King Jesus, the New Moses, the New Joseph: Palm Sunday

The very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and strewed them on the road. The crowds preceding him and those following kept crying out and saying: “Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is the he who comes in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.” And when he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?”
On Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday, as it is also known, we represent Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The celebrant, a bishop or priest, walks up to the steps of the altar while the congregation holds palms. At that altar, he will offer the true sacrifice of the body, blood, soul and divinity of the God-man, Jesus Christ.
 
Psalm 118 26-28 describes a king coming entering the city of Jerusalem. And by the first century A.D. it was interpreted as a prophetic psalm, as a psalm about the coming of the future king, the Messiah, to the city of Jerusalem.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD.
We bless you from the house of the LORD.
The LORD is God and has enlightened us.
Join in procession with leafy branches  up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, I give you thanks;
my God, I offer you praise.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good,
his mercy endures forever. Ps. 118

By the first century, this Psalm was seen as messianic. The new King of Israel entering triumphally into his city, Jerusalem. This is the kind of reception that would build the animosity of the powers that be towards Jesus.  This reception would suggest to Rome that Jesus was a threat. The Romans knew, as the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus write, the the Judeans expected a king would lead them to triumph. The first century Roman historians, because they were religious people, accepted the prophecy; but not the Jewish interpretation. They knew the prophecy was to be fulfilled by the now, long-dead, Roman emperors. The Early Christian, knew that Jesus was the answer to this prophecy.
 
Matthew’s gospel presents Jesus passion and death as the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old Testament about the Messiah, the New Exodus, the New Adam, the Suffering Servant, the New Joseph. The welcoming of King Jesus with palms as he entered Jerusalem was the fulfillment of prophecy and ushered in to history, the reign of God. So, how does Matthew’s gospel accomplish this? What are the unique elements of Matthew's Gospel and, even, more importantly, how does the passion of Christ fulfill the Old Testament?  This is Fr. John Arnold and this is OVC.
 

1.  How does the Gospel of Matthew show that Jesus is the new Moses leading all people on a new Exodus?

Matthew's passion narrative emphasizes over and over again that the Last Supper was a Passover meal.  "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?” Matthew 26:17 the Gospel says. The Passover meal was the annual memorial of the deliverance of the 12 tribes of Israel from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt. So, on the Passover night, the lamb was sacrificed, unleavened bread was eaten, and Israel was finally set free. They were redeemed. They were delivered. And they began their journey home to the promised land. So when Jesus instituted the Eucharist, the Last Supper, in the context of the Jewish Passover meal, he is inaugurating the new Passover. After, the traditional part of the Passover meal, Jesus identifies himself as the new Passover lamb. This is my body, this is my blood, Jesus says. The old Passover remembered the escape from Egypt to new life in Israel. The old Passover began in Egypt and ended in Jerusalem, in the earthly promised land. It was a journey from Egypt to Canaan. But the new Passover of Jesus begins in Jerusalem and ends with his resurrection and his ascension into the heavenly promised land.

2. How does the Gospel of Matthew show that Jesus is the New Adam?

Remember that when Jesus left the Passover meal went across the Kidron Valley singing Psalms, and entered the Garden of Gethsemane. The Hebrew for Gethsemane means ‘oil press.’ So Jesus goes over to the mountain of olives into the garden where they would press olives to make oil, and that's where his passion begins.   Possibly Matthew emphasizes that Jesus’ agony takes place on the mountain of olives and in the garden named after an olive oil press because an ancient Jewish tradition believed that the tree of life, placed in the garden of Eden, was actually an olive tree.   Adam was tempted in a Garden, but fell. Jesus is tempted in the Garden, but does not fall. He overcomes sin, by his trust in God. Jesus dies that we might be restored to Eden. St. Paul explains it like this;

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raise incorruptible.  It is sown dishonorable; it is raised glorious. It is sown weak; it is raised powerful.    It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.  So, too, it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being,” the last Adam a life-giving spirit.”  1 Cor. 15:42-49

3. How does the Gospel of Matthew portray Jesus as the prophetic Suffering Servant from the Book of Isaiah?

When Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, he tells his disciples that “the scriptures be …  fulfilled, that it must be so?" Mt. 26:54  Jesus going to the cross silent like a lamb led to the slaughter, and bearing the spitting and the abuse of the soldiers and of the leaders in Jerusalem, just like the prophecies of the suffering servant had foretold. Recall Isaiah the prophet

“He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.  Yet it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured. We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted,   But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity. He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed.” Is. 53:3-5

In Isaiah 53, and other chapters, the prophet foretells a figure that will be reviled and suffer for the people. This future leader would be the Suffering Servant. That figure is the Old Testament prophecy underlying Jesus conquering sin and death. Jesus himself will explain before and after his resurrection, the necessity of his suffering and death.
 

