The crowds who followed Jesus lived under violent and repressive Roman occupation. They needed to be saved and couldn’t do it themselves. Because they witnessed Jesus’s teaching and healing, they believed Jesus was the new king would give them the victory. And so, when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, they welcomed him with a parade.

The victory those crowds anticipated was a military defeat of their Roman rulers, not the moral victory that Jesus delivered. After the Crucifixion, Rome was still in charge, and so where the Pharisees and Herod and the temple leaders. What Christ’s early followers didn’t immediately realize was that when Jesus died on the cross, he was actually launching the victory. Jesus didn’t conquer an empire. Instead, he conquered death by dying.

On this Palm Sunday, Pastor Mia reminds that that the victory was given to early Christians and it is given to us. However, we sometimes miss God’s enormous strength. When a group of women approached Jesus’s tomb on Easter Sunday, they discovered the huge stone at the entrance had been rolled away. God cleared the way for those women and God clears the way for us. After all, only God can move the stone that blocks our way to a free and full life.