I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a bit

suspicious of parades. There is something about the

crowd—something about the chaos, the noise, the

frenzy, the disorderliness of it—that makes it hard to tell

the truth from all the shouting. And where are they all

going, anyway?

In six days, he’ll be dead. But this morning, there is a

parade. There is a donkey. There are children. There are

branches and cloaks and a crowd pressed against the

gates into Jerusalem shouting a word so ancient and so

urgent it already knows where this road ends.

Hosanna. Don’t get this wrong. It’s not a greeting. It’s

not a cheer. It’s a 911 call. Save us. Now. Save us. We

have been waiting so long. And that crowd, they meant it

with everything they had, and so do we. Save us. He will

answer that prayer, just not the way any of us wanted.

Six days. The cross is already there, casting its shadow

backward over the parade, over the branches, over the

children, over the whole beautiful, desperate, chaotic

mess. No, they can’t see it yet, but this is the week the

light shifts.

It’s the eve of Passover. Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims,

and Rome is watching it all. And the religious authorities

are watching Rome watch it all. And here comes Jesus.

Where is he going?

Well, he’s done being careful. He rides into Jerusalem

in a deliberate fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy—the

king who comes not on a warhorse but on a donkey.

Humble. Unarmed. Lowly he rides.

And the crowd goes wild. Blessed is the one who comes

in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the kingdom of our

ancestor David.

David. That’s who they want. They want to crown a

conquering king. They want a lion. They get a lamb on

a donkey. This Messiah they seek will break their hearts

before he saves their souls.

Flashback. Weeks earlier, on the road, Jesus turned to

his disciples and said, “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter answered first. And he is right. “You, Jesus, are

the Messiah.”

But Jesus did not congratulate him. He shuts Peter

down. And then he says what no one wants to hear.

“The Messiah must suffer. The Messiah must be

rejected…and killed.”

What kind of parade is this? Peter wants none of it. He

pulls Jesus aside. “No, no, Jesus. That’s not how this

works. Messiahs don’t get killed. They slay.”

And Jesus turns on him with the sharpest words he ever

speaks. “Get behind me, Satan.”

You see, Peter has the right word and the wrong

definition. Peter wants a Messiah too strong to suffer,

but Jesus will show him a love strong enough to die.

Peter spends the next three weeks trying to steer Jesus

away from the cross—until Thursday night.

Thursday night, Jesus is inside being interrogated, and

Peter is outside in the courtyard. He’s warming himself

at a fire, and a stranger looks at him across the flames

and asks, “Aren’t you one of them? You were with him,

weren’t you?”

“Who, me? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Three times. Before the rooster crows.

You see, Peter is us. Peter is us every time we choose

silence over solidarity. Peter is us every time we warm

ourselves at the fires of comfort while the vulnerable are

handed over. Peter is us every time we look away. I do

not know this man!

You see, this week, you are not only in the crowd that

shouts Hosanna. You are in the courtyard, warming your

hands, hoping no one looks too closely, ready to deny

the one you promised to follow all the way to the end.

Watch the religious authorities in this story. They are

not cartoon villains. They are leaders who have made

a carefully calculated accommodation with Rome to

survive. They give Caesar what Caesar demands. They

protect the temple. They keep the peace. And what

choice do they have? Rome executes resisters. So, they

make a bargain.

But compromises have a way of shaping our

convictions. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Each one comes a

little easier than the last. And soon the courage is gone,

surrendered to appease those who control the crosses.

This is not ancient history. Every generation must

decide the cost of discipleship. Today we see the same

surrender, its monstrous effects. Religious leaders who

betray the Gospel of the crucified Christ to become

chaplains to power. Scripture wielded not as holy word

but a harmful weapon. The name of Jesus invoked to

target the very people he drew closest—the hungry

child, the sick, the refugee, the one with nowhere to lay

her head. The faith that sets captives free used to justify

captivity. For shame.

You see, whenever the church marries power, it’s always

power that calls the shots. If you grieve this twisting of

gospel truth to fit the demands of power, you are not

losing your faith. You are on the way to finding it. The

church has always been renewed by those who love

Jesus too much to let his name be stolen.

You cannot conscript the crucified Christ. God will not

be mocked.