4. How is Jesus the New Joseph?

Recall that in Genesis 37-50, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, had 12 sons.   His favorite was Joseph. In the book of Genesis 38, Joseph, the son of Jacob, the righteous and innocent son of Jacob, is betrayed by his brother Judah and sold to the Gentile slave traders for 20 pieces of silver.  Joseph, because he was favored by God, rose to be second in command in Egypt, Pharoah’s Vizier.   When famine struck Canaan, the other eleven brothers went to Egypt to ask for help from the Vizier. They did not recognize the second in command as Joseph.  Long story, short, Vizier Joseph forgave his brothers, fed them and the family was reunited in Egypt.  Does the story sound familiar?   Jesus is sold by Judas for 30 pieces of silver to the Gentiles, enters the kingdom of Heaven and waits for us. Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, in Hebrew his name means Judah, the very name of the brother who betrayed Joseph.

5. Why does Matthew tell us about Barabbas?

Jesus the Messiah was a nonviolent Messiah; Barabbas was a revolutionary.   Matthew goes deeper. “Barabbas”, that name in Aramaic, literally means son of the father. “Bar” means son and “abba” means father.  In certain manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel, we get Barabbas' first name, which is Jesus. Jesus Barrabas is his full name. The crowd wants the son of the Father, they just choose the look alike, and kill the real one. The problem of sin in the New Testament.
 

6. Why does the crowd say, his blood be upon us and our children?

The Barabbas story is about irony. The people want the Son of the Father, they just choose wrongly.  The irony continues when the crowd says, "his blood be upon us and upon our children." It needs to be said, that this passage has been misused by generations of Christians to put the guilt for Jesus’ death on all Jews. This has given a religious justification for persecution of the Jewish people. That interpretation is condemned by the Church. The Catechism par. 58 says that all sinners, including you and me, are the author’s of Christ’s passion.  
 
Pope Benedict points out in his book Jesus of Nazareth,

“When in Matthew’s account the “whole people” say: “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . God put [Jesus] forward as an expiation by his blood” (Rom 3:23, 25) … read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation. Only when understood in terms of the theology of the Last Supper and the Cross, drawn from the whole of the New Testament, does this verse from Matthew’s Gospel take on its correct meaning.”  Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection (pp. 187-188). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

 The irony? We are all washed and saved by the blood of the New Passover Lamb. God first loved us, while we were still sinners, St. Paul says in Roman 5. By calling for Jesus blood to be upon them and their children, the crowd called for salvation through the very scapegoat, Jesus, whose death they sought. A true sacrificial offering, although they did not understand it as so at the time.  As Christians we all want Jesus's blood to be upon us and upon our children, because we are all responsible for the crucifixion and the death of Christ and we find salvation through his blood.
 

7. Why was is called Golgotha, the place the skull?

There are multiple traditions:

1. Possibly, it was a place where executions occurred;
2. Possibly, it was the place where the heads of decapitated Roman citizens were displayed.
3. Possibly, this particular hill in Jerusalem looked like a skull.

Nothing for sure, but that it was called Golgotha for some or all of these reasons. Some Church Father's said that it was the place of the burial of Adam. Sometimes, on depictions of icons of the crucifixion you'll see a grave underneath the cross with a skull or sometimes you'll see Adam and Eve depicted as being beneath the crucifix.

 
Conclusion
Holy Week is the center, in many ways, of the Liturgical Year. When you read Matthew’s account of Jesus final moments of agony, you heard him say, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” God has not abandoned us and Jesus did not despair at the moment of his death? He is praying, quoting the Old Testament, Psalm 22. That Psalm  begins in desolation and the experience of David feeling abandoned by God, the Psalm ends with the salvation of David and the conversion of the nations, that is, the pagans. That is exactly what happened and is happening after Jesus death and resurrection. Here is the part of Psalm 22 we read at mass: