Two Processions: The Day Jesus Threw a Parade to Mock an Empire | In Color | Chad Belew

We tend to read Jesus' "triumphal entry" as a humble, gentle ride into town — but for the people watching, it was loaded with meaning. Pastor Chad walks us back into Passover week in Jerusalem, where a city remembering its liberation from Egypt was now living under Roman oppression. On the same week, two processions enter the city: Pilate riding in from the west on a war horse, surrounded by soldiers and the religious elite — a display of power, force, and fear. And Jesus riding in from the east on a borrowed donkey, surrounded by the poor, the sick, the overlooked, and the healed — a display of humility, presence, and peace. Seen side by side, Jesus' entry isn't passive. It's a calculated, deliberate protest — a parody of empire that exposes one way of being human and offers another. This is the message that starts the countdown to the cross.

In this episode:

- Why Passover wasn't just nostalgia but a charged, dangerous story about God overthrowing empire

- The Pax Romana: how Rome's "peace" was really control, order, and stability enforced by violence

- Pilate's procession from the west vs. Jesus' procession from the east — two visions of humanity walking into the same city

- What it meant that Jesus chose a donkey (peace) and not a war horse (conquest) — drawing on Luke 19

- The contrast in the crowds: people protecting power vs. people who had been crushed by it

- A look ahead to the temple and the tables — the calculated demonstration that becomes the last straw (continued next week)

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