Notes on Mark 11:1-11

These notes are provided to support and expand on my podcast Triumphantly Toward Death.

Translation and Notes

At a time when Jesus appears most like what the crowd expects he is actually heading into that portion of his ministry in which he will disappoint those same crowds the most. One of the key contrasts of the book of Mark is the crowd here in Mark 11:1-11 as opposed to the crowd in Mark 15:6-15. We should be very, very careful not to judge these crowds. We are often so much the same. God is great while his plans coincide with ours, but just let him ask us to push outside our comfort zone, and things change. We may not decide to crucify him, but we do tend to become disobedient. When we take that first step of disobedience, even that moment at which we believe we can judge God’s will and plan, we open the door that leads to the cry of “Crucify him.”

His right to kingship is also validated by the long line of people running down through the centuries, people who have taken him as Master and Savior, and whose lives in power and ministering love have been direct and fundamental proofs of the Christian religion. It has been given, too, an overwhelming demonstration in the social and political world. Every year piles up new mountains of evidence that Jesus was everlastingly right in his reading of life. The most effective arguments for the truth of Christianity are not being spun out of the brains of theologians, but by the events of contemporary history. The passing parade brings daily testimony to the truth that other foundation can no man lay for lasting security, economic welfare, and peace than that which is laid in Christ Jesus.

We have been given for generations the conventional picture of him as a gentle, mildly deluded sentimentalist, a figure for poetry and art, but unfitted to deal with the rouge realities of the world. That picture is steadily changing for anyone not deaf, dumb, and blind. Jesus is emerging as the sternest realist who ever injected hard truth into a world ruled by illusion. He is not the sentimentalist in the world we know. The sentimentalists are the romantic fools who imagine that it is possible to build security and peace on a foundation of hate and revenge, or of greed and competing sovereignties. Clemenceau, after the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, directed a scornful sneer at Woodrow Wilson. He said that the president of the United States “spoke like Jesus Christ.” One keen-minded man exclaimed, “Ah, if only he had!” If anyone there, or at Yalta, or anywhere else, had spoken like Jesus Christ and carried conviction, our world might not have fallen into such ruin. The only one who could bring now a saving word to that world would be one who would speak like Jesus Christ. We can still cry to him with the old shout, “Hosanna!” IB on Mark 11:1-11

¹When he came near Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples,

I regard the efforts to straighten out the geography as pointless. The IB, for example, complains that the place names are out of order for someone traveling from Jericho to Jerusalem. What is missing, of course, is any indication that Mark intended to present them in order.

²and told them, “Go into the village that is across from you, and as soon as you go into it, you will find a donkey tied up, on whom no human has sat. Untie it and bring it. ³And if anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The master needs it, and he will send it back here immediately.'”

This passage has created some truly bizarre claims, including the accusation that Jesus was a horse thief. Most commonly, however, people make reference to the supernatural. But there is no requirement for Jesus to have supernatural knowledge in order to know about the donkey. He may well have made arrangements either through another messenger or on his own. Perhaps he knew the owner and his habits. Of course it would be quite possible for Jesus to know supernaturally where the donkey actually was, but how would he arrange for the docile crowd who question, but then allow the disciples to take the donkey away?

The most natural reading is to assume some sort of prior arrangement or even a standing friendship with the owner. Bock (p. 313) suggests the practice of “angaria, the temporary procurement of resources on behalf of a leader, either ruler or rabbi.” That is also possible, but it would presumably only work with an existing disciple.

⁴And they went and found the donkey tied up by the gate outside on the street, and they untied it. ⁵And certain persons who were standing there asked them, “What are you doing untying the donkey?” ⁶But they said to them just what Jesus had told them, and so they left them alone.

Mark makes it clear that Jesus is in control of the situation and is going voluntarily to what he is about to experience.

⁷And they brought the donkey to Jesus, and they threw their garments on it, and he sat on it.

The disciples were certainly bright enough to understand the purpose of the donkey. Once Jesus is seated, the crowds will understand as well—to the extent that their agenda allows them to.

⁸And many spread out their garments on the path, but others broke off leafy branches out of the fields. ⁹And they went before him and followed him, saying,

Hosanna
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
¹⁰Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David,
Hosanna in the highest!

Beware the crowds! I wrote some comments on this in a devotional this morning, which can serve as my comment on this portion of the passage.

¹¹And he went into Jerusalem, into the temple, and he looked over everything, and it being evening, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

The crowd has one agenda, but that is not the same agenda as Jesus has. Throughout Mark, Jesus has been in conflict with the crowds and with his disciples. Each group has a plan for Jesus’ life and ministry, but Jesus has a definite plan not to get derailed.