So, 

Have you ever played the group game called telephone?

The idea is that you whisper a story into someone’s ear and then they do the same to the next person in line and so on until it comes back around the circle. Then the last person tells what they heard and the first person tells what the story was in the beginning.

It is amazing how the story morphs in the hearing and in the telling!

Of course, the more times the story is told and heard, the more insane the story can get. Why? 

Well partly because we all hear the story as it is interpreted by the person before us, and then tell it as we interpret what we have heard. 

There is no ill intent on anyone’s part. It is just a reality that we hear things and then assume we understand, and then tell the story based on our assumed understanding! 

Just ask the four witnesses to the automobile accident who stood on four different corners. Their stories are not identical, not because they didn’t see the same accident, but because they stood in different places.

To really understand what has happened, we need to hear the story from an eyewitness. But we also need to understand that the eyewitness stood on just one of those corners.

And so it is, with Matthew’s account of the Triumphal Entry. 

Matthew not only wanted to give us Joe Friday’s “just the facts ma’am” in that old, old, TV series Dragnet, but he wanted us to understand what they meant, a difficult task then - and more difficult the farther and farther we get from first century Jerusalem.

We hear the celebration Matthew describes and think of the joy of a victorious ticker tape parade down the canyon of heroes in New York City. 

But the reality is, if the celebration Matthew talks of was like that, the Roman garrison in Jerusalem would have been called up to quell it, especially with the talk of a king come to Jerusalem.

Instead, Matthew invites us two millennium later to see and hear the hope and expectation of a captive people who still hold tight to the Passover story, the belief that even now, God will save them.

Understanding Matthew’s story in that light, helps us understand how we get from Palm Sunday and the appearance of Jesus’ victory lap around Jerusalem - to the death of the Passover lamb, the one who body is broken and whose blood is poured out for us.

And for some of us - with this deeper understanding – are finally able to glimpse the irony! The story of the cosmic king who finally comes to Jerusalem – but who comes not with sword in hand - but gentle, riding on a donkey.

Unlike our world that passionately worships power, wealth, and control, Jesus comes without power, without wealth, and without any desire or need to control our lives or our world.
Even at the gates of Jerusalem, the Holy City, Jesus comes not with angels and power, but with the simplicity of a beloved son, finally home from afar.

Those who wish for political, geographic, social, and economic power, wealth and control - fundamentally misunderstand the message and meaning of the person of Jesus. 

The creator of all this is does not seek in us soldiers to capture the world for him. The world is already God’s and all that is in it is belongs to God. 

What God seeks in us is servants willing to go into the world and reveal God’s love for the whole world, by in word and deed loving the whole world.

Jesus, the very son of God, comes without fear, gentle and riding on a donkey, without the pomp and ceremony of a Roman general, instead cheered by the few who recognized God’s hand in this his servant son. 

For though there was a crowd who cheered him on into the city, there were only some who saw him for who he really was – and welcomed him 
home!

It is our invitation too! Not to welcome home a conquering king, but to recognize and welcome the very presence of the God who calls us into his arms in the person of Jesus.

Jesus comes not in the glory of eternity, but in the gentleness of the grandparent at the door who is welcomed by the little ones calling “Papa, Nana”, and the smiles and tears of children who have waited with great expectation for this day.

Yes, there are hard days ahead as Jesus becomes the Passover lamb of God. But beyond it is good news beyond all understanding. 

It starts here with “Hosanna’s” and “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. It begins here in us.

Jesus has come home! 

Welcome him into Jerusalem, into your heart, into your lives!

This gentle king who rides on a donkey, and the colt of a donkey.

Amen.