"After the Parade”
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- Feb 22
- 4 min read
Holy Week begins with a parade – Jesus entering Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey to the cheers of a crowd shouting Hosanna!
Matthew 21:18-22 and Luke 19:41-44
February 22, 2026
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Holy Week begins with a parade – Jesus entering Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey to the cheers of a crowd shouting Hosanna!
Billy Collins captures the mood in the opening lines of his poem “The Parade”:
“How exhilarating it was to march
along the great boulevards
in the sunflash of trumpets
and under all the waving flags—
the flag of ambition, the flag of love.
So many of us streaming along—
all of humanity, really—
moving in perfect step,
yet each lost in the room of a private dream.”[1]
But some might wonder what happened next ... after the parade.
Another poet – Nada Meshal supplies some lines that might fit what Jesus was thinking:
“When we’ve all gone home,
Still glitter on my face …
I used to dream about this,
Loud liberation
An uncompromising announcement
Of my worldly vocation …
Earned celebrations
But still, a speechless sadness squats
In darkest depths of my soul …
That truth comes with a fee
Still, it didn’t stop my heart breaking
Or the inevitable aching
That came as a result of
The rumbling and shaking
Of shattered realities …
But truth has its own agenda, And that is to set you free
So take comfort in knowing, you’re one step closer to liberty.”[2]
A quick skim of Matthew and Luke tells us Jesus cursed a fig tree and wept over Jerusalem.
Curious!
You’d think he would be riding the high of being welcomed into the Holy City.
Why would he be angry or sad?
Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American Olympian might know.
The “freestyle skier said following the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing — where she won two gold medals and one silver for China at age 18 — [that] she was hit with a wave of burnout and anxiety, a feeling shared by many other elite athletes.” In a June 2025 interview, Gu added, ‘There’s this thing called post-Olympic depression, and it’s very common among athletes, a pretty well-known phenomenon. But the interesting thing is, it’s not at all correlated to results. That’s what’s kind of surprising to people, you can win the Olympics and still just enter the deepest rut of your life and just really be questioning everything, your purpose.’”[3]
So one possibility is that while Jesus has been marching toward this moment for much of the gospels, post-parade he feels what Gu felt.
But I don’t think that’s what is going on.
When Jesus curses the fig tree he is performing what scholars call an “enacted parable”.
And just like all parables, this one is an attempt to teach his listeners something.
Next week we will talk about Jesus cleansing the Temple. The fig tree is a preview.
There he will fume that “They have turned my Father’s house into a den of robbers,” quoting Jeremiah. A few verses later the weeping prophet will continue God’s lament over Israel, “When I wanted to gather them, says the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree.”[4]
Matthew, says Tom Long, is reminding his readers that “the fig tree with no fruit [was] not an unlucky plant that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a prophetic symbol … of God’s own people who resist what God is doing in the world.”[5]
So, Long continues, “if we allow the symbolism to take hold, [we can] see the fig tree as a sign, first of the holy but barren city of Jerusalem … [but also] as representative of all that appears to offer nourishment, justice, and hope, but finally gives only bitter disappointment.”
Jesus wants his listeners to get real nourishment; he wants them to be filled body and soul, he wants them to receive salvation. And frustratingly few grasp the gift.
He curses the fig tree as a stand-in for everything that will not do the job and stands before them as the one who will deliver ... if only they will place their trust in him.
The story Luke tells is much the same, with a different emotional tone.
When he returns to the city after the parade, he draws near and weeps. The city whose name means “seeing peace”, doesn’t. It only sees a man from Nazareth, one more in a long line of rustic preachers, self-proclaimed messiahs, zealots! Or, it mis-sees him as another David ready with his slingshot to fell the giant … Rome!
But we see him. We see him weeping over the city and people he loves.
He weeps and then he laments.
Fred Craddock writes, “The Bible is no stranger to laments: the psalmist laments, prophets lament, God laments. That Jesus laments over Jerusalem is a clear revelation of his character. A lament is a voice of love and profound caring, [a] vision of what could have been and of grief over its loss, of tough hope … and frustration, of sorrow and anger mixed, but with energy enough to go on.”[6]
So how does Jesus start Holy Week?
Not in a depressed funk, but teaching and expressing his love.
Just as he has done throughout his ministry.
This is the start of a week that will reveal all we need to know about Jesus … and more! Amen
[4] See Jeremiah 7:11 and 8:13
[5] Here and following from Matthew, page 239
[6] From Luke, page 228-229
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