A clash of kingdoms

Today’s Palm Sunday reading features one of my favorite events in the Gospels; a donkey heist. In order to fulfill the witness of the prophets, the Messiah needed to ride into Jerusalem on a steed—and not just any steed, but an ass (Zechariah 9:9). Unfortunately, Jesus didn’t have one handy, so he told his disciples to go find one and claim it for God’s Kingdom. If anyone asks what they’re doing, Jesus says, just tell them: “the Lord needs it” (Luke 19:31).

After the disciples swindle somebody’s donkey (and it’s colt, depending on who tells the story), they return and put Jesus on top of it. Then, the crowds lay out palm branches in the street and shout, “Hosanna, blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). As others have suggested (most notably John Dominic Crossan and Diana Butler Bass), “Hosanna!’ was a cry for help and not simply words of praise. The Jewish people had been living under the boot of Roman occupation and were desperate for a way out. Some of them believed that a Messiah would come to save them, and many thought that they would be a political revolutionary.

In a sense, Jesus was a revolutionary, but not in the way some of the people had wanted. Instead of overthrowing the Roman government, Jesus was willingly handed over and crucified as a heretic and criminal. Even though the Roman authorities found no basis for a death sentence (although they were certainly happy to mock him and flog him), they crucified him to satisfy the crowds; the same crowds who had just laid out those palm branches and praised Jesus as he entered into Jerusalem.

It’s impossible not to see Palm and Passion Sunday as the clash of two kingdoms. On the one hand, you have Jesus riding on a donkey; a backwater Jewish peasant from Galilee who some of his followers had shockingly claimed was their messiah and king. On the other hand, you had the imperial power of Rome and the Temple authorities who were often in Rome’s pocket.

There was an insightful op-ed in the New York Times this morning that captures this clash well. In some ways, it was a rehashing of Butler Bass and Crossan’s work, but we all have a tendency to interweave ideas together (especially clergy). In it, the author reminded us that we often miss “an uncomfortable truth about Jesus’ procession: At the time, it was a deliberate act of theological and political confrontation. It wasn’t just pageantry; it was protest.”1 [1]

This echoes a book I’ve been reading by N T Wright and Michael F Bird called Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies. That’s one heck of a title, I know, but it helps bring the clash of kingdoms that were present in today’s reading into our current sociopolitical context. Bird and Wright remind us (like Thayer, Butler Bass, and Crossan) of the deeply political implications of the Gospel. Specifically, they remind us that “the Kingdom of God” that Jesus so often proclaimed wasn’t some ethereal paradise off in a distance, spiritual realm. Instead, through the actions and witness of Jesus, God’s Kingdom was breaking into our own world. It may not have been “of the world,” but it was certainly “for it.”

In the second chapter, the authors perfectly sum up the witness of Jesus’ “triumphant entry” into Jerusalem.

“If Jesus were an earthly king of this age, then there would be soldiers killing to bring about his kingdom, just as they do for every other earthly kingdom: victory through violence. Yet that’s not how Jesus’ kingdom will come. The kingdom will come rather through the imperial violence done to him on the cross and through the anti-imperial, death-reversing, justice-loving power of resurrection. Then the kingdom spreads, not through conquest, but through the spirit’s life-giving and liberating power being experienced by more and more people.”

This is the heart of Palm and Passion Sunday; the “anti-imperial, death-reversing, justice-loving power” of the Kingdom of God. It looks absolutely nothing like the kingdoms of the world, and yet it breaks into our world all the same; through the actions of the crucified and risen Messiah.

As Christians throughout the world make their journey through Holy Week, I invite us to consider these words as we follow the Way of the cross. We live in tumultuous times, but so did Jesus. As we remember the clash of kingdoms present in Christ’s day, may we look towards clashing kingdoms in our own day; a kingdom of humility, justice, and love breaking into a world of arrogance, injustice, cruelty, and fear. And let us never forget that, in the end, God’s Reign will have the final word. Caesar will fall, and the crucified King will take his place on the throne. Alleluia.

© 2025 Will Berry

Original post: https://willberry.substack.com/

Image credit: Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash