Luke 19:28-40
We celebrate Palm Sunday every year as though it were Jesus’ coronation. All our lives we have called Jesus “King” or “Lord” so we hear this story through that lens. Palm Sunday is the day the crowds in Jerusalem crowned Jesus as king, choosing him over Rome to rule them. Of course that’s not what happened. It’s very likely the crowds welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem because they had heard about the miracles of healing he performed and the teaching that drew crowds. But it’s not a coronation. At the same moment the Roman legions would have been arriving on the other side of the city to keep order during the Passover festival. They came with war horses and marching, heavily armed soldiers. Jesus on his donkey with a few peasants armed with tree branches were not taking Rome’s power.
The Pharisees knew this was true. They tried to silence the crowd, knowing that their joy only endangered Jesus. Rome wasn’t going to tolerate even the semblance of this upstart pretending to have power. It was inevitable that he would soon die. He may have bravely claimed that “even the stones” would acknowledge him, but Jesus was not about to overthrow Rome.
It's hard for us to hear this story through first century eyes. We are used to people having choices about who is in charge of their world. If Jesus represents a better way of living for the people, then we think it’s natural that they would rally for him and choose his leadership. But first-century people had no power to make that choice. Jesus’ teaching and his miracles could change the way they saw life, but none of them could change the Empire.
Centuries later Christianity named Jesus Lord and celebrated Christ the King Sunday, but only after the Empire endorsed this religion. Jesus became King when the Empire merged itself with what they claimed was Jesus’ kingdom, not before. Palm Sunday isn’t about Jesus winning or the Kingdom of God becoming the way the world works – at least not in any obvious ways. The people who welcomed Jesus had no illusions that their world was going to change that day. Except perhaps that it was never going to be the same
This year I’m inclined to think that Palm Sunday is about hope. Often we think of hope as the belief that the world is going to change for the better. We hope someone is going to get well. We hope Congress will wake up. We hope wars will end. We tie that hope to real possibilities that these things will happen. There will be the right medicine, the right speech delivered, the right negotiations. We tie our hope to the real possibility of change happening.
The first century has something to teach us about hope. They had no hope of the Empire changing. Jesus had no hope of being in charge. He had no hope of living through the next few days after what happened that day. The realities were harsh and unrelenting. But there was something about Jesus that still inspired hope.
He spoke of loving neighbors in a way that made folks believe they could do that.
He spoke of God’s love in a way that convinced people love was real.
He held a vision of the way the world could be that was so strong people could believe it. Maybe they couldn’t change the world, but they could change the way they lived in the world. That vision didn’t depend on probability. Even if Jesus didn’t stand a chance, he still inspired them to see life in a new way, to treat each other in a new way.
The kind of hope people found in the Jesus movement was the kind of hope that would let them believe that even someone who died might rise from the dead. Even Rome’s crushing power couldn’t keep their spirits from rising up and their community from finding life in the midst of death.
This is a Palm Sunday gift to us. Centuries ago people who lived under occupation and violence believed it matter how they treated one another. People who lived under corrupt leaders believed they could be good and kind. People who saw no way forward still formed communities that cared for each other and gathered in joy day by day.
Their hope was in a vision Jesus called the reign of God, and it didn’t depend on the possibility of it coming true. Instead, it was a way of life people could live in spite of what was happening around them. In spite of horrors and struggle. The Empire could control food and work and who lived and who died, but it couldn’t control how they loved one another, how they cared for each other, how they saw a bigger reality beyond the soldiers in their streets and the crosses on their hillsides.
Palm Sunday crowds surely knew Jesus would die. But hope told them he also would live. A God-sized vision of goodness can’t be crucified.