Victory on Jesus’ Terms
Text: Matthew 26-27
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As we enter Holy Week, we once again come to the story that we’re so familiar with. We’ve heard the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, His passion, His betrayal, His sufferings, and His death. We’ve taken our parts in it once more, reading along with the various people who were part of it all: the disciples, Pilate, the soldiers, the crowds. And yet, if we let ourselves hear this anew, if we let our ears hear Jesus’ words as spoken to us—we who know that we would have been clustered in that crowd at Jerusalem’s gates—what do we hear? What would we expect?
I suspect that our expectations back then, if we were there, would not be so different from the crowds’. That is to say, it’s not so different from our expectations now. For what was it that the crowds shouted at the beginning of our service today? “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” Those miracles, those signs of power served a purpose in their minds: to cement Jesus as the One who should be their conquering king, sweeping into Jerusalem, ousting corrupt Herod, driving out the Romans. That would be power added to power. That would be a return to glory. That’s what a good king would do. That’s what they want.
And that’s what we want too. We know what power looks like. We see people wield it all the time—military might, political power, influence, wealth. We celebrate it when it’s held and used by the people we approve of. We lament it when it’s in the hands of those we don’t. We have an idea of what strength should be. And we even expect God Himself to look and act accordingly.
But this is not the Lord’s way. It never has been—not in any account of the Old Testament, not in the life of Jesus, not in that triumphal entry, and not during Holy Week. St. John very specifically gives us a passage from Zechariah, showing that Jesus was making a point in the way He chose to enter Jerusalem. “Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!” Jesus will not enter Jerusalem in a chariot or on a warhorse. From the very start of the battle that He will wage all week long, He will fight on His own terms. He won’t subscribe to the rules of strength and power, winning and losing, as the world has defined it.
That’s precisely why the crowds can’t figure out what’s going on. Even the disciples, those who have been with Jesus for three years, don’t understand these things at first. St. John tells us that it was only after Jesus was glorified that they remembered these things had been written about Him, revealing how He would fight, how He would win, ages before His birth. The meaning was hidden in plain sight: God does not fight, does not win, the way the world fights or wins.
We’ll see this contrast again and again through the events of Holy Week. Peter will draw his sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest, only to have Jesus tell him to put his sword away. If the battle was going to be won by sheer strength, Jesus could call on more than twelve legions of angels to strike down this mob with swords and clubs. Jesus says exactly what He could do in terms of power, and yet He does not. He will not fight with might alone. And when He is mocked on the cross by the chief priests and scribes and elders, “He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him!” Jesus knows that victory will not lie in avoiding suffering; it will require more than proving His antagonists wrong. The world might think that’s what winning looks like, but it won’t be any victory Jesus wants to take part in.
Instead, His victory will look—it will be—very different. In fact, to the sin-blinded eyes of the world, to our fallen mortal sensibilities, it will look very much like defeat this week. Slaying the sinners who wanted to wound Him wouldn’t win. Surviving their cruelty wouldn’t be triumph. Staying there on the cross, taking each lashing from the whips of the Roman torturers, bearing every insult and barb, being forsaken even by His heavenly Father, even dying—that’s Jesus’ victory.
Jesus does not meet sin, death, and the devil on their own terms of grandiosity and power. He meets them with His own humility and weakness. He overcomes them with His own death. That means that for you—you who are called this Holy Week, you who are called in your baptismal lives—to bear your cross and follow Jesus, your victory will not be in the things that the world says are so important. It won’t be in satisfying the impulses of your fallen nature. It won’t be in appearing great and powerful and commanding respect from other sinners. Your victory is in the cross. Yes, it’s in the crosses that you are called to bear, but precisely because those crosses in your life point you to the cross: the cross of Jesus, where He defeated everything for you. That is your hope, your light, your salvation, your life—even when it would seem to be the opposite. Be drawn to that cross of Jesus this Holy Week and always, as you see all that your Lord has won for you there, all that He promises you in His sacrificial victory. In the name of Jesus, the Crucified One. Amen.
