March 30, 2026
Palm Sunday is the story of two parades happening at the same time, on opposite ends of the same city, heading straight toward each other. One was a show of force. The other was a deliberate act of protest by a man who knew exactly what he was doing — and chose a borrowed donkey to do it. If you've ever sung "hosanna" without knowing what the word means, this is worth slowing down for.
The crowds that lined the road into Jerusalem on that Sunday weren't singing a hymn. They were screaming a plea. The Hebrew word hosanna doesn't mean "praise" — it means deliver us. It's a cry for rescue, aimed at a figure they believed was finally coming to overthrow their oppressors.
For generations, the Jewish people had lived under the boot of one empire after another. Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and now Rome — the list is long enough to make anyone exhausted. By the time Jesus entered Jerusalem, the hope for a Messiah had become inseparable from the hope for military liberation. When the crowd waved palm branches and shouted hosanna, they were calling for a warrior king. They wanted the revolution to start. They were ready for swords.
And Jesus knew exactly what they wanted — and chose to give them something entirely different. The donkey wasn't an accident. It was a statement. If you're sitting with a longing for things to finally change — in your family, your work, your own heart — it's worth sitting with the question the crowd was already asking: is the kind of rescue I'm hoping for actually the kind I need?
If you are curious about what Terraforma actually believes, read about it here.
To understand the Palm Sunday procession, you need to know about the other procession happening simultaneously — the one no one talks about in church.
Every year during Passover, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate made the trip from his palace in Caesarea Maritima to Jerusalem. He came through the western gate, the Jaffa Gate, at the head of a full military column: cavalry, infantry, chariots, gleaming armor, and the Roman eagle standard flying above it all. The message was unmistakable. Rome is here. Don't try anything. Passover — with its quarter million additional pilgrims all singing songs about God delivering his people from an evil empire — made Roman officials deeply nervous. Pilate came to remind everyone who was in charge.
At the very same moment, Jesus came down from the eastern side of the city. Not through the Jaffa Gate with its association with Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom — the burning waste dump that gave the city's southwest corner its reputation as the worst place in Jerusalem. Jesus came through the Golden Gate, the gate associated with the Messiah, the same gate King David had used when he returned to reclaim Jerusalem. He rode through a graveyard filled with people who had paid a premium to be buried there, believing the resurrection would begin the moment the Messiah arrived. He came from the east, where the sun rises.
Pastor Justin Ulrich of Terraforma Church described this moment as "deliberate political theater" — every detail chosen, every symbol layered. Jesus wasn't stumbling into an ambush. He was choreographing a counterprocession. One concrete step worth taking today: read Luke 19:28–44 with a map of first-century Jerusalem beside it. The geography makes the text come alive.
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Here's the part that doesn't stay in first-century Jerusalem. Pilate's procession didn't end with the Roman Empire. The warhorse is still running. It shows up every time power is used to dominate rather than serve — in boardrooms, in politics, in marriages, in the conversations we have in our own heads when we're deciding whether to escalate or absorb.
Jesus looked at the crowd that day and saw people who were certain they knew what kind of rescue they needed. They wanted the sword. They got the donkey. And when they couldn't figure out what to do with a king who wouldn't fight back, the same people who shouted "hosanna" shouted "crucify." The shift took less than a week. That's not an ancient failure — it's a human one. We still don't know what to do with a gentle king. We still reach for the sword in our closest relationships, convinced that winning the argument is more important than keeping the connection.
But Zechariah 9 — the prophecy Matthew and John both link to Palm Sunday — doesn't stop at the donkey. The second half of that passage describes a king who takes away the chariots and the war horses, who breaks the battle bow, and who proclaims peace to the nations. That's not weakness. That's a different kind of power, one that goes after the real enemy: the sin and the corruption that drives human stories into places they were never meant to go. One thing worth trying today: in the next conflict that tempts you to power up, try asking what it would look like to fight to connect instead of fight to win.
The warhorse way: Power through dominance.
The donkey way: Power through submission.
The warhorse way: Peace through defeating enemies.
The donkey way: Peace through forgiving enemies.
The warhorse way: Winning the argument.
The donkey way: Staying in the relationship.
The warhorse way: Salvation through force.
The donkey way: Salvation through surrender.
The warhorse way: Fear.
The donkey way: Love.
What the way of the donkey actually looks like:
There's something fitting about sitting with this story in a place like Brambleton or Ashburn — communities built for people who came here to build something, to earn something, to secure something. The calendar fills up. The commute on 267 takes what it takes. The pressure to win — at work, in the neighborhood, in whatever argument is running on a loop in the back of your mind — doesn't let up just because you know it shouldn't be there.
The Palm Sunday story doesn't offer a self-improvement framework. It offers a different road entirely. If you've been curious about what it looks like to live in the Loudoun County corridor alongside people trying to actually walk that road together, Terraforma Church gathers Sunday mornings at Brambleton Middle School. No dress code, no performance required — just people trying to figure out what the way of the donkey actually looks like on a Tuesday.
Palm Sunday wasn't a parade — it was a question. Two processions. Two visions of the world. Two ways of dealing with the things that oppress you. Jesus chose the road that led to a cross, not because he lost, but because that road was the only one that could actually deal with what's broken. The same choice is still in front of us.
If you want to explore it further, plan a visit to Terraforma's Sunday gathering — we'd love to have you. And if you're not quite ready for that, reach out here and we'll talk with you.
Q: What does "hosanna" mean?
A: Hosanna is a Hebrew word that means "deliver us" or "save us now." It wasn't a word of worship — it was a cry of desperation aimed at someone the crowd believed could rescue them from Roman oppression. Understanding that changes how the whole Palm Sunday scene reads.
Q: Why did Jesus ride a donkey into Jerusalem instead of a horse?
A: The donkey was a deliberate contrast to the warhorse that Roman governor Pontius Pilate was riding into Jerusalem through the western gate at the same moment. Jesus was staging a counterprocession — a nonviolent parody of imperial power. The donkey fulfilled a specific prophecy from Zechariah 9 about a humble king who would come to proclaim peace to the nations.
Q: What does Palm Sunday really mean beyond the religious tradition?
A: At its core, Palm Sunday is a story about two competing visions of power. One says peace comes through dominance and force. The other says it comes through surrender and love. Jesus deliberately chose the second road and invited everyone watching to consider which road they were on — a question that remains just as live today as it was in first-century Jerusalem.
Q: How do I follow Jesus' way of peace in my everyday relationships?
A: It starts with recognizing the moments when you reach for the sword — when you power up in an argument, when winning feels more important than connecting. Jesus modeled an alternative: not passivity, but a refusal to let dominance be the last word. Small groups and honest community are places where that kind of practice actually takes root. You can learn more about groups at Terraforma at the link below.
Q: Why was Jesus crucified as an insurrectionist if he was nonviolent?
A: The Greek word for the charge against Jesus — lēstēs — means insurrectionist or rebel, not thief, as some older Bible translations render it. Rome used crucifixion specifically for people who challenged imperial authority. Jesus was executed on a political charge because his entire final week in Jerusalem was a deliberate, public confrontation with corrupt systems of power — even though his methods were deliberately nonviolent.
