The assembled “elders of the people,” the “chief priests and the scribes,” (Luke 22:66) are so close to being right about Jesus. “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king,” they say to Pontius Pilate. (23:2) This is mostly not true. The real issue, the one that pushes them over the edge, is that he claims to be the Son of God. But Pontius Pilate doesn’t care about theological disputes. One the other hand, he cares very much about politics. Nobody can be made a king without the approval of the emperor, and so the elders tell him what he needs to hear to press charges: he’s stirring up rebellion. But as insincere as their accusations are, they’re picking up on something real. While Jesus will neither confirm nor deny whether he is in fact “the king of the Jews,” (23:3) his actions tell the story clearly enough. He rides into the city on the back of a colt. (Luke 17:35) The people spread their cloaks before him on the road, (17:37) and cut branches from the trees to wave. And if the colt, and the cloaks, and the palms weren’t enough, the people cry out “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (19:38) as Jesus enters the city.

But even without these words, the symbolism would’ve been clear to any ancient Judean. The colt on whose back Jesus rides is not a symbol of humility, a young colt or a donkey instead of a powerful warhorse. It’s a carefully-arrange enactment of the words of the prophet Zechariah, who cried out, “Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech. 9:9) The cloaks on the ground aren’t simply a way of protecting exalted feet from the dirt of the earth. They’re an echo of exactly what a band of rebels had done eight hundred years before when they were launching a coup to proclaim Jehu as King of Israel. (2 Kings 9:13) The leafy branches that the crowd cut from the trees and that we wave today, are not just any festive seasonal greenery; they’re the branches of the myrtle and willow and palm, the greens of the local trees used in the festival of Sukkot. And these greens, along with the menorah, were the primary signs of Jewish national identity in Jesus’ day. Earlier Jewish revolutionaries had waved them in patriotic military parades (1 Macc. 13:51; 2 Macc 10:7) and later ones would stamp them on their coins. Where we would put the head of George Washington and phrases like “Liberty” and “In God We Trust,” the rebels stamped a palm branch with the phrase “For the Freedom of Jerusalem.”

The elder of the people weren’t stupid. They knew what was up. Jesus was positioning himself as the first king in five hundred years, the heir of David and the leader of the people of Israel—a man who would, presumably, lead them in the armed struggle to overthrow Roman rule and establish a new and independent Jewish state. They knew that Jesus was claiming to be king, and we know that Jesus is king; but the events of the week to come show that Jesus is unlike any king who’s come before. Jesus’ life, from his birth to his death but especially during the events of this Holy Week, overturn and our ideas of what it means to be a king.

The colt, the foal of the donkey on which Jesus rides into Jerusalem reminds me of the donkey Mary traditionally rides toward Bethlehem, (Protevangelium of James 17) to give birth to a king who’s not an authoritarian strongman, but a vulnerable child. And it’s the humility and vulnerability of the newborn king that characterize this grown man as he ascends to the throne. The people treat him as a king so lofty that they protect his donkey’s feet from the dirt with the clothes off their own backs; but Jesus doesn’t mind dirty feet. In fact, on Thursday night, he’ll kneel on the floor and wash the feet of his followers and friends. The people cheer for Jesus as he enters the city as if he were this year’s revolutionary leading this year’s army of liberation. But when the moment of crisis comes, when the battle should break out, when even a single one of Jesus’ followers strikes even a single, non-lethal blow, Jesus cries out, “No more of this!” and heals the wound. (Luke 22:51)

If this is supposed to be a coup, then Jesus is failing utterly, and indeed, he fails, because while he is eventually given the title of king by the imperial authorities, it’s only on the cross, in the words of that sarcastic charge an explanation of his crime: “This is the King of the Jews.” (23:38)

And this is why we read the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday: the king whom we hail with cries of “Hosanna!” is the king who reigns enthroned on the Cross, and he is the inversion of every earthly king. He doesn’t send the young to die in battle to fuel the fires of his ego; he goes himself to die to save them all from death. He doesn’t lord it over those who follow him, but tells them, “I am among you as one who serves,” (22:27) and then serves them, and tells the future leaders of the Church to do the same, for “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” (22:25-26) He doesn’t send tax collectors to extort half the grain from his hungry subjects so he can grow rich; he takes what he has, and breaks it into pieces, and shares it among them, and tells them to do the same. (22:19) Jesus doesn’t do any of the things an ordinary king would do. He does the very opposite, because, in Paul’s words, “though he was in the form of God,” he “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself,” and “humbled himself,” (Philippians 2:6-7) giving up all the divine and royal privilege that was his by right.

We know all too well what would-be kings can do. We’ve seen it in the rise of authoritarian politics in this country and around the world in the last few years. We’ve seen it more clearly than ever before in our lifetimes in the Russian assault on Ukraine in the last few months. Evangelical support for the far right notwithstanding, strongman politics are not Christian; they are, as they have always been, the way of “the kings of the Gentiles,” who “lord it over them.”

But literal tyrants of flesh and blood are not the only ones we face. There are cultural and spiritual tyrants who set strict laws we cannot manage to obey and demand tribute we cannot afford to pay, forces that demand success, excellence, endless compassion; that tell us we’re not good enough as parents, as spouses, as citizens of the world or members of the church unless we do more and more and more. These tyrannies are so enticing that we sometimes don’t recognize them for what they are, but over time they will crush us nevertheless.

And we are all subject to death, the ultimate tyrant, the last enemy, whom nobody would vote but whose power claims us all, in the end.

But imagine, for a moment, that the things we heard today are true. Imagine that it’s true that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:11) and that “the greatest among us must be like the youngest,” and the “leader like one who serves.” (Luke 22:26) If we lived in a world that followed Jesus as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord,” the invasion of Ukraine with all its atrocities would not happen, because its Russian perpetrators would know that the measure of our value is not our strength and selfish hunger for power, but Christ’s weakness and self-sacrificing love. If we lived our lives as though Jesus were king, we would not be subject to the tyrannies of perfection, because we would know that the measure of our value is not in our success or achievement or rightness in our arguments, or even in our good works, but in our humility, and forgiveness, and compassion for ourselves and others when we fail. And we do live in a world in which Christ has overthrown the power of death, in which we die—but we will rise again.

Our world often doesn’t look like the world of Palm Sunday, a world Christ has entered in triumph to reign in humility and love. It more often looks like Good Friday, or perhaps Holy Saturday, a world of absence and of loss. But Christ is king, and he is inviting us into the kingdom of love even in the midst of a world that has lost its way. So “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (Luke 19:38)