Introduction
There is something unsettling about Palm Sunday if we are honest enough to sit still with it.
The crowd was not wrong to cry out. “Hosanna” was not a foolish word. It was not even a false one. “Save us” is a profoundly human prayer. In fact, it may be one of the most honest things a person can say. We are fragile creatures, wounded by the world, burdened by ourselves, and forever reaching for some kind of rescue. The problem, then, is not that the crowd wanted salvation. The problem is that they had already decided what salvation had to look like.
And that is where the danger begins.
Because human beings are very good at wanting the right thing in the wrong way. We long for deliverance, but often only on terms we can recognise, control, and approve. We want peace, but usually without disruption. We want justice, but not if it arrives in a form that exposes us. We want God to save, but we often expect Him to do so by confirming our assumptions rather than overturning them.
Palm Sunday reveals this with uncomfortable clarity. The same public emotion that celebrates Jesus also contains the seeds of disappointment. The same crowd that welcomes can, under pressure, fall silent, detach, or even turn. Not necessarily because they stopped wanting rescue, but because the rescue offered did not match the one imagined. Desire, when misaligned, does not stay innocent. It can harden into judgement. Unmet expectation can become disillusionment. And disillusionment, left unchecked, can become hostility.
So this is not merely a story about ancient crowds and misplaced hopes. It is a mirror. It asks whether our own cries for salvation are truly directed toward God as He is, or toward a version of Him we have quietly constructed for ourselves. Because “Hosanna” can be the beginning of faith. But it can also be the beginning of offence, if God refuses to be who we expected Him to be.
Section 1: Hosanna Was Not the Problem
The crowd’s cry on Palm Sunday was not a mistake. It was, in many ways, a deeply appropriate response. As Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David… Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”¹ This was not random enthusiasm. It was loaded language, saturated with expectation, hope, and theological meaning. “Hosanna” means “save us.” The crowd was recognising Jesus within the framework they understood, namely, as the long-awaited king who would bring deliverance.
The issue, therefore, is not that the crowd desired salvation. The issue is that they had already defined what salvation should look like.
First-century Jewish expectation was not abstract or merely spiritual. It was concrete, historical, and often political. The hope was for liberation, restoration, and the re-establishment of Israel’s identity under God’s rule. Within this framework, the Messiah was not primarily imagined as a suffering servant, but as a figure who would act decisively within history to bring justice and freedom.² The people were, in other words, asking for real change in the real world. They were not wrong to do so.
But they were asking for it on terms they already understood.
This creates a subtle but critical distortion. When expectation precedes revelation, we do not simply receive what God is doing. We interpret it through what we have already decided He must do. The crowd saw Jesus, but they saw Him through a lens shaped by national longing, cultural memory, and political desire. They welcomed Him as king, but the kind of king they had in mind was already predetermined.
They wanted deliverance They wanted restoration They wanted God to act
But, they expected power, not weakness they expected conquest, not surrender they expected immediate victory, not suffering
The tragedy is not that they misunderstood everything. It is that they understood enough to recognise Jesus, but not enough to accept Him as He truly was.
As N. T. Wright observes, Jesus must be located firmly within first-century Judaism, where expectations of God’s action were intense, varied, and often charged with revolutionary potential.³ The people were not looking for a vague spiritual teacher. They were asking, in very real terms, how God would act within history to set things right. Their cry of “Hosanna” emerges precisely from this context. It is a cry shaped by longing, but also constrained by assumption.
This is why the problem is not the desire itself, but its direction.
Desire, when properly ordered, opens us to truth. But when it is preloaded with expectation, it can close us off from anything that does not conform. The crowd was not wrong to hope. They were wrong to assume that hope would be fulfilled in the way they had already imagined.
And that is the danger that runs beneath the surface of Palm Sunday.
Because it is entirely possible to recognise Jesus, to celebrate Him, and even to speak rightly about Him, while still aiming at the wrong end. “Hosanna” was not false. But it was incomplete. And when reality began to contradict expectation, that incompleteness would not remain neutral. It would eventually fracture.
Section 2: Humans Are Not Thinkers First, but Desirers
If Section 1 exposes the misalignment of the crowd’s expectation, Section 2 presses deeper into the anthropology beneath it. Why did they misinterpret so profoundly? Why did recognition not lead to understanding?
Because human beings are not, at root, neutral observers of reality. We are not detached thinkers who simply process information and arrive at truth. We are, more fundamentally, creatures of desire.
Anthropology, at its most basic level, is the study of what makes us human. The American Anthropological Association defines it as the discipline that seeks to understand the full sweep and complexity of human cultures across time and space.⁴ But embedded within every anthropology is an assumption about how humans engage the world. Do we primarily think, feel, construct, receive, or desire?
Clifford Geertz offers a helpful starting point. He describes human beings as “animals suspended in webs of significance” which they themselves have spun.⁵ In other words, we do not merely encounter the world. We interpret it. We live within meaning structures that shape how we perceive, respond, and act. Anthropology, therefore, is not simply about behaviour. It is about meaning.
But meaning is not formed in a vacuum of pure reason.
James K. A. Smith presses this further by arguing that human beings are not primarily “thinking things” but “desiring, affective, liturgical animals.”⁶ Before we articulate beliefs, we are already being shaped by what we love, what we practice, and what we repeatedly give ourselves to. Our habits, environments, and cultural rhythms form us at a level deeper than conscious thought. We do not first think and then act. More often, we love, and then we rationalise.
This helps explain the crowd.
They did not stand at the roadside as detached theologians evaluating messianic claims. They stood as a people already shaped by longing, history, oppression, and hope. Their desires were not neutral. They had been formed over time, reinforced by culture, and directed toward a particular vision of what the “good life” under God should look like.
And so, when Jesus appeared, they did not simply see Him. They saw Him as the fulfilment of what they already loved.
This is why Augustine’s insight remains so penetrating. He writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”⁷ The problem is not that we desire. The problem is that our desires are often disordered. Restlessness does not disappear when we believe. It is either rightly directed toward God, or misdirected toward substitutes.
We do not first reason our way to meaning We are first drawn toward what we perceive as good And then we interpret reality in light of that attraction
This is precisely what unfolds in Palm Sunday.
The crowd’s cry was not the product of careful doctrinal clarity. It was the overflow of desire. They longed for liberation, dignity, justice, and restoration. These are not wrong desires. In fact, they reflect something deeply true about the human condition. But because those desires were already shaped toward a particular kind of outcome, they constrained how Jesus could be understood.
Geertz reminds us that culture provides the “webs of significance” within which meaning is made.⁸ Smith reminds us that those webs are not merely cognitive, but formative of love and desire.⁹ And Augustine reminds us that unless those desires are anchored in God Himself, they remain restless and unstable.¹⁰
When these insights are brought together, the crowd becomes far less surprising.
They did not fail because they lacked intelligence. They failed because their loves were misaligned. They desired salvation, but in a form that matched their existing vision of the good. And so when Jesus embodied a different kind of kingdom, one marked not by immediate triumph but by suffering, humility, and surrender, their interpretive framework could not hold it.
The issue, then, is not simply misunderstanding. It is misdirected desire shaping perception.
And that raises an uncomfortable implication.
If human beings are primarily desiring creatures, then we do not merely see what is there. We see what we are prepared to love.
Section 3: When Desire Is Misaligned
The tragedy of the Passion is not that the crowd suddenly became evil. It is that their desire, though real, was misaligned.
They wanted salvation.
They wanted deliverance.
They wanted restoration.
But they wanted it on their own terms.
Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem reveals the depth of this misalignment:
“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace… But now they are hidden from your eyes… because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:42, 44).
This is not a rebuke of desire itself. It is a rebuke of misrecognition. The people longed for peace, but did not recognise the form in which peace had come. They expected a Messiah who would overthrow Rome, restore national sovereignty, and vindicate their suffering in visible, immediate ways. Instead, they were confronted with a Messiah who wept, who spoke of surrender, and who moved steadily toward suffering.
Isaiah had already foretold this paradox:
“He was despised and rejected by men… and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).
The problem was not absence of expectation. It was the shape of expectation. The Servant did not fit the framework the people had constructed. And so, what was sent as salvation was perceived as failure. They desired peace, but defined it politically they desired rescue, but rejected suffering they desired a king, but not one who would die. Misaligned desire does not eliminate longing. It distorts perception.
Tim Keller provides a crucial lens for understanding this dynamic. He argues that idols are not always evil things, but good things that are made ultimate.¹¹ When a legitimate desire is absolutised, it becomes a counterfeit god. The crowd did not reject salvation outright. They idolised a particular version of it.
Their expectations became fixed: salvation must look like political victory the Messiah must fulfil national hopes deliverance must be immediate and visible. When Jesus did not conform to these expectations, the issue was not merely disappointment. It was disorientation. Their framework for meaning could not accommodate Him.
Keller notes that when cultural hopes become ultimate, they begin to organise entire societies around themselves, shaping what is seen as good, true, and desirable.¹² In such a system, anything that contradicts those hopes is not simply questioned. It is resisted.
This explains the shift in the crowd:
expectation → disappointment disappointment → disillusionment disillusionment → detachment detachment → hostility
The rejection of Jesus was not the abandonment of desire. It was the defence of a disordered desire.
Desire that is misaligned does not remain passive. It intensifies. When something ultimate fails, it produces more than confusion. It produces offence.
The crowd had already invested their hopes into a specific outcome. When that outcome collapsed, the emotional and psychological tension demanded resolution. The easiest resolution was not to question their expectations, but to reject the One who contradicted them.
This is the subtle but devastating shift: Jesus is no longer misunderstood He becomes unacceptable.
Isaiah’s words take on their full weight:
“He was despised and rejected… a man of sorrows… and we esteemed him not.”
To “esteem him not” is not mere ignorance. It is a value judgement. It is the decision that He is not worthy of allegiance because He does not align with what is desired.
Keller observes that when idols fail, they do not simply disappear. They often lead to breakdown, frustration, and even hostility, because the thing we trusted to give meaning has collapsed.¹³ The deeper the attachment, the stronger the reaction.
In this light, the crowd’s response becomes tragically coherent. They did not stop wanting rescue. They rejected the form in which rescue came.
This exposes something far more unsettling than a historical mistake. It reveals a structural tendency within human desire.
We do not merely want good things.
We want them on our terms.
And when reality confronts us with a different form of fulfilment, we are faced with a choice: surrender our expectations or reject what contradicts them.
The crowd chose the latter.
And in doing so, they illustrate a universal pattern. Misaligned desire does not stay innocent. It moves toward judgement, first internally, then externally.
They did not reject Jesus because they stopped wanting salvation.
They rejected Him because He would not become the salvation they had already decided they needed.
Misaligned desire does not remain neutral.
It hardens.
And if left unchecked, it does not merely misunderstand truth.
It resists it.
Section 4: From Disappointment to Hostility
When desire is frustrated, the human response is rarely limited to disappointment. Something deeper occurs. Perception itself begins to shift. Reality is not merely experienced differently. It is reinterpreted.
What begins as unmet expectation gradually develops into a chain reaction within the human person. First comes expectation, the anticipation that reality will conform to one’s desires. When that expectation is not met, disappointment emerges. If sustained, disappointment hardens into disillusionment, where trust in the object of hope begins to erode. Disillusionment then creates detachment, an emotional and cognitive distancing that protects the self from further pain. But detachment does not remain neutral. It often culminates in hostility, where the object once trusted is now perceived as the source of the problem.
