The triumphal procession of palms led to the arrest of Jesus, but this humiliation prepared Jesus to be the King and Saviour of all (Is. 52:13). As Saviour, as Victim he broke the mechanism of violence: suffering the greatest violence without becoming violent. In his humiliation Jesus shows the greatness and power of God, taking on himself all the humiliations of the defenceless, the dejected victims on whom were heaped the mindless of peoples and their leaders.

Jesus is Saviour not by evading the Cross, but by enduring it! This forms the basis of our Christian faith. "A slave's death on the cross is not poetry but bitter historical reality," (Raymond Brown).

The Jewish leaders condemned Jesus to death without denying his innocence (Mt. 26:2-3). The soldiers made a game out of a reality they were unaware of...when they fell on their knees mocking him, (v 30). Jesus was king as attested by them and Pilate, though he washed his hands of Jesus's fate. These are gentiles; it's the jewish crowd, incited by their leaders who finally decide on his death as a criminal, by crucifixion!

From this encounter with God, hated and killed, so different from the God worshipped in heaven, will gush waters of pardon and purification. No one will be able to look at him without discovering their own wickedness, and mourning for him who was their victim, (Zech. 12:12).