Sermon Notes — March 29, 2026
“The Good News Invites Us to Act”
Mark 11:1-11 (CEB)
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
March 29, 2026
Who could imagine that a week that begins like this – a week that begins with a parade and songs and celebrations – who could imagine that week that begins like this will end in despair? Mark – Mark the gospel writer – Mark could imagine.
All four gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all four tell a story about Palm Sunday, and each of the stories is unique. In Matthew’s story of Palm Sunday, the crowds behave in much the same way that the crowds behave in Mark’s story, but at the end of the story, when Jesus enters Jerusalem, he goes directly to the temple, and turns over the tables of the moneychangers, and chastises the people who sell goods there.
Luke packs his story with even more drama. In Luke’s story it’s the disciples who surround Jesus as he enters the city, and it’s the disciples who sing songs of praise for Jesus and all the things that they have seen him do. In Luke’s story, though, there are Pharisees in the crowd, and they tell Jesus to make his disciples stop singing their songs. And as Jesus draws near to Jerusalem, Luke tells us, Jesus weeps, anticipating the eventual destruction of the temple.
In John, the stakes get even higher. As Jesus rides into Jerusalem he is followed by many of the people who saw him raise Lazarus from the dead. Those same people spread the word through the crowd about the miracle, which makes even more people follow him. And when the Pharisees see his giant following they become even more resolved to kill him.
Of all of the Palm Sunday stories, Mark’s is arguably the least dramatic, and yet its message may be the most insightful for us today.
Will you pray with me and for me?
Tell me something good!
I have a few things to tell you, but first we’re going to set the stage. No matter who tells it – whether it’s Mark or Matthew or Luke or John – the story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem is full of symbolism and imagery and prophecy. Jesus carefully plans the events leading up to his famous donkey ride so that his disciples – and anyone else paying attention – will not be able to miss the message.
The story of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem actually begins with the Hebrew prophets, mostly notably Zechariah. Zechariah is one of the minor prophets. If you were to look him up, he would be the second to last book of the Old Testament, just before Malachi.
The Jewish people who had been exiled to Babylon in 586 BC have finally returned to Jerusalem, but the temple is destroyed, and they have the excruciatingly difficult job of rebuilding their lives in the city that they had been taken from about eighty years before. Zechariah’s job is to encourage those who are returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. The first thing he encourages them to do is to be faithful to Yahweh and to obey only him. The second thing he encourages them to do is to get busy putting their lives back together. Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and start rebuilding your homes and your temple. Replant your gardens, worship God, and remember that this land and this life are part of God’s ongoing faithfulness to you. God brought you back here, now get to work.
The book of Zechariah ends with a mosaic of poems and visions, and those poems and visions describe what the world will be like when God’s Messiah comes and all is as it should be. One way to describe the world as it will be when the Messiah comes to make everything right again is the Messianic Kingdom.
The Messianic Kingdom is the world as it should be, when the Messiah comes to make everything right.
Of course, for us – for Christians – Jesus is the Messiah. Our Jewish brothers and sisters still await the coming of the Messiah.
The book of Zechariah ends with a description of this Messianic Kingdom – the world as it will be when the Messiah comes to make everything right.
In chapter 14 Zechariah proclaims that
A day is coming that belongs to the Lord…
On that day he will stand upon the Mount of Olives to the East of Jerusalem.
The Lord will become king over all the land.
On that day the Lord will be one,
and the Lord’s name will be one.
Let’s open our Bibles to Mark chapter 11 so that we’re all on the same page, literally. And let’s look at verse 1. When Jesus and his followers approached Jerusalem, they came to Bethphage and Bethany which were located where?
(wait for it)
At the Mount of Olives
Here’s a fairly good map. The Mount of Olives was a ridge that sat just a stone’s throw from the temple, although getting from one to the other required crossing the Kidron Valley. Today, the valley is spanned by traffic bridges, but at the time of Jesus it would have been rough traveling, whether by animal or by foot, and the Mount of Olives and the Kidron Valley are going to become really important landmarks as this week goes on. You can see the location of Bethphage and Bethany, although the location of Bethphage is just a guess.
And this is where Jesus begins his journey to Jerusalem. From the Mount of Olives. Coincidence? Probably not.
In Zechariah 9, we read this:
Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion.
Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem.
Look, your king will come to you.
He is righteous and victorious.
He is humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the offspring of a donkey.
Back to Mark. Jesus tells his disciples to “go to the village over there” (and I’m starting in verse 2) “As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a what?
(Wait for it)
A colt that no one has ridden.
Now those two pieces of prophecy – that the king will stand on the Mount of Olives and that he will come riding on a colt – those things might not mean much if we don’t take into account the larger message of Zechariah. The picture that Zechariah paints in chapters 9, 10, and 11 is that this king – this king who stands on the Mount of Olives – this king who rides a donkey – this king is a king who comes to be a shepherd – this king comes to shepherd his people.
Chapters 9-11 of Zechariah use a lot of shepherd imagery. There are lots of bad shepherds in these chapters, but there is one good shepherd. One good shepherd who faithfully cares for his flock.
