Oops!
An interesting juxtaposition happened last weekend.
On Saturday was the third “No Kings” protest — some estimate the largest protest in American history, drawing 8 to 9 million people across more than 3,000 locations, surpassing even the Earth Day demonstrations of 1970 and the Women’s March of 2017.
The flagship event was here in our own state of Minnesota, drawing celebrities, politicians, and, of course, no shortage of creative signs. One read: “No Kings except Elvis” — which captured something deep in the American spirit. We are a fiercely independent people. We resist what we perceive as authoritarian power.
This isn’t unique to this administration, or any administration. But what caught my attention last weekend wasn’t only the message — it was the timing. Because Saturday was also Palm Sunday for our Western Christian brothers and sisters.
Ugh!
The juxtaposition is striking. Saturday’s march said No Kings while the Palm Sunday march says Yes, King.
You see, as Jesus entered Jerusalem, the crowd was not simply welcoming a teacher or a healer. They were welcoming their king. They expected him to overthrow Rome, reestablish the Kingdom of Israel, and restore glory to the Temple. The very word they shouted — “Hosanna!” — means “Save us!” It is a political cry as much as a religious one.
Even the Gospel writers frame the scene in royal terms, quoting the Prophet Zechariah: “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming.” Zechariah wrote as the Jews were returning from exile in Babylon, longing to rebuild the Temple and restore the throne. His words carried the weight of centuries of national longing.
And the palm branches? They were not merely festive decoration. During the Maccabean revolt, when the Jews overthrew the Greeks, retook Jerusalem, and purified the Temple, they celebrated with palm branches — even minting them onto their coins. When the crowd waves palms at Jesus, they are making a statement: This is our moment. This is our liberation.
They wanted a king who would fulfill their national ambitions, crush their enemies, and deliver the victory they believed God owed them. A king of strength. A king of power. A king who would make things go their way.
And — if we are honest — how many of us carry the same longing? Not for Jerusalem, perhaps, but for our own private kingdoms. Maybe we are looking for a political victory of our convictions over those across the aisle. Maybe we are looking for vindication at work, or control over how our families run. Whatever form it takes, it is ultimately the assertion of our own will against whatever — or whoever — we have named as the enemy.
Aha!
But notice what is missing from this entire conversation: What did God want? What kind of victory was God pursuing?
The answer history gives us is uncomfortable. There was no restored Kingdom of Israel. No rebuilt Temple — to this day, none stands in Jerusalem. Forty years after Jesus rode into the city to the sound of hosannas, Rome razed it to the ground. For the next four centuries, Jerusalem was little more than a military outpost.
God did not give the crowd what they asked for. So what was God doing?
I think the answer is hidden in plain sight — right there in the road, on top of the cloaks and the palm branches.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.
Not a warhorse. Not a white stallion. A donkey — the ancient symbol of peace, of humility, of a power that refuses to impose itself by force. Here comes the King, yes — but a King unlike any the world had imagined.
And look more closely at his royal regalia. Jesus does receive the full honors of a king: a crown, a purple robe, a scepter. But his crown is woven from thorns. His purple robe is placed on him in mockery, as soldiers spit on him and laugh. And his scepter? A flimsy reed — placed in his hands as a joke.
The world dressed Jesus as a king in order to humiliate him. But the Church has always understood something the soldiers did not: they were telling the truth without knowing it.
Whee!
This is the stunning, world-reversing proclamation of Palm Sunday: the King has come — and he has come to lose. Not because he is weak, but because the victory God is after cannot be won by force. The crowd wanted a king who would overpower their enemies. God sent a King who would absorb the worst their enemies could do — absorb hatred, violence, and death itself — and transform it from the inside.
The Kingdom of God does not conquer by crushing. It conquers by descent. The King goes down — into humiliation, into suffering, into the tomb — so that death itself might be defeated from within. This is not the victory of the powerful over the powerless. This is something far stranger and far deeper: the victory of self-emptying love over everything that destroys us.
In the Orthodox tradition, we have a word for this movement: kenosis — the self-emptying of God in Christ. And Holy Week is the liturgical journey into that mystery. We do not simply commemorate these events from a distance. We enter them. We walk with the King on his procession — not toward a throne room, but toward Golgotha.
Yeah!
So as you hold your palm branches today, I want to leave you with a question to carry through this Holy Week — not to answer quickly, but to sit with in prayer:
Where in your life are you still asking for the wrong kind of king?
Where are you demanding that God deliver the victory you have planned — the vindication, the outcome, the control — rather than opening yourself to the kind of victory only God can see? The crowd on Palm Sunday was not wrong to long for a king. They were wrong about what a true king looks like.
The invitation of this week is contemplative before it is active.
Before we change what we do, Holy Week asks us to let go of what we expect. To loosen our grip on the kingdoms we are quietly building, and to follow — slowly, on foot, with the palms in our hands — a King who rides a donkey toward the cross.
The tomb, we know, is not the end. But we are not there yet. For now, we walk. We watch. We wait.
And we let the mystery do its work in us.
Amen.