This progression is not merely emotional. It is cognitive.
Jonathan Haidt’s work in moral psychology demonstrates that human beings do not typically reason their way into moral conclusions. Rather, they arrive at conclusions intuitively and then construct reasoning to support them. He observes that “people usually condemned the actions very quickly,” and only afterwards attempted to justify their judgement.¹⁴ In many cases, individuals struggled to articulate reasons for their condemnation, yet remained firmly convinced of it. This led Haidt to conclude that “reasoning was often a servant of moral emotions.”¹⁵
This insight is crucial. It reveals that once an emotional judgement has been formed, the mind does not neutrally evaluate reality. It begins to defend the conclusion already reached.
In this light, disappointment is not a passive state. It becomes the seedbed for reinterpretation. When expectations collapse, the human mind does not simply accept the disconfirmation. It searches for meaning that preserves its emotional orientation. If the desired outcome is not achieved, then the object of desire may be reclassified as inadequate, deceptive, or even threatening.
Contemporary psychological research reinforces this pattern. Cognitive distortions are described as “irrational or deviant thought patterns that lead individuals to misinterpret reality.”¹⁶ These distortions do not merely obscure truth. They function as a “justification mechanism,” allowing individuals to reframe harmful or unjust actions as “acceptable or even warranted.”¹⁷ In other words, distortion is not simply error. It is moral reinterpretation.
This helps explain how hostility becomes sustainable. It is not driven by raw emotion alone, but by a reconstructed narrative in which hostility appears justified. The individual or group no longer perceives themselves as reacting wrongly. They perceive themselves as responding appropriately to a redefined reality.
Studies examining extreme forms of violence, including serial and mass offenders, reveal similar cognitive patterns. While the actions of such individuals are not equivalent to those of a disappointed crowd, the underlying mechanisms of perception show disturbing parallels. These studies identify recurring themes such as a developing “hatred for humanity,” motivations rooted in power and revenge, and deeply embedded worldview distortions, including forms of nihilism that strip life of inherent meaning.¹⁸ In such cases, violence is not experienced as irrational by the perpetrator. It is experienced as warranted within a distorted interpretive framework.
It is essential to maintain the distinction. The crowd that turned against Jesus is not to be equated with serial offenders. The scale and nature of the actions differ profoundly. However, the cognitive architecture reveals a shared human vulnerability. Distorted perception, justificatory reasoning, and group-aligned hostility are not anomalies confined to extreme cases. They are latent possibilities within ordinary human experience.
In the Passion narrative, this dynamic becomes visible. The crowd does not move from admiration to hatred through a sudden moral collapse. Rather, their expectations are frustrated. Their disappointment deepens into disillusionment. Their perception shifts. And within that altered perception, their hostility begins to feel justified.
They do not experience themselves as irrational.
They experience themselves as right.
This is the most dangerous stage of all.
For once perception is distorted and justification is in place, actions that would once have been unthinkable can now be embraced as necessary.
The crowd did not become evil in a moment.
They began to see wrongly, and then acted as if they were right.
Section 5: The Crowd Does Not Turn Loudly. It Falls Away
The common imagination of the Passion often assumes a dramatic reversal. One moment the crowd cries “Hosanna,” and the next it shouts “Crucify him.” But the Gospels suggest something more unsettling, and far more recognisable.
The crowd does not primarily turn.
It thins.
By the time we reach Mark 15:6–15, the atmosphere has shifted. The noise of Palm Sunday is gone. In its place stands a different crowd, one that is stirred, influenced, and ultimately decisive in choosing Barabbas over Jesus. The text does not require that this is the same unified group that welcomed Him days earlier. What it reveals is absence as much as opposition.
Many did not become hostile.
They simply were no longer there.
This is the quieter movement of the human heart. When expectations collapse, people do not always rage. Often, they withdraw. The intensity of early devotion gives way to the silence of disengagement.
