Day Twenty Two: The King’s Way Up Is Down

They cried “Hosanna!” In doing so, they were quoting Psalm 118:25, which literally translates to “Give salvation now!”

This psalm was sung daily during the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, and when the congregation got to the point of the “Hosanna,” every male worshiper would wave a lulav or willow and myrtle tied with palm.

“Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord (Psalm 118:25-26).” The psalm was widely understood as a reference to the coming messiah, the king of Israel.

But as the Jewish people gathered around to prepare for Jesus’ entry into the city of Jerusalem, the scene was very different from a typical king’s installation.

Almost 200 years earlier, a man named Judas Maccabeus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a warhorse when he rallied the Israelite troops to go to war with the Greeks and reinstate a Jewish kingdom. Judas Maccabaeus fit the typical standard of a king who comes into power, like Solomon with his 40,000 stalls of horses and 12,000 horsemen (1 Kings 4:26).

However, Jesus is not a king like Judas or Solomon; he is the king from Zechariah’s God-given vision who is “righteous and brings salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).”

Our world tends to view triumph and victory solely through the lens of battle, but Jesus intentionally de-militarizes their vision and announces his rule as one of peace and gentleness. Victory and liberation will not be accomplished through force but through death. To quote the opening prayer of The Valley of Vision:

Let me learn by paradox that the way down
is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.

Jesus invites us to embrace a counterintuitive reality where victory emerges from vulnerability, and true strength is found in humility.

To bear the cross becomes synonymous with wearing the crown, and the valley transforms into a place of profound vision. Jesus teaches us that possessing nothing grants us everything, giving is receiving, and the path of self-denial leads to the ultimate victory.

As the crowd hailed him with “Hosanna,” they unwittingly heralded the arrival of a King whose kingdom would redefine the very essence of triumph; a triumph that transcends worldly expectations and triumphs through the transformative power of humility and sacrificial love.