Are we missing the point of Palm Sunday?

I grew up waving palm fronds in church, marching down the aisle with the other kids as we sang "Hosanna in the highest." It felt like a celebration—and it was. We were reenacting Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem, welcomed like a king. I remember thinking it was fun, sitting in the pews afterward making little crosses from the fronds.

But as an adult, I've started to wonder: Are we missing the point of Palm Sunday?

There's something deeply unsettling about this holiday when you really sit with it. The same voices that shouted "Hosanna!" on Sunday were screaming "Crucify him!" by Friday. Something happened in between. Something turned their celebration into rejection, their adoration into anger.

What was it? And more uncomfortably—would I have been any different?

The Messiah They Wanted

The people who lined the streets that day had been waiting generations for this moment. They'd memorized the prophecies, whispered prayers in the dark, endured Roman occupation with one hope burning in their hearts: The Messiah is coming. Our king will restore us.

They weren't wrong to hope. Scripture promised a king in David's line who would rule with righteousness and bring peace (Isaiah 9:6-7). What they missed—what we all tend to miss—were the other prophecies. The ones about a suffering servant. The ones that didn't conform to their vision of power and victory.

They didn't ignore Scripture—they just cherry-picked the parts that fed their desires. The parts that looked like worldly success. The parts that promised them what they wanted.

The Week That Changed Everything

In the days following his arrival, Jesus systematically dismantled their expectations, revealing a kingdom that looked nothing like what anyone predicted:

He cleared the temple courts—not to purify worship for the religious elite, but to reclaim space for the outsiders, the Gentiles who had been pushed to the margins. The very people the religious establishment had deemed unworthy.

He pronounced his harshest words not for the sinners and outcasts, but for those convinced of their own righteousness: "Woe to you... for you clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence." The religious leaders tithed even their spices while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

He knelt and washed feet—taking the position of the lowest servant in a household. "The greatest among you shall be your servant," he said, as water dripped from his hands.

Every action rebukes power as the world defines it. Every word is a challenge to those who thought they knew what God wanted.

When Jesus Doesn't Match Our Vision

I wonder how many of us would have followed this Jesus all the way to Friday.

This Jesus who says give to Caesar what bears his image, but give to God what bears His—your whole self, your entire being.

This Jesus who insists the greatest commandment is love—not doctrinal precision, not moral superiority, not cultural victory.

This Jesus who says that in the final judgment, what matters isn't what we claimed to believe, but how we treated "the least of these"—the hungry, the stranger, the imprisoned.

This is not the Jesus who makes us comfortable. This is not the Jesus who champions our political causes or confirms our biases. This is not the Jesus who promises that if we just have enough faith, we'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

This is the Jesus who calls us to a kingdom where the first are last when we desperately want to be first. Where enemies are loved when we'd rather see them defeated. Where power is found in service when every instinct in us craves authority and control.

No wonder they crucified him. His kingdom threatened everything they—everything we—naturally value.

The Mirror of Palm Sunday

Maybe we celebrate Palm Sunday not because that crowd got it right—but because they got it wrong in ways we desperately need to recognize in ourselves.

I look at much of American Christianity today—our obsession with political power, our judgment of outsiders, our equation of faith with prosperity, our endless culture wars—and I have to ask: Have we created a Jesus who looks more like us than like the man who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey?

When Jesus says the greatest among us must serve...are we listening? When he says love God and love your neighbor as yourself...are we obeying? When he says what we do to the least, we do to him...are we seeing him in the faces of those we've been taught to fear or dismiss?

The palm branches we wave on Sunday are easy. The towel and basin of Thursday are harder. The cross of Friday seems impossible.

But that's the journey of Holy Week. Not a celebration of a king who validates our way of life, but an invitation to die to everything we thought we knew about power, about religion, about God Himself.

I think Palm Sunday is an opportunity, an opportunity to ask ourselves the hardest question of all: If we had been there, watching as Jesus turned over tables, challenged the religious, and redefined greatness as service...

Would we still be with him by Friday? Or would we, too, be in the crowd shouting "Crucify"?

Because two thousand years later, we still have to choose which Jesus we're following: the one who confirms our biases, or the one who calls us to the cross.