When our sports team wins a cup or our country wins a battle, we arrange a victory parade. The open topped bus is driven slowly through the town, with the smiling heroes on top waving to their adoring fans. It’s a tradition that seems to have started in Roman times, when, on the day of triumph, the victorious general wearing a laurel crown and a purple toga, a symbol of his divinity, rode in a four horse chariot through the streets of Rome. He would go on to offer a sacrifice at Jupiter’s Temple on the Capitoline Hill.
No wonder the religious leaders in Palestine were rattled by Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. It must have looked like an ironic parady of a Roman parade. What exactly was the victory being celebrated? Well, yes, Jesus had brought Lazarus back to life so there was a celebration of this and the promise of Jesus’ resurrection to come, although even His closest followers hadn’t grasped that this would actually happen. Before it could happen, He would have to die and would be dressed in a purple robe and a crown, not of laurel, but of thorns, in mockery and spite.
No four horse chariot for Jesus, but a humble donkey, symbolising service, suffering and peace; unthreatening and gentle in contrast with the power, strength and might of the Roman military horse.
Just as football fans might use scarves, the crowds took branches from the palm trees, shaped like feathers or fans to waft and wave at their hero. At that time in the Mediterranean and Near East, palms were a symbol of victory, triumph, peace and appropriately eternal life. They represented immortality in Egypt, often awarded to athletes and were an attribute of the Roman personification of ‘Victory’.
Today fans compose songs about their heroes. It was no different then. ‘Hosanna’ came from the same linguistic root as ‘Jesus’ (Joshua) and meant ‘Save us’.
So here we have a victory parade in anticipation of the salvation that was to come through the death of the servant king, as He approaches the hill on which He will be the sacrifice through which the victory over death will be accomplished.
‘Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
Bow your meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, Your power and reign.’
Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868)