decided, no, I’m not going to participate in that particular shout? Being part of a crowd can be exhilarating—but it can also play havoc with our own mindset. Was that true on that first Palm Sunday? Did they know what they were saying or implying? Or did they just go along with the crowd?
The storyteller Mattew is no dummy. He knows the power of tension in a narrative. And so, as we wind our way into Jerusalem, as the crowds continue to increase, and “the whole city” is in turmoil, the question is asked, “Who is this?”
And after our sneaky Genesis word for donkey, and our shouts of “Son of David,” we expect the answer to be clear! But it isn’t. The crowds show their ignorance, or maybe their fear.
For they don’t say, “Here is the Messiah, the one who will overthrow our oppressors.” They don’t even say, in code, “It’s the Son of David”—which might not mean anything to the Romans, and any other Gentiles around . Matthew has built us up to understand who Jesus is. But when push comes to shove, the crowd answers, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” What a let down. Just another prophet, from a backwater town, from a not so great neighborhood. Nothing to see here.
And maybe Matthew is giving us a window into what it felt like that day. Maybe it was jubilation, but when people starting asking questions, you weren’t sure where you stood. Were you really part of a conspiracy to topple the Romans? Were you willing to put your life on the line for this prophet? Yeah, he had a reputation, but what do you really know about him? So it was easier to answer with a true statement--Jesus was a prophet, he was from Nazareth, which was in Galilee. But was it the fully truthful answer to “Who is this?”
The events we are just about to walk with Jesus, those lonesome miles, show that even the disciples are not exactly sure how far they want to follow, how far they are willing to go. And that becomes the question for us. Sure, we can be part of the crowd at Palm Sunday, and we can live our lives this week, and be part of the crowd on Easter. But that question remains, “Who is this?” And I don’t think that you can find the “final answer” to that question if you only stay part of the crowd.
Matthew is teasing us with insider knowledge. And, of course, if we’ve been following along, Peter has spoken it out loud, “You are the Messiah (the Christ), the Son of the living God.” We say it every Sunday--“In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.” What does that mean to us? Who is this one who comes in the name of the Lord? How is he going to “save us”? (which is what Hosanna means). To answer those questions, we have to be willing to leave the crowds behind. We have to be willing to hear the story, of a last supper, of betrayal, even of those closest, of torture and cruel execution and death. And only then, faced with the Easter mystery, can we begin to grapple with Who this really is in our lives.
The storyteller, Matthew, has opened the path. A path we are invited to take each and every year. A path that calls us to ever deeper understanding of who Jesus is, of how God participates in our world, of what that could mean for our lives. A path that never gets to a final destination until, as Augustine says, “our hearts are ever restless until they rest in you, [O God.]” Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven.
May it be so. Amen and Amen.