"The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!"
About this Quote
As an athlete, Kirk’s eye goes to performance, spectacle, and rulebooks. He frames Jesus’ entrance the way a modern city might frame a protest march or an unsanctioned celebration: symbolic, disruptive, and technically illegal. That “parading without a permit” line yanks the story out of stained-glass reverence and drops it into contemporary civic life, where public space is policed and meaning is managed. The subtext is uncomfortable: truth doesn’t arrive with credentials, security details, or institutional approval. It arrives looking like a mismatch for the occasion, almost designed to be underestimated.
The “poor king” also needles our addiction to the optics of winning. In sports culture, legitimacy is often measured by hardware, money, and swagger. Kirk flips that metric. The donkey becomes a deliberate affront to imperial pageantry - not an accident of poverty but a choice that exposes how easily we confuse dominance with authority. Absurdity, here, isn’t nihilism; it’s strategy. The scene works because it stages a collision between expectation and method, daring the crowd to decide whether they can recognize significance when it doesn’t look like success.
Quote Details
| Topic | Bible |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kirk, David. (2026, January 16). The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit! FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-entrance-into-jerusalem-has-all-the-elements-123877/
Chicago Style
Kirk, David. "The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!" FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-entrance-into-jerusalem-has-all-the-elements-123877/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!" FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-entrance-into-jerusalem-has-all-the-elements-123877/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2026.










