Raise the Palms, Raise the Fists:
A Palm Sunday Reflection in an Age of War
There is, every year, a peculiar tension that accompanies Palm Sunday—a tension not easily resolved, nor meant to be. It is a day that begins in procession and ends in foreboding; a liturgy that opens with palms raised in jubilation and closes under the shadow of the cross. In the narrative of the Gospels, the same crowds that cry “Hosanna!” will soon fall silent, or worse, turn their voices toward condemnation.
The occasion, as recounted in Gospel of Luke 19:28–44, presents the image of Jesus entering Jerusalem not as a conqueror but as a servant—mounted on a donkey, not a war horse. It is a deliberate contrast, a subversion of expectation. The people, weary of occupation and longing for deliverance, greet him as one who might restore power, sovereignty, and triumph. Yet the moment turns. The same passage records that he wept over the city, lamenting: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:42).
In this, the ancient scene begins to resemble the modern condition.
For Palm Sunday is not merely a recollection; it is a mirror. It reflects the enduring human temptation to confuse redemption with domination, salvation with conquest. The crowds then, as now, desired a political Messiah—one who would overthrow, reclaim, and rule. They longed for victory, not vulnerability; for power, not peace.
And yet, the figure at the center of the procession resists such appropriation.
From the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Gospel of Matthew 5:9, comes the enduring admonition: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” It is not a sentimental utterance. It is a summons—a definition of identity bound inseparably with responsibility. It is also, in times of war, an indictment.
For there are moments in history when nations, cloaked in righteousness, drift toward violence while invoking the language of faith. Leaders, invoking divine sanction, bend scripture to the service of policy. Patriotism is fused with piety; war is baptized as necessity.
Against this, a different voice has been raised. As Pope Leo XIV is quoted as saying:
“God rejects the prayers of leaders who start wars. Their prayers do not rise beyond the ceilings of their palaces; they become trapped in the smoke of the bombs they themselves unleash.”
Such words recall an older prophetic tradition—one that does not comfort power but confronts it.
For the Christ of Palm Sunday cannot be easily enlisted into the machinery of empire. His kingdom, as he declares in Gospel of John 18:36, “is not of this world.” And yet, neither is it detached from it. It intrudes, disrupts, and unsettles. It calls for the love of enemies (Matthew 5:44), even as it warns of the consequences of violence: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).
There is, to be sure, an apparent paradox. The same Christ who speaks of peace also declares, in Gospel of Matthew 10:34, that he has come not to bring peace but a sword. The tension is not accidental. It reflects the cost of truth in a divided world—the sword not of conquest, but of division between justice and injustice, between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of men.
Thus, Palm Sunday becomes not merely a liturgical threshold into the Passion, but a political and moral reckoning.
For in every age, the question returns: where does loyalty lie? Is it with the state—however flawed, however corrupt—simply because it commands allegiance? Or is it with a higher conception of justice, one that often stands in judgment over earthly authority?
History offers no shortage of examples where this tension becomes acute. Societies, even those professing righteousness, fall into corruption. Systems meant to serve the common good are bent toward private gain. And in such moments, the invocation of God becomes not a call to repentance, but a shield against accountability.
It is precisely here that the Palm Sunday narrative speaks with renewed urgency.
For the one who enters Jerusalem does so not with legions, but with lament. He weeps—not only for what is, but for what might have been. He embodies a kingship that refuses coercion, a power that is revealed in surrender.
And in this refusal lies the scandal.
For it denies the world its preferred grammar of force. It challenges the assumption that justice must be imposed by violence, that order must be secured by domination. It proposes, instead, a kingdom built on love, humility, and solidarity with the oppressed.
The implications are not abstract.
“Do not waste your breath on prayers, nor profane temples with your ceremonial uniforms in search of a blessing that will never come. As long as even a single child is crying beneath the rubble because of them, every ‘Amen’ they utter will be a blasphemy.” Again said Pope Leo XIV.
Such a statement cuts through the pieties of power. It insists that faith divorced from justice is not merely insufficient—it is profane.
In this light, the figures so often reduced to abstractions are restored to their humanity. The refugee child is not an enemy. The grieving mother across a border is not expendable. Even the one labeled a dissident or a martyr cannot be so easily dismissed as “against the law” when the law itself has been corrupted.
To follow Christ, then, is not to retreat from the world, but to inhabit it differently. It is to make peace where the world makes war; to love where the world teaches hatred; to resist the seduction of vengeance even when it is cloaked in the language of justice.
Palm Sunday, in the end, offers no easy resolution.
It begins with raised palms—symbols of hope, of welcome, of fragile expectation. But it also gestures, implicitly, toward raised fists—not of blind revolt, but of moral resistance against injustice. Between these two gestures lies the path of the Passion: costly, misunderstood, and yet, for those who believe, the only road that leads beyond the cycles of violence.
The crowd once cried, “Hosanna! Save us!”
The question remains whether it recognized—and whether we recognize still—the kind of salvation being offered.