Palm Sunday is about power, and about surrender. The crowd acclaim a king, but what a king. Jesus rode into a city boiling with violence and gave himself up. No one takes his life from him. He surrenders to judicial, political and religious processes of power. Within and beyond the Passion of Jesus, power is subverted because beyond his suffering and death there is hope, beyond the violence the reaching out of reconciliation, beyond the angry fears and arrogant unilateralism of the powerful, is this one man who comes as king and peacemaker.

What W H Vanstone called, "the stature of waiting", the patient handing over of self that renders force futile, the refusal to retaliate whether by the cutting off of an ear, or as the Evangelist observes, Jesus could call on legions of angels – but declines. In a world of hard moral choices, when we are confused by suffering and our own weaknesses, Palm Sunday is a call to trust the Lord of creation, believing that ultimately, finally, in God's good time, there will be peace, justice and the fulfilment of our farthest reaching hopes. And not through our fighting, but through God's victory in Christ crucified and risen. Palm Sunday reminds the church that Hosanna is not a war cry, but a peace cry, arising from the heart of the Church and giving voice to hope, and hope to those voices that sing the song of a creation that awaits its redemption.

The suffering of our world's conflict spots, the toxic rivers of hate that flow between religious and cultural enemies, are grim reminders that the stakes God was playing for on Calvary were high, nothing less than the healing of that incurable violence that tears creation in pieces. The creation itself groans, awaiting its redemption – and that Sunday, which we now celebrate as Palm Sunday, was the beginning of the end for the life of Jesus, and the beginning of the end for all those powers of destruction so hell bent on human ruin and Jesus' death.

So on Palm Sunday I always make time to pray for peace. The latent but lethal violence of that disillusioned mob who had just seen their Messiah make a fool of their expectations by arriving on a donkey and refusing to fight, hints at that more profoundly disturbing bias of human hearts, turning too easily to conflict. And when hate locks on to its target, crucifixion becomes thinkable, then probable, then justifiable. Strange how God turns occasion of original sin into occasion of final redemption, and converts violence to reconciliation. The God of peace, indeed.

But just so this isn't all taken so seriously we lose our perspective, the underlying purposes of God are allowed to inform the best Palm Sunday poem I know:

The Donkey. G.K.Chesterton