Real Power, on a Donkey

There is something subversive about Palm Sunday. We have domesticated it into a cheerful procession of children waving branches, but the original event was nothing less than a political act of genius: a deliberate, theologically loaded, non-violent confrontation with the most powerful empire on earth.

When Jesus stopped just outside Jerusalem and borrowed a donkey, he wasn’t tired. He was making a statement that everyone in that crowd, soaked in centuries of scripture and longing, would have understood immediately. He was embodying the vision of the prophet Zechariah: a king arriving not on a war horse but on a donkey, commanding peace rather than domination. In a world where chariots and war horses were the stealth bombers of the ancient world, this was breath-taking provocation.

The crowd erupted. “Hosanna! Save us! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” And they meant every word of it, though not quite in the way Jesus intended. They were hoping for the next warrior-king, another Simon Maccabeus, someone who would drive the Romans out and restore national glory. They wanted power that looked like power. Jesus was offering them something far more radical: power that arrives on a donkey.

The Hebrew word Matthew reaches for is anach: humble, self-giving, meek. Not weak. Never weak. But utterly non-violent, utterly uninterested in domination. It is the quality that Nelson Mandela embodied when he walked out of Victor Verster Prison after twenty-seven years and chose reconciliation over revenge. The world still doesn’t know what to do with power like that.

And here is where it gets personal. Matthew is very particular about who is in that crowd welcoming Jesus. It isn’t the who’s who of Jerusalem. It is the people from the backwaters and the countryside, the poor, the marginalised and the suffering: those the Hebrew scriptures call ‘the daughters of Zion’. They know exactly who Jesus is, because they have seen him at work. They have watched him feed thousands, heal many, and restore dignity to the forgotten. They are not surprised by the donkey.

Palm Sunday leaves us with an unsettling question: do the daughters of Zion around us know that they can find Jesus among us? Do they hear from us that steadfast love endures (not as pious words but as lived reality)?

Following Jesus, means continuing to follow him when the music fades and the cloud disperses through the gates and all the way into the places where healing is needed, where change is necessary, and where people are excluded from the presence of God.

Life is stronger than death. Peace is stronger than violence. Justice outlasts greed. Light overcomes darkness. Hope outlives despair.

This is what God is doing. On a donkey.