The Rev. Dr. Brandon Perrine
Palm Sunday A
Matthew 21:1-11
March 29, 2026
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 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. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet: “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.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 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!” When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
~o~
Did you notice the extra character in the reading? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell this story in their gospels, but Matthew has the 1 distinction of adding an extra character and I wonder if you picked up on it. Let’s see those hands…
Listen once more: “they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.” In Matthew’s story, Jesus wasn’t just riding a donkey—he was riding a donkey and her colt! I’m wondering how in the world he managed to do that. Maybe he sat side saddle on the bigger one and used the colt as a kind of walking footstool? Maybe they were just about the same size and they hitched them together and Jesus just sat in the middle? Maybe he took turns riding the donkey and the colt? I really don’t know how, but that’s exactly what Matthew tells us he did. Just when you think you can’t get anything new out of these ancient stories you discover something new, hiding in plain sight!
The truth is, there’s a very logical explanation for Matthew’s inclusion of the colt, but it’s probably not what you’d expect. Matthew shows their hand in verse five when they quote the prophet Zechariah: “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.” The trouble is, Zechariah is clarifying that the donkey the king is riding on is a colt, not that he’s riding both a donkey and a colt. Matthew adds the word “and” and the quote becomes: “your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Why in the world would they do that? Well, because Matthew wasn’t just linking Jesus to Zechariah’s prophecy. They were also linking Jesus to an even earlier blessing from the book of Genesis in which Jacob blesses his son Judah and says that the royal line of Israel will not pass from his descendants— that he will bind “his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine.”1
Judah’s most famous descendant is the fabled King David. By linking Jesus to Zechariah’s prophecy of a king coming on a donkey and the blessing of Judah in Genesis, Matthew presents Jesus as not just a king, but a king in the ancient line of blessed kings from the line of Judah.
Perhaps you are now wondering why any of this really matters—whether or not Jesus rode one or two donkeys, that Matthew altered the prophecy, or that Matthew claims King David as Jesus’ ancestor. For us, maybe it really doesn’t matter. We weren’t around back then. We aren’t waiting for a new king, a king in the line of Judah, to overthrow our oppressors. But they were. And if we’re honest, we know something about that kind of longing too. Matthew wanted to make it very clear that the one they were waiting for was in fact Jesus of Nazareth—riding not one but two donkeys into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday—doubly foretold and blessed to be king.
So, were the crowds really seeing double donkeys on that long ago Palm Sunday? I tend to think not. Matthew’s story is a perfect example of what scholar John Dominic Crossan describes as “prophecy historicized” not history remembered.2 That is to say, “sought out after the events of Jesus’ life were already known and his followers declared that texts from the Hebrew Scriptures had been written with him in mind.”3 In other words, Matthew’s inclusion of that extra donkey was not so much for the sake of history as it was for the sake of theology—of applying not one, but two ancient scriptures to Jesus and seeing him as the fulfillment of both.
Crossan’s lens of prophecy historicized can be a helpful one for us because it reminds us that the gospels are doing more than telling us what happened. They weren’t just offering a historical recounting of the events of Jesus’ life. They were coupling those events with ancient theological claims and prophecies—finding Jesus foretold in the scriptural record of their people. As such, the gospels are so much more than histories—they are a complex tapestry of historical events, theological claims, prophetic fulfillments, older oral traditions, and innovative storytelling. Their primary purpose was not to provide an unbiased historical accounting of Jesus’ life. Their primary purpose was to convey who Jesus was and is, from the author’s perspective.
From the very first verse of their gospel, Matthew tells us that they’re writing about Jesus the Messiah, the son of David—not Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary and Joseph. For the author, Jesus is the longawaited Christ, the humble/compassionate savior, the future king from an ancient line. More than any other gospel-writer, this author draws extensively from the Hebrew scriptures and portrays Jesus as their fulfillment. The author was not, and should never be assumed to be, a neutral bystander, simply reporting the events of Jesus’ life. On the contrary, they were deeply committed to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and future king—Son of David and Son of God. Likewise, the authors of Mark, and Luke, and John, and the epistles were all deeply committed to their own experiences of Jesus, their own interpretations of him in their unique contexts.
The point I’m trying to make is this: everyone who encounters Jesus does so in their own unique context and then interprets him in light of that context. We can learn from the interpretations of others, but the power of Jesus’ story isn’t just in those interpretations. It’s in the fact that his story continues to engage our own—bringing with it new interpretations for our lives, in our time. Jesus continues to engage us in every generation: bringing wisdom, hope, and peace; challenging our assumptions and pressing us to be the best versions of ourselves; and illuminating fresh vision for the church and for the world.
Maybe that’s the invitation of Palm Sunday for us this year—not to argue about whether there was one donkey or two, but to learn how to see double. To see the story as it was told…and to see what it means for us now. To see the hopes of those first crowds, crying out for a king to overthrow empire…and to see the way Jesus refuses to become that kind of king. Because we’re not so different from that crowd. We still long for rescue. We still want things fixed—quickly, decisively, on our terms. And yet, here comes Jesus—not on a war horse, not with an army, but on a borrowed donkey…or maybe two. Easy to miss, if you’re only looking for power as the world defines it.
So maybe seeing double means learning to recognize Christ as he actually comes to us—in humility, in compassion, in the quiet, stubborn work of love. The question isn’t just “Who is this?” It’s: what kind of king are we willing to follow? And what kind of world are we willing to help bring into being? Because the story doesn’t end at the gates of Jerusalem. It continues—in us.
Hosanna.
Amen.
1 Genesis 49:11 2
2 John Dominic Crossan. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, San Francisco: Harper, 1994, page 145.
3 Ibid., 145. 3
