They thought He was going to fix everything. He didn't. (Or did He?).
If you grew up in church, you know the word.
Hosanna.
It gets sung, shouted, printed on bulletins in fancy fonts. But I wonder if most of us have ever stopped to ask what those people actually meant when they yelled it.
Because they weren't just cheering. They were hoping.
Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. People are waving branches, and celebrating. But underneath all that noise was something heavier. A desperate, aching hope that had been passed down for generations. God made a promise. Judeans had been waiting. And now here was this guy from Nazareth, of all places, doing and saying things that made people think: maybe. Maybe this is it. Maybe God is finally keeping His word.
They wanted their nation back. Their dignity back. Their story back.
And then, a few days later, it was over.
Jesus was arrested in the dark. Dragged out before sunrise. Nailed to a Roman cross by mid-morning. The empire did what empires do. It crushed the thing people loved.
And everyone who had put their hope in Him had to sit with that.
Sound familiar?
Here's the part I keep coming back to, the part that messes with me in the best way. The Gospel writers don't tell this story as a tragedy. They tell it as a twist. Because it turns out that God wasn't doing what everyone expected. He was doing something no one saw coming.
The thing designed to humiliate became the thing that set people free.
Paul, writing years later to people who thought the cross was absurd, put it plainly: the message of the cross looks like foolishness to the people walking away from it. But to the ones still standing there, trying to make sense of it? It looks like grace.
I don't think you have to have everything figured out to sit with that this week.
You don't have to resolve the tension. You don't have to land somewhere neat and tidy.
Maybe you're in the Saturday. The part after the hopes got crushed and before anything made sense again. That's a real place to be. And it's okay to stay there for a minute.
But if you've got a quiet moment this Holy Week, maybe just let yourself wonder: what if God works differently than we expect? What if the worst thing isn't always the last thing?
Pour something good. Sit with the mystery.
Or don't. I'm just saying.
I’m Just Saying is a weekly email where I share a thought I’m wrestling with in real time. It is an invitation to pause, reflect, and reconsider the way we think about faith, the Bible, Jesus, and the Church. No pressure. Just an honest thought, once a week.