Where is he going? A Roman cross. They designed it to

be slow, public, humiliating. They stripped him, pressed

down a crown of thorns, nailed his wrists and feet to

the wood, and lifted him up where everyone could see

the spectacle. Crucifixion kills by suffocation. You push

yourself up to breathe until you can no longer push.

We built that cross. Out of fear. Out of the need to

control. Our lust for power. Our addiction to brutality. We

built that cross.

But he would not turn aside. He would not accept power

on our terms. The cross is humanity’s most damning act

of violence. The cross is God’s most radical act of love.

Our cruelty put him there. And God said: I would rather

die than abandon you. I would rather lose everything

than win your way.

The theologian Jürgen Moltmann was conscripted as

a German soldier at age sixteen and taken prisoner at

the end of World War II. He spent months surrounded

by devastation so complete it seemed to preclude the

existence of God entirely.

Instead, he came out of it with this conviction that

shaped his life: only the suffering God can help us. Only

the suffering God. Not the God who watches from a

balcony. Not the God who rewards displays of power. A

God who enters the darkness all the way to its depths.

And stays. This is the God of the cross.

Some of you know my friend Sarah Brouwer. Former

Lake Fellow. Pastor in Minneapolis. This winter she

watched fear take up residence in her city. The kind

that changes how people move through their days, that

asks everyone to decide what kind of neighbor they are

willing to be. She watched her community rise to answer

that question. In the middle of it she wrote these words:

Sometimes I think Jesus became the Messiah because

he was the only one who could not look away. The only

one who couldn’t look away. I’ve read those words a

hundred times.

It seems to me there are two kinds of faith. One reaches

up for power, seeks the Messiah who conquers, the God

who blesses our warring madness, the muscle-bound

Jesus itching for a fight.

The other kind of faith reaches out toward the neighbor,

toward the stranger, toward the suffering, the God who

chose sacrificial love.

When I read this story, I notice that while everyone else

was looking for a king, Jesus had his eyes set on the

cross. He could not look away. I have seen that kind of

faith. I’ve seen it here at Second Church.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw it in two children standing

at that lectern, at their grandmother’s funeral, where

together they read scripture in voices that were not

quite steady. But they didn’t look away.

I saw it in a saint who said what saints say when they’ve

made their peace. “Chris, I’ve had a blessed life. I’m tired

now. I’m ready for what comes next.” No fear. Just faith in

a God who stays.

When word spread that their friend had cancer, nobody

asked what to do—they just started doing it. Organizing

support, showing up. The love of God arriving in

takeout containers and space for tears to flow. They

didn’t look away.

I see it in a thousand small acts of faith lived out in

parking lots and pews and text threads and kitchen

tables—families finding their way home, one relationship

at a time.

And you, this congregation, hungry for the real thing

and finding it. I know this because you tell me. Week

after week, something lands, something opens, and you

write me to say, “Keep telling the hard truth. We can take

it. We need it.” That is a congregation that has found its

faith not in the comfortable, but in the costly.

You can keep that God crafted in the image of a tyrant’s

dream. You can keep that leader hellbent on crushing

the weak to look strong. You can keep the church so

intoxicated by power it abandons its mission. And I will

keep preaching this truth: that only the suffering God

can help us. That only the suffering God will stay.

On that Roman cross, the crucified one took on the

worst that we can do, and he looked on us with eyes of

love. That’s the God I know. That’s the God I worship.

That’s the God to whom I give my life.

Yesterday, Sara and our boys rode out to Lebanon

with Dick Kruse to pick up Enright. That’s our beloved

donkey. And believe it or not, she spent last night

at our house. At our house, not in our house. In the

afternoon, Sara and Enright went for a walk around the

neighborhood. Quite a scene in Carmel. As word spread

there was a donkey on the sidewalk, children from every

house in the neighborhood came running out. Adults

peeked out their windows, maybe took a step onto the

porch. The children gathered, and Sara asked them

why they thought Jesus chose a donkey. One of our

neighbors—eight years old—patted Enright’s back and

said: “If he wanted to get away fast, he would choose

a horse. But, if he wanted to stay, he would choose a

donkey.” The gospel according to Liam.

The parade ends here. Not in triumph, but in death’s

shadow. And so, you came in here waving palms, but

you will leave carrying something much heavier. Do not

look away. Do not trust those whose god is power.

He chose the donkey. He chose the cross. His eyes on

you. He did not look away. He stayed. For you.

Hosanna. Save us. Stay close.

He will.