There are always two processions.

One is driven by a war horse and a cohort of violence and militaristic strength. This procession thunders down the road, with announcements of security for those who are loyal. If you are willing to capitulate to its rules, it offers power. This parade never stops. It winds through our cities, our screens, our churches. In it we see oligarchs, billionaires, politicians, Christian nationalists, and everyone who is willing to settle for a Pax Romana enforced by the fear of what this empire can do. We all have walked in this procession at some points in our lives. Some of us still do.

The other procession is everything the mighty war machine isn’t. It’s dusty feet and a borrowed donkey. It’s a messiah who doesn’t shout but instead weeps over a city and a people that reject and ultimately kill him. This parade isn’t about power; it’s about presence. It is solidarity in action. This is a procession of downward mobility, of emptying oneself for the good of others. This is the procession of kenosis.

This second parade is the procession Christians want to say we are part of, but are we willing to stay after the palm branches are gone, after the Hosannahs have stopped echoing in the streets? Are we willing to stay with this dusty messiah who leads us first to the table, and then to the cross?

Or, are we going to be like the protesters who welcomed Jesus as their king and then, days later, when he failed to save them with might and violence by overthrowing the oppressive forces, called for him to be crucified by those very same oppressive powers?

We are the crowd—fickle and demanding, looking for a quick route to liberation. But all we find in Jesus is solidarity and joy that is resistance, even as he is nailed to a tree and left for dead.

The day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a borrowed donkey, coming as the king of peace to a people intimately familiar, aware, and longing for violence, Jesus put on full display the nature of God. God is sitting in solidarity with the suffering. God is the suffering one, the one who knows what it is to hurt, to feel the boot of oppression heavy on the neck. God refuses to sit above suffering in detached power. God enters it. Becomes it. Redeems it not from a throne, but from a cross. God pours Godself out fully in love with and for all of creation.

That is why the stones were ready to shout, “Hosannah. Save us!” On that first Palm Sunday, joy came to the house of Jerusalem. Their salvation was at hand… but it didn’t look like the people thought it should.

This makes me question if we can see our liberation for what it is here and now. Maybe liberation isn’t about overpowering oppression but about refusing to become it. Our liberation isn’t found in winning a battle against the oppressor. Our liberation is the reality that all of the empire has been disarmed by Jesus, and when we follow in his dusty footsteps into solidarity with the marginalized and suffering, when we find God in suffering, sitting with us at the foot of the cross, we find ourselves challenged to become what we have received at the table of God.

We are the broken bread and poured out wine of God given for others.

In the Eucharist, this act of communion, this setting of a feast at the table of God, we once again see God’s nature on display. Jesus gives us his body and his blood, emptying himself for our sustenance and wholeness. But, we also find in this act of broken and spilled love a map for how to be human. This is who God is, and we are made in the image of God. If we are going to live into that image, we must be broken and spilled for others as well.

But we keep missing the point. Because love is quiet. Because joy doesn’t shout. Because it’s easier to be right than to be broken open. Just like the disciples, we keep arguing over our place and positions in the kingdom of God. We want a system that affirms us, that strokes our egos, that ranks us all as “in” and not “out”. But what we are given is a cross shaped table that costs us. It is at this table that we are called to make space for everyone who will come to receive, even when it encroaches on our personal space and comfort.

This is the church, constantly missing the point, selling out to the empire it is supposed to be disarming with love. This is what we find in ourselves. Sometimes it’s not very different from those whom we condemn. We keep missing the point. We keep shouting hosanna when we think liberation is going our way, while we shout “crucify” as soon as we have to self-examine our hearts. The question is never which parade we’re in. The question is—who are we following when the singing stops?

If we are going to follow Jesus, we have to follow him into the garden of Gethsemane and all the way to the cross, into the fulness of solidarity with human suffering. But here’s the thing, when we enter into solidarity, committing ourselves to disarming empire without using the tools of empire, but with love and joy, we refuse violence and choose love. When we refuse to betray love to win, we will become the target of the crowd’s rage—of our rage—and will become the scapegoat for the violence they demand.

So what? Do we just suffer to suffer, let the oppressors walk all over us, and become meek doormats for the sake of love?

No. We practice joy for the sake of love.

That same joy the rocks felt on the first Palm Sunday is what we experience at the table. When we make room for other people at the expense of our own comfort, we can lock eyes and hands, and joyfully say, “we’re still here.” We can spit in the eye of empire and declare it hasn’t won because we are still here, still refusing to play by the rules it dictates, still believing and learning to live out love. We are still the broken body and the poured out blood of Jesus to the world, and the empire can’t take that away from us.

So rejoice! Your king comes riding on the back of a donkey, coming to break himself open for us, that we might break open for each other, that we might all live.