March 29, 2026 – Palm Sunday
Zechariah 9.9-10
John 12.12-19
The First No Kings Day
Palm Sunday
If it were not for the gospel of John, we might well be celebrating Palm Tuesday or Palm Thursday this week, because John is the only one to tell us the day of the week Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem occurred. If we were left with only Matthew, Mark and Luke it could have almost any day, because none of them tells us. But John’s timing is precise: chapter 12 begins, “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany.” And this morning’s reading follows, “The next day the great crowd that had come to the Festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.” Since we know that Passover began on Friday evening that year, we know the Triumphal Entry took place on Sunday.
It may seem a minor detail, but it is John’s attention to such seemingly minor details that gives the story its power. When we read the story of Palm Sunday, we envision crowds of the faithful lining the streets of Jerusalem greeting Jesus as the Messiah, the promised one of Israel. But John clarifies that vision. The crowds of people who lined the streets of Jerusalem that day were less excited to see Jesus as a spiritual leader; they were much more excited because they wanted to make him King. Not the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Isaiah’s sense, but a King who would overthrow Roman oppression, who would topple Pilate and Herod and usher in the promised new kingdom with himself as regent.
I wonder what those folks who lined the streets of Jerusalem hoping to see their new king would make of yesterday’s rallies. I had a funeral yesterday and could not make any of the local gatherings, but I did stand in the rain in St. Louis at the last No Kings Day with hundreds of other souls who were determined that good government abhors a monarch of any stripe. Yesterday’s rallies counted between eight and nine million souls in the US alone, demonstrating for democracy and the rule of law. Similar rallies took place across the globe, in Latin America and Australia, in Berlin, London and Paris – Paris’ was, appropriately enough, at the Bastille. Speaking of the Bastille, I loved the photo Karli took yesterday, it was a sign someone had made that read, “They want 1939 Germany – they’ll get 1789 France. And we know what the French thought about kings in that year. Evidently, Jesus thought the same.
What the people of Jerusalem believed they wanted is what thousands of people stood up against yesterday. More to the point, what the people of Jerusalem wanted on that Palm Sunday was rejected outright by Jesus himself. He refused to be called king; in fact his choice of conveyance, to ride in on a young donkey, was a sign of humility, a rejection of royalty, and the clear statement that he was a very different kind of leader than what most folks expected, and the crowd became confused. As John tells us, “[Even] the disciples did not understand these things at first.”
To get to the heart of John’s Palm Sunday story, we want to look beyond the triumphal entry. The sixth chapter of John foreshadows the crowd’s mood and desire. After John relates the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we come across this curious note: “When the people saw the sign that Jesus had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’ When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him King, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him King, he slipped away and found sanctuary in the mountains. He recognized their illusions about him, and he wanted no part of them.
The theme continues later on in Holy Week, when Jesus, now a prisoner, is taken to Pilate. “Pilate… summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’” Jesus’s reply rejects and redirects the question: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over… but as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” And in a passage we remember well this Holy Week, “Pilate had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” It was because Jesus was mistakenly taken for a worldly king, a political king, that he was crucified. It was because Jesus was mistakenly taken for the kind of King the people thought and said they wanted, and he refused to become, that he was crucified. There would be no kingship for Jesus. He knew that to confuse earthly authority for spiritual authority was a sure recipe for disaster. He became disaster’s victim.
In the earliest days of the war against Iran, something unusual and unsettling began circulating among our armed forces. US troops were hearing from their superiors that the action against Iran carried a divine imprimatur, that the massive bombing and casualties it continues to inflict is all part of God’s divine plan. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization which protects the first amendment rights of our enlisted men and women, began receiving complaints from officers who were being directed to interpret their orders through the lens of an aggressive and insistent Christian bias. In one instance, an officer was instructed that the Commander in Chief had been anointed by Jesus to start a fire in Iran in order to hasten a biblical Armageddon and thus bring about Jesus’ imminent return to earth. The Secretary of Defense defended this line of reasoning when he said, “There is a direct through line from the Old and New Testament Christian gospels to the development of… the United States of America.” Old and New Testament Christian gospels? I wonder which Old Testament Christian gospel he thinks he is reading. This is the same Defense Secretary who offered a prayer last month he addressed to “King Jesus.” No wonder Jesus fled to the mountains when that idea was first broached.
To date the Iran War has taken approximately 6500 Iranian lives, at least 1500 of them civilians, and about 220 of those, children. Is this too part of a divine plan? Is this what our enlisted men and women are being told, to justify their role in the conflict? How many more need to be killed before King Jesus returns in triumph? Jesus knew where such misguided posturing inevitably leads. He rejected the attempt to be made into a political pawn. He would not be the king to overthrow the Roman oppressors, and he will not be the one in whose name our nation bombs Iran. Remember, when he disappointed the hopeful crowd on Sunday it was only a matter of days until they turned against him. Less than a week later, when Pilate presented Jesus to that same crowd their shouts of “Hosanna!” turned into shouts of, “Away with him! Away with hm! Crucify him!”
I won’t blame you if you don’t believe this, but I pretty much had this whole sermon mapped out in my mind before I read this week’s Lent devotions. Some of you heard my reply to Eileen Sypher’s prayer request last week, when she alluded to the military leadership’s invocation a of divine blessing on the war; I thanked her for providing a sneak preview of this morning’s sermon. And sure enough, when we opened our devotionals to this morning’s reading, there is our friend Molly Baskette writing about No Kings Day. “We get it.” Molly writes. “We get it. Jesus is the anti-fascist anti-King! The lore of Palm Sunday, the original No Kings Day, reminds us over and over again. Jesus ditches the trappings of kingship, trading a warhorse for a borrowed donkey, his red carpet a frothy path of palms.” All I will say about Molly’s and my convergence of ideas is, Good minds think alike.
Claudia read the familiar words of the prophet Zechariah this morning, words the gospel writers borrowed to describe the triumphal entry. At first blush, they seem to be looking ahead to a royal kingship. “Look, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” But this is not the kind of King that leads soldiers into battle. Indeed, just the opposite is true: “He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim – [he will cut off] the war-horse from Jerusalem. and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.” If Jesus can be said to have a realm, it is a peaceable one, there is no place for war or chariots or horses or bows or rifles or bombs. To say the war against Iran is part of a divine plan is to misunderstand Jesus as completely as Pilate did. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asked. “Do you ask this on your own,” Jesus replied, “or did others tell you this about me?.. My kingdom is not of this world.” “So you are a King?” “That’s what you say.” No wonder Pilate was confused. As is every politician who is Pilate’s heir, who believes Jesus is about world domination, about being the hero warrior, about subduing nations and peoples no matter what the cost. No Kings, no Presidents, no Potentates, no rulers of any stripe wear the mantle of Jesus. They may all think they deserve the glory, the laud and the honor of Palm Sunday, but only One is willing to walk the path to Good Friday.