This is where Viktor Frankl’s insight becomes profoundly illuminating. Reflecting on human endurance under extreme suffering, he writes, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”¹⁹ The ability to endure difficulty is not primarily a function of strength, but of meaning. When a person possesses a compelling “why,” even severe hardship can be sustained.
But when that “why” collapses, endurance collapses with it.
Frankl further reframes the human condition by suggesting that the central question is not what we expect from life, but “what life expected from us.”²⁰ This shift is critical. It moves the axis from demand to responsibility, from expectation to response.
The crowd, however, had already established its “why.”
They expected liberation, restoration, and visible triumph.
When Jesus no longer aligned with that expectation, the “why” that sustained their enthusiasm dissolved. And with it, their loyalty.
This explains the quiet disappearance, they did not see a reason to remain, they did not see a future in following Him, they did not know how to interpret a suffering Messiah. Disappointment did not immediately produce hostility. It first produced distance.
This is often how disengagement works. It is not announced. It is not always even conscious. It is a gradual loosening of attachment when the object of hope no longer appears meaningful.
The choice of Barabbas intensifies this reality. Barabbas represents a form of deliverance that fits the expected pattern. He is a known quantity, a figure aligned with the kind of liberation the people understood. Jesus, by contrast, has become ambiguous, even confusing.
And when meaning becomes unclear, people tend to return to what feels familiar, even if it is flawed.
Frankl’s framework allows us to see what is happening beneath the surface. When the meaning attached to Jesus collapsed, the crowd lost its interpretive anchor. Without a “why,” there was no longer a reason to endure the tension, confusion, or cost of staying with Him.
They did not need to become His enemies.
They simply ceased to be His followers.
This is the quieter tragedy of the Passion.
Not all rejection is loud.
Much of it is silent absence.
When Jesus no longer fit their “why,” they no longer knew what to do with Him.
Section 6: The Deeper Problem Is Not Rejection, but Redefinition
The final layer of the Passion reveals something even more profound. The issue is not merely that people rejected Jesus. It is that they first redefined Him.
Before rejection comes reinterpretation.
René Girard’s analysis of human behaviour provides a powerful lens for understanding this process. He identifies mimetic desire as a central feature of human anthropology. Desire is not self-generated. It is learned through imitation. And this imitation “almost always leads to conflict,” which in turn can escalate into violence.²¹
This is not merely individual psychology. It is social dynamics.
Desire spreads.
Perception aligns.
Hostility synchronises.
Girard shows that when mimetic desire intensifies, communities enter into a state of contagion. Individuals begin to mirror not only each other’s desires, but also each other’s fears, suspicions, and accusations.²² In such an environment, tension seeks resolution. And that resolution often takes the form of identifying a single figure who can bear the weight of collective unrest.
This is the mechanism of the scapegoat.
The Passion narratives reveal this with striking clarity. Girard notes that figures as different as Peter and Pilate are both caught within this mimetic contagion.²³ Peter, despite his devotion, mirrors the fear of the crowd and denies Jesus. Pilate, despite recognising Jesus’ innocence, yields to the pressure of collective unrest. Neither acts in isolation. Both are drawn into a shared interpretive field shaped by the crowd.
Hostility becomes coherent because it is shared.
By the time the Passion reaches its climax, the process has fully converged. What began as scattered misunderstandings and disappointments now coalesces into unified accusation. Girard describes this as the moment when “a thousand mimetic conflicts” converge upon a single victim.²⁴
Jesus becomes that victim.
Not because He is guilty, but because the system requires resolution. The crowd does not perceive itself as unjust. Within the distorted framework, the accusation feels justified. The elimination of the victim appears necessary for restoring order.
This is the terrifying power of collective distortion.
imitation produces alignment alignment produces certainty certainty produces accusation accusation produces violence
And all of it feels reasonable from within the system.
