Today – Palm Sunday – begins what we today call Holy Week or Passion Week. It marks the days leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection, allowing space and time to listen, focus, and remember what happened on these days almost 2000 years ago.

Just before this day, Jesus had been in Jericho. He’d met and spent time with Zacchaeus – a Jewish tax collector who worked for the Roman occupying government, doing a job which his family, neighbors, and fellow Jews despised and looked down on. And yet Jesus spent time with Zacchaeus and befriended him, giving a glimpse of how very upside-down the kingdom of God truly is. 

Shortly after that, Jesus met a blind man on the road, and in usual fashion, he stopped, listened, and healed him, giving physical sight to a specific man, giving a glimpse of what was to come — clear spiritual sight for any and all who ask.

From Jericho, Jesus headed to Jerusalem, the capital city, where faithful and devout religious people traveled regularly for feasts and other temple celebrations.

Like so many others, Jesus was going to Jerusalem for the coming Passover. But he was mostly going there for another reason: to not just celebrate the Passover but to be the Passover lamb and to die the Passover lamb’s death.

If you’ve ever been in church on Palm Sunday, you’ve likely experienced the joy and energy of young children walking the aisles, a chaotic mass of little bodies, smiling at parents, poking younger siblings, waving their palm branches wildly (like the children they are) or methodically (like the adults they may grow into), shouting at the top of their tiny young lungs, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

They’re re-enacting what the people did when Jesus himself rode into Jerusalem. Riding on a donkey. Think about that for a moment: Jesus – the Creator of all, the King of all, the Savior of all, the long-awaited Messiah, God himself — riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The Jewish people had long been living under the oppression of different occupying rulers, currently the Romans, and for hundreds of years, they’d been waiting for God to send them a conquering Messiah, someone who would overthrow their oppressors and set things right with a strong military reign. 

But Jesus came to set things right in a different way, at a deeper level: in our very souls.

And for that monumental task, he arrived on a donkey.

We might think of a donkey as nothing more than a work animal. In the ancient world, thought, donkeys were associated with kings, specifically with peaceful kings. A warrior king arrived on a horse, a peaceful king on a donkey. Already Jesus was making a statement about how his Kingdom worked. 

Long before Jesus was born, the prophet Zechariah had spoken about this very thing when he said, “Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in trumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey — riding on a donkey’s colt.” (Zech 9:9) Over the years, people focused and clung to the first part of those words about victory and justice. The humility part, the donkey part, somehow got lost in the days and years and generations of waiting.

Today when we hear Hosanna, most people either have no idea what it means, or they think it means, “Praise him!” or “Honor him!” or “Worship him.” But Hosanna simply means either “God saves” — a statement of fact, or “God, save us” — a plea for rescue.

Jesus does in fact save. At that moment, people were hoping and expecting him to save them and their city in a very specific way. But the way he eventually saved was actually more amazing than anything they imagined, for he came to save everything — all of broken humanity, all of cursed creation.

Jesus saves. Hosanna. When he rode a donkey into Jerusalem that day, he rode into a crowd of branches and praise. But mostly what he rode to was betrayal, rejection, and death.

For you. For me. For the whole world. For all of creation.