Let us consider the historical context to the events leading up to the time that Christians commemorate on Palm Sunday. Passover was (and is) a big deal for the Jews. When Jesus entered the city, many Jews were already gathering in Jerusalem for Passover. Rome responded by sending in extra troops and stepping up their terror campaign of crucifying petty Jewish criminals in hopes of using terror to keep in their place. As Jesus approached Jerusalem he would have been walking past several bodies hanging from crosses on the road leading to the city.
He was walking into a politically charged, terror influenced environment. To the Jews in power, he posed a threat. Jesus threatened to destabilize the uneasy but not completely chaotic balance of power that existed between the Jews and their occupiers.
It is in this context that "King of the Jews" should be heard.
The Jews were expecting a new King. The expected a new Joshua. Jesus shares Joshua's name and Jesus comes from to Jerusalem by way of Jericho. Jesus was also depicted as the new David by way of his two genealogies and the shepard analogies.
Like the Kingship of Joshua and David, the Jews were expecting deliverance here and now in this life and by means of a military victory in this Jewish Kingdom.
Jesus, however, poses a challenge to this Jewish notion of Kingdom. Like Joshua, Jesus also tore down walls, but the walls he tore down were not made of stone and earth, but prejudice. The Kingdom of Jesus was no longer us (Jews) vs. them (Gentiles). In Jesus's Kingdom everyone was welcome. Tearing down these walls was upsetting to some Jews. People like to feel special. As the Passover story reminds them, Jews think of themselves as a special people who have a special relationship with God. Jesus was changing this special status: he touched leapers, he took water from a Samaritan woman at the well, he took license with the law and healed on the Sabbath. As a new baby threatens to divide her parent's attention, so does Jesus' welcoming of outsiders into the Kingdom of God. The Jews are no longer God's special people.
A Hebrew reading of Kingdom of God would suggest that the Kingdom of God was not something up in the sky, but "on earth as it is in heaven". As this notion was communicated to a gentile audience, the language and images would have been Greek. As such, this Hebrew image would have been translated into Greek neoPlatonic language of "ideas" and otherworldly perfections.(Both the Hebrew and the Greek images views have Biblical support. I do not suggest to collapse the two or to argue for one over the other.)
As an alternative to the "King of Heaven" image that is often invoked, I am prompted to ask, what kind of Kingdom would this have been? One answer is the otherworldly Greek image, another comes from Luke 22:27. In this passage, in the Kingdom Jesus was heralding, the greatest is not the ruler at the table, but the servant. To illustrate this, Jesus pointed to himself as the model servant, "Yet here am I among you like a servant."
So often modern Christians set themselves apart from the world and give the impression that they think themselves to be special or uniquely suited to get a special reward in an otherworldly heaven. Against this too common image, I suggest that it is also Biblical to see that the Kingdom that Jesus brought did not have "us" versus "them" distinctions and that the greatest in the Kingdom of God are not the ones that receive the most rewards or who sit in a place of prominence, but are the ones that offer the most in service.
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