The crucial insight here is that Jesus is not rejected as He truly is. He is rejected as He has been reinterpreted within the crowd’s distorted perception. He is no longer the misunderstood Messiah. He becomes the perceived problem.
This is why the issue is deeper than rejection.
It is redefinition.
Once Jesus has been reframed as dangerous, disappointing, or disruptive, His removal becomes not only acceptable, but necessary within the logic of the crowd.
Girard’s work exposes something deeply unsettling. The Passion is not simply the result of individual malice. It is the outcome of a shared distortion of reality, sustained and amplified through social imitation.
And this mechanism is not confined to history.
It remains a permanent feature of human communities.
We rarely reject God as He is.
We reject the God we have first edited.
Conclusion
Hosanna was not the problem.
It was, in fact, right.
The crowd saw something real in Jesus. They recognised authority, possibility, even hope. Their cry was not misguided in its direction, but in its expectation. They were not wrong to long for salvation. They were wrong about the shape it would take.
And this is where the fracture begins.
The aim was wrong.
They desired rescue, but without surrender.
They desired kingship, but without crucifixion.
They desired victory, but without transformation.
What unfolds in the Passion is not merely a historical tragedy. It is an anthropological revelation. It exposes something fundamental about the human condition. Desire, when left unchecked, does not remain pure. It bends toward control. It begins to define not only what is wanted, but how it must be given.
And when reality does not comply, desire does not quietly dissolve. It distorts.
Distortion does not appear immediately as hostility. It begins as reinterpretation. The mind adjusts, reframes, justifies. What once inspired devotion now produces confusion. What produces confusion, if left unresolved, becomes disillusionment. And under pressure, disillusionment hardens into hostility.
This is the movement:
desire without surrender becomes distortion distortion under pressure becomes hostility
The Passion reveals how fragile human allegiance can be when it is built upon expectation rather than truth. Love, when anchored in conditions, is not stable. It is contingent. And when those conditions are unmet, it does not always protest. Sometimes it simply disappears.
The crowd did not need to be convinced to hate Jesus.
They only needed to be disappointed by Him.
This is the deeper warning.
The issue was never that they wanted salvation.
The issue was that they would only accept it in a form they could control.
And so the question no longer remains with the crowd.
It turns, uncomfortably, toward us.
How quickly would your “Hosanna” become silence if God refused to be who you expected Him to be?
Prayer
Lord Jesus,
Forgive us, and help us to love You more.
In Your Holy Name,
Amen.
Footnotes:
1. Matthew 21:9 (ESV).
2. Isaiah 53:3–5 (ESV); cf. Luke 19:41–44 (ESV).
3. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), chap. 3, “(i) How does Jesus fit into Judaism?”
4. American Anthropological Association, “What Is Anthropology?” accessed March 31, 2026, https://americananthro.org/practice-teach/what-is-anthropology/.
5. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 5.
6. James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), Introduction, “Making the Familiar Strange: A Phenomenology of Cultural Liturgies.”
7. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1.1.
8. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 5.
9. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, Introduction, “Making the Familiar Strange.”
10. Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.
11. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009), section “The Hidden Idols in Our Lives.”
12. Ibid., section “Idols in Our Culture.”
13. Ibid.
14. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 28.
15. Ibid., 30.
16. Agnes Sandra, Pralayar Fanny Fadesti, and Tina Khostarina, “Analyzing the Influence of Cognitive Distortions on the Formation of Criminal Behavior: A Systematic Review of Theories and Recent Research,” Psikoborneo: Jurnal Ilmiah Psikologi 15, no. 1 (2026).
17. Ibid.
18. Shah S., “Analysing the Similarities and Differences between Serial Killers and Mass Murderers from First-Hand Accounts: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis,” Journal of Forensic Psychology 9, no. 4 (2024): 1–4.
19. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), chap. 1.
20. Ibid.
21. René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 11.
22. Ibid., 13.
23. Ibid., 19–20.
24. Ibid., 21–22.
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