NOTES for Mar 11:1-11
Jesus enters Jerusalem not as a king, but rather as a prophet: He rides into it on a donkey. A king would most likely have entered the city in a chariot or on horseback; in antiquity a horse, and especially a horse-drawn chariot, was the royal means of transportation par excellence.
Prophets, however, either walked or used donkeys, more precisely mules, and in the same way, according to traditional popular messianic ideas, the Messiah was to appear in the city at the very beginning, before He became the King of His messianic Kingdom. Here Jesus meets these traditional ideas, clearly making it clear to the people that He truly is the very Messiah they are waiting for.
This behavior of His plainly contrasts with the desire to hide His messiahship that had characterized Him before. This is understandable: He was not going to start or lead any mass messianic movement, and therefore publicity and wide renown were, in essence, of no use to Him. He became known because of the miracles and healings He performed, but this renown did not help Him at all, and sometimes even hindered Him. His spiritual work required not mass scale but depth, and it was connected not with crowds but with specific people.
The crowds of people who constantly pursued Him, alas, did not at all testify to a large number of people ready for serious spiritual work; they only demonstrated how susceptible a crowd is to miracles. In fact, the Jerusalem crowd that met Jesus as He entered the city was no different in this respect from any other. Now, however, the time had come to call things by their proper names: Jesus finally bears open witness to His messiahship, whatever the people around Him may think.
Now this was possible: too little time remained before His death and resurrection for anyone to try to draw Him into another "messianic" adventure, of which a very great many were being launched in Judea at that time. Such witness was absolutely necessary: the people of God had to know that the Messiah they awaited had come. Each person decided for himself how to respond to this witness, but it was given, and no one in Jerusalem could in good conscience say that he had seen nothing and known nothing.