Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Year A
RCL
The Two Processions and the Choice of the Cross
By +Brian Ernest Brown, CWC
Today we enter the holiest week of the year. It is a day of profound, jarring contrasts. We began our liturgy with the joy of palms, waving branches, and shouting hosannas as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. But now, we have sat through the reading of the Passion, and those shouts of praise have turned into a chilling roar of crucify him.
In a matter of moments, we move from the mountaintop of victory to the absolute baseline of human betrayal, suffering, and abandonment.
Historically, on that first Palm Sunday, there were actually two processions entering Jerusalem from opposite sides of the city. From the west, Pontius Pilate rode in with a massive display of Roman imperial power. He came with cavalry, flashing spears, armor, and banners, designed to intimidate the crowds and project total control. It was a procession that said power belongs to the ruthless, the loud, and the strong.
But from the east, coming down the Mount of Olives, came a completely different procession. Jesus rode in on a borrowed donkey. He came surrounded by peasants, children, and fishermen. He had no armor, no weapons, and no desire to dominate.
These two processions represent the great choice that sits before every single one of us. Which version of power will we trust? Will we trust the power of the world, which relies on leverage, force, and self-preservation? Or will we trust the upside-down power of God, which reveals itself through vulnerability, humility, and sacrificial love?
This radical, counter-cultural power of Jesus is exactly what Paul is capturing in his letter to the Philippians. Paul writes what is essentially an early Christian hymn, describing the downward trajectory of God’s love.
He tells us that Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, or grasped. Instead, he emptied himself. He took the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Think about the sheer weight of that truth. The Creator of the universe did not protect his status. He did not claim his rights or demand that everyone bow down to him. He chose the path of total solidarity with us, including our deepest experiences of pain, rejection, and mortality.
This is the exact posture described by the prophet Isaiah in our first reading. The suffering servant says, “The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.”
Jesus does not run away from our messy, painful human reality. He walks directly into it.
We see this agonizing vulnerability play out step by step in the Gospel of Matthew. The Passion narrative is a story of profound isolation.
Jesus is sold out by Judas, one of his closest friends, for the price of a slave. He goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood in his anxiety, and asks his disciples to just stay awake and pray with him. But they fall asleep. When the guards arrive, everyone flees. Peter, the rock, denies even knowing him three times around a charcoal fire to protect his own skin.
By the time Jesus hangs on the cross, he is stripped of his clothes, stripped of his dignity, and mocked by the onlookers. He cries out in the darkness using the words of Aramaic prayer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken out of love?”
He enters into the absolute deepest, darkest basement of human experience. He goes to the place where we feel completely abandoned, forgotten, and clean cut off. He goes there so that no matter how dark your life gets, no matter how isolated you feel, you can look up and know that God has been there too. You are never alone in the dark.
So how does Jesus navigate this total collapse of security? He does it by anchoring his identity in the faithfulness of the Father.
The Psalmist captures this exact mindset in Psalm 31. It is a prayer written by someone whose life is spent with grief, whose strength fails, and who has become a horror to their neighbors. But right in the middle of that desolate landscape, the Psalmist sings:
“But as for me, I have trusted in you, O Lord; I have said, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hand.'”
This is the ultimate victory of Passion Sunday. Jesus does not win by fighting back with Roman weapons or using angels to blast his enemies. He wins by refusing to let the hatred of the world change who he is. He absorbs the violence, the mockery, and the betrayal, and he responds with silence, forgiveness, and total trust. He places his spirit entirely into the hands of the Father.
As we walk out of the church today and step into Holy Week, we cannot treat this as just a historical re-enactment. We cannot just look at the crowd in Jerusalem and wonder how they could have been so fickle.
Because if we are honest, we are that crowd.
We wave our palms on Sunday, but by Thursday or Friday, when following Jesus gets difficult, inconvenient, or costly, we often retreat into the shadows. We choose the procession of Pilate. We opt for self-preservation, we harbor grudges, we draw lines in the sand, and we deny him by how we treat the vulnerable people right in front of us.
This week, Jesus is inviting you to change processions. He is asking you to drop your armor, your need for control, and your habits of self-defense.
If you are carrying a heavy burden of betrayal this week, if you feel abandoned by people you trusted, or if you are walking through a valley of deep grief, look to the cross. See the King who emptied himself for you. Let his radical, enduring love wash over your wounds. Step with him into the mystery of this week, trust that your times are securely in his hand, and walk forward knowing that the darkness of Good Friday never has the final word.
Amen.