He’s come to be our saviour, but not on our terms. He’s a king, yes – but he is frustratingly humble. He refuses to be the kind of Saviour we try to make him into. He has come not to be served, but to serve – and to give his life as a ransom for many.

1.A pageant of power

The date is April 2, 774 AD – just six days after Palm Sunday. The great man himself is coming to Rome, the Eternal City, for the first time. Charlemagne – whose nickname itself means ‘Charles the Great’ – rides at the head of his mighty army and a train of dukes, counts, bishops, abbots, and other officials, both secular and sacred.

About a mile from the city, the general was met by a military guard and by young boys carrying palm and olive branches. Greeted by Pope Adrian at St Peter’s, he entered the church to the sound of a choir of monks singing the Palm Sunday anthem from Psalm 118: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’.

It was a pageant of power, honouring the greatest leader that Europe had seen in four hundred years – the great man who would found the Holy Roman Empire, an Empire that would last until another strong man, Napoleon, ended it a thousand years later. Charlemagne made Europe great again by sheer force of will – converting whole nations to Christianity at the point of the sword.

There’s something deeply appealing about leaders like Charlemagne, even to us today. Troubled times make us long for a leader whom we can get behind—one who will stand up for us and get things done – who won’t be pushed around. We want strength, power, and decisive action. If anything, that’s something that has intensified even in the last decade.

We live in an era of strong man rulers.

But was Jesus just another one of these? Did Charlemagne get the triumphal entry right when he re-enacted it as a symbol of his own glory? Or was he falling into the trap that the disciples themselves had fallen when they rebuked Jesus? Is today just another pageant of power to put beside the military parades of dictators, the coronations of kings and the inaugurations of presidents?

2.Jesus the deliberate king

Like so many other rulers, Jesus carefully orchestrated his entry into the royal city. The two disciples are sent off with precise instructions to find a young donkey that has never been ridden before.

Why? He could have just walked in, after all. He’s walked everywhere else. But Jesus is making a statement here. He’s enacting the prophesy from Zechariah 9:

“See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey.”

The message is: I am that king, the king come to save, the Messiah. I’ve come as the bringer of God’s eternal peace to the holy city.

Jesus has never denied who he is. He’s not engaging in a kind of false modesty. When Peter proclaimed him the Messiah, he didn’t deny it.

But he does challenge Peter – and James and John, and the other disciples, and ultimately you and me – about what treading the path of the Messiah would mean. He will be betrayed to the authorities, suffer and die – and only after that, rise from the dead.

Jesus will be crowned a king. He will be enthroned. Power and authority will belong to him. But the pathway is not via glory and victory, strength and honour – but through rejection, suffering, and disgrace.

Jesus is king, but a different kind of king. His authority does not come from the threat of violence and domination but from his weakness and suffering for our sake.

The nervous young donkey is the complete antithesis of the highly trained warhorse. Rather than sitting high above the crowd on a stallion, Jesus would’ve been tottering precariously on the back of the donkey. It’s hard to ride a donkey with a kingly dignity.

Jesus is a king, but he is a humble king.

3.Jesus the humble king

Despite that, the scene when Jesus enters Jerusalem, though, has all the atmosphere of a political rally. The crowd hails Jesus in the terms of Psalm 118, a Psalm of royal hope – the same psalm that greeted Charlemagne.

Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

They spread their cloaks on the road, which was a way of showing great honour. And they waved branches to welcome him – in John’s gospel, we read that they waved palm leaves as well. This was a symbol of rejoicing for the Jews and a symbol of triumph and victory for the Romans.

It looked like momentum was building. We know that Jesus had been the focus of the hope for the liberation of the Jewish people from the yoke of Roman power. The disciples were expecting the restoration of Israel.

But that’s not what we get here.

Jesus does not oblige our fantasies of power and victory. He subverts them.

He enters Jerusalem, but not to seize the reigns of power or to take over the temple.

Read More