Dueling Parades(John 12:12-19)
When Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, the crowd waved palm branches and shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!” (John 12:12–13). This moment was a loaded political and prophetic act. Palm fronds were not just greenery. They carried the memory of the Maccabean revolt, when the Jewish people had thrown off foreign oppressors and rededicated the temple. Palms became a symbol of liberation, resistance, and hope for God’s deliverance. To wave them at Jesus was to declare: Here is the one who will set us free.
But freedom looked different in Jesus’ kingdom.
Two Parades, Two Kingdoms
At Passover, the city of Jerusalem swelled to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims. To keep order, Pontius Pilate would ride into town from the west, at the head of a column of Roman cavalry and soldiers. His parade —with armor gleaming, weapons rattling, was designed to intimidate. It was empire on full display.
That same day, Jesus entered from the east with his own procession. But it was the opposite of Pilate’s: he rode a donkey instead of a warhorse, surrounded not by soldiers but peasants. They waved palm branches, shouted “Hosanna,” and declared him king. This was protest theatre—mocking Rome’s show of power with a parody of kingship. It was joy against intimidation, laughter against fear, hope against empire.
In this moment, Jesus revealed what the kingdom of God looks like. It is not built on violence or fear but on humility, joy, and love. It lifts the lowly, disrupts oppression, and refuses to bow to empire.
Breaking the Cycle
The people of Israel understood history as a cycle. They longed for a king, but kings so often led them back into idolatry, injustice, and oppression. The prophets warned them, but they fell into the same trap repeatedly—power, wealth, exploitation, collapse, exile, then return.
This pattern is seen again and again in empires: Babylon, Egypt, Rome… and in every human attempt to build power through domination. Each empire promises glory but ends in self-destruction.
Jesus comes to break that cycle.
By riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, he declares that his kingdom is different. At the cross, he exposes violence and fear as powerless. In resurrection, he shows that love and life cannot be defeated. His reign offers release from Babylon’s grasp.
When Jesus becomes King:
Our desires are reoriented—toward contentment and generosity.
Our idols are dethroned—power and violence are unmasked.
Exploitation is undone—the last become first, the hungry are fed, the oppressed are honored.
Wrath is absorbed—hatred and fear exhaust themselves at the cross.
Collapse is transformed into new creation—Babylon falls, and the New Jerusalem descends.
In Jesus, we no longer live under the doom wheel of empire, repeating the same cycle of pride and ruin. Instead, we live in a new story: a kingdom without end, ruled by self-giving love, where every tear is wiped away.
Palm branches point us to this deeper hope. They are not only symbols of past revolutions but signs of the kingdom that will never fall—the reign of Christ that mocks the pretensions of empire and calls us into joy, liberation, and love.
Questions for Communal Discernment
In what ways do you see “Pilate’s parade” still showing up in our world today—symbols of intimidation, empire, or fear?
How might Jesus’ “upside-down parade” shape the way we imagine leadership, power, and influence?
Where do you notice cycles of Babylon—wealth, exploitation, collapse—at work in our culture, and how might following Jesus free us from them?
What does it mean for us, as a community, to wave palm branches today—to symbolically declare allegiance to Jesus instead of empire?
How can our daily lives reflect the joy, humility, and hope of Jesus’ kingdom, rather than the fear and coercion of worldly power?