1. On Palm Sunday, Christ enters Jerusalem as a conquering king, His way strewn with palms. But He is a most unusual king: riding unarmed upon a borrowed donkey, His retinue being a motley bunch of fishermen, zealots, and ex-tax collectors. And when He enters the city, He does not take His seat or meet with the ruling authorities; He simply looks around, prays at the Temple, and leaves. “Tell ye, the daughter of Sion: ‘Behold thy king cometh to thee, meek and sitting upon an ass.’”

The Meekness of Christ is not so much in His riding a donkey; it is in His coming to Jerusalem at all. An earthly king bears a sword and rides a horse, a beast of war, because his rule must be asserted and defended by strength and grandeur. Christ needs no such exterior signs; the question is not whether He can command loyalty, but whether the people will give it to Him. His majesty is not in question; our submission is. Hence, He stoops Himself and declaims all outward signs of power, lest it be thought His majesty is dependent on them.

2. It must be again and again reiterated that Our Lord resolutely refused to take sides in political questions of His day, declining even to say what He thought of Roman rule. This is because He is quite literally above such things. It isn’t for Him to support any one side; it is for those sides to choose whether to support Him. The King of Kings is no one’s vassal.

In this, Christ stands unique in the annals of historical figures. He is not exactly aloof from public affairs: He is not a Diogenes snapping at Alexander to get out of His light, for instance. Jesus is a very public figure who goes about preaching and deliberately collecting followers. But neither is He in any way bound to public affairs or seeking governmental support: He is no Mohammed fleeing to Medina to gather an army in order to march on Mecca. Again, He refuses to take sides on the Roman question or to arbitrate legal disputes.

Instead, Jesus adopts the remarkable approach in that He simply acts as though He is the one in charge. He orders people to leave everything and follow Him. He executes chastisements on those who violate sacred law. He goes where He will, does what He likes, and asks no one’s permission. When He pays the Temple tax, it’s explicitly done as a concession, not as something He feels obligated to do. Again, Christ’s authority and majesty are not in dispute: He does not need to justify them or garner support for them. It is our response to his authority that is in question, and for which we will be judged.

3. On a much lower level, this means that whenever someone says “Jesus would support Policy,” you can be sure they don’t know what they’re talking about.

4. Phoenix cracked the triple digits this week for (I think) the first time this year. Incidentally, ‘triple’ ought to be spelled with a double ‘p’, the better to convey the multiplicity of the idea. Dear Dr. Johnson bungled that one, I’m afraid (as did Mr. Webster, but we expect misspellings from him).

5. You know when you see stories of, say, a leopard becoming best friends with a dog, and then it always ends with the author or narrator saying something like: “If they can get along, why can’t we?”

The proper response is:

“Because morons like you never ask questions like that honestly.”

6. When someone asks why two groups can’t get along, or why one group tends to be prejudiced against another, it’s like when a woman asks if a dress makes her look fat. Nine times out of ten, an honest answer is the very last thing they want.

7. I’m picturing God creating the donkey:

God: “It’s like a horse, only it’s smaller, uglier, has a worse personality, and makes a sound like its throat is full of rusty hinges.”

Nature: “Lord, is this one of your joke projects like that platypus thing?”

God: “No, no; I’ve got plans for this one….”