This is the image that Mark wants us to hold in our minds as we watch Jesus enter Jerusalem on a donkey.
Jesus is the good shepherd. Jesus is the humble shepherd. He is not coming for his own glory and for his own honor. He is coming to care for his people. He is the king who stands on the Mount of Olives and who silently enters on the colt amid the celebration.
As the crowds made their way into the city and to the temple to celebrate the Passover, they would be singing the Hallel psalms. The Hallel psalms are psalm 113-118, and the people coming to celebrate Passover would sing them together as they approached the city and as they made their way to the temple. The psalm that they sing in today’s scripture as Jesus rides toward the city is Psalm 118. We’re going to actually read it responsively. Your part is the part that says, God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Give thanks to the Lord because he is good, because his faithful love lasts forever.
Let Israel say it: God’s faithful love lasts forever
Let the house of Aaron say it: God’s faithful love lasts forever.
Let those who honor the Lord say it: God’s faithful love lasts forever.
And the pilgrims would keep singing and as they got to the end of the psalm they would sing. Let’s join our voices together
Lord, please save us!
Lord, please let us succeed!
If we knew Hebrew, what we would actually be saying is
Hosanna!
Lord, please save us!
And the response to the words Hosanna, please save us are:
The one who enters in the Lord’s name is blessed; we bless all of you from the Lord’s house.
Psalm 118 was a song of celebration and welcome. It was a homecoming song. So if you can, try to imagine thousands of people approaching the city, approaching the temple, singing these words together as they made their way to the house of God.
Mark tells us in verse 9 that as Jesus rode his donkey into the city, the people in front of him and the people behind him are shouting…
(Wait for it)
Hosanna! Save us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
Could it be that Jesus timed his entry into the city so that it coincided with the moment that the people would be singing this particular psalm? Maybe.
Could it be that he intentionally joined the crowd during the height of the celebration?
It very well could be.
But I don’t think that Mark wants us to believe that the crowds are singing these words to Jesus. In the other gospels that might be true, but Mark doesn’t want us to assume that the crowd’s singling out Jesus specifically and singing praises to him specifically.
The disciples might be doing that, but it is more likely that the crowds are just moved by the joy of the moment. They probably don’t throw their cloaks on the colt and on the ground because they believe that Jesus is going to overthrow the Roman government and take his rightful place as the ruler of the Jewish people. They throw their cloaks and wave their branches because Jesus’s reputation as a great prophet and teacher precedes him. They are caught up in the moment. This is a family reunion, Disneyland, and Mardi Gras all rolled up into one.
So there we have our context, what’s the good news?
Let’s watch Jesus carefully. Jesus enters the parade into the city in silence. He appears in every way to be unaffected by the enthusiasm of the crowds. He doesn’t talk to the religious leaders like he does in Luke. He doesn’t go to the temple and throw tables like in Matthew. Instead, he rides silently into the city, goes to the temple, looks around, and then goes right back to Bethany, where he just came from. Hopefully he returns the donkey.
I was reading a commentary this week by the late Presbyterian scholar Lamar Williamson, Jr. and he used this phrase to describe Jesus as he rode into the city
Authoritative lowliness.
He says that in Jesus – particularly in Mark’s portrayal of Jesus riding his colt alongside all the other pilgrims – we see the authoritative lowliness of God. It is in the lowliness of Jesus that we see God’s authority. It is an authority that does not draw attention to itself. It is an authority that does not insist on its own way or demand respect or admiration. Jesus derives his authority from God, and he is clear that human regard is not his goal. He is also aware that no one in the crowd, not even the disciples, know the end game. He alone rides with the weight of his future, and it is his alone to carry.
Williamson goes on to say that
Lowliness is a quality all too seldom associated with God, even by those who hold that God is most fully revealed in Jesus Christ.
Jesus’s lowliness is not performative. He’s not putting on a show. He will reveal his kingship in sacrifice and service. He is lowly, but he is not a victim. He may be silent, but he is in charge. And he is entering this week prepared to put the lives of his disciples ahead of his own. He is prepared to put the lives of the other pilgrims ahead of his own. He is prepared to put our lives ahead of his own.
Williamson states even further that
[being] clear about the grandeur of the divine lowliness is important because we tend to become like the God or gods we worship.
The good news today is that we are invited to respond to Jesus in his divine lowliness. We are invited to learn to be more like Christ in his willingness to serve others. Our world offers so many compelling temptations to clamor for respect and admiration and attention. But Jesus came to show us another way. Jesus came to show us the way of lowliness, of service, of sacrifice.
At the beginning of this sermon series we said that the heart of the good news is that God came to be with us in the person of Jesus, and that despite any and all evidence to the contrary, God is still working to make the world as God has always intended it to be. Even as he rides toward his betrayal, his arrest, and his death, Jesus is working to save the world, not by claiming fame and glory but by offering himself in service and sacrifice. He does not seek to destroy his enemies but to give them the gift of eternal life. He chooses forgiveness over revenge, compassion over rage, and restoration over destruction.
Friends, that is the good news. Our king is a shepherd who gives up his life for the sheep.
And the question that we leave with today is how will our lives reflect the divine lowliness of our savior?