Seeing the Saviour As He Is

Author: Aaron Frost - Community Chaplain

As someone who is ethnically Samoan, even though I was born and raised in Australia, my parents brought strong Samoan influences into our home. In Samoa, where around 98% of the population identifies as Christian, like most Pacific Island’s faith shapes the rhythm of life. On Sundays, everything closes. The shops, restaurants, work places nothing is open except the churches and everything just pauses. Police wear white uniforms on Sunday ensuring they are wearing their Sunday best. Every evening of the week is marked by village curfews for family prayers and devotions. Faith isn’t an event. It’s a way of life something that has been the norm since Christianity first arrived on Samoan shores in the year 1830, thanks to the London Missionary Society. 

So with all of this in the Samoan culture, we didn’t really grow up with the tension if Christianity is true or not. The tension lay in which version of it people identified with most. For this very reason I grew up around family and friends from all different denominations, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Assemblies of God, Presbyterian the list goes on.  

It was completely normal for family gatherings to end with family devotions: hymns, reciting psalms, and the Lord’s Prayer in Samoan.  As a child I noticed something. You could often tell which denomination someone belonged to just by how they prayed. 

Some would bow down prostrate, face to the ground. 
Others would kneel with arms folded. 
Some would sit quietly. 
Some would raise their hands while singing. 
Others would make the sign of the cross. 

Each expression was meaningful. Each one sincere. All of these actions were something they all learned from their church tradition and when coming together created something beautiful of all worshipping God in our own way. 

But even then, I began to see a pattern. Although we all identified as Christian, we often related to God in very different ways. Yes beautiful, but it also carried tension. 

One time, in 1999, some family members came over to our house to tell us goodbye as they were going to be raptured in the year 2000. They were from a tradition that loved end times theology and I guess because we weren’t from the same tradition, they thought we would be left behind. They were courteous enough to come and say goodbye. It definitely left us with an awkward family interaction when we saw them next at the family gathering in the new year. 

Humour aside, it stuck with me: even sincere faith can look very different, depending on what people expect or believe should happen. 

We see this time and time again, with Christians romanticizing their preferred version of Christ. Or this constant need to look for a saviour in places other than Jesus.  

There can be a quiet pressure to move quickly past anything uncomfortable and land on victory. We’re often drawn to a version of Jesus who meets our expectations, who brings triumph, but doesn’t ask us to sit in tension. And so, we rush from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, celebrating the resurrection without walking through what comes before it. 

Because we prefer a triumphant Saviour. A victorious Jesus. A risen King. 

And those things are true, they are the foundation of our hope. 

But when we only focus there, we risk shaping Jesus into someone who meets our expectations. We begin to want the outcome of Easter without walking the path of Holy Week. 

But Holy Week doesn’t let us rush. 

It invites us to slow down, to walk with Jesus through each moment. To celebrate His entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey on Palm Sunday, to sit in the tension of the days that follow as He confronts empty religion, teaches hard truths, and as betrayal quietly begins to unfold. To sit at the table on Maundy Thursday, where everything feels uncertain and not yet understood, where Jesus breaks bread and washes the feet of the disciples. To stand at the cross on Good Friday, where salvation looks like loss, not victory. And to wait in the silence of Holy Saturday, where God seems absent and hope feels buried. 

It may not be the kind of story we would write. But maybe that’s the point. 

Because the Saviour we are given is not one who avoids suffering, but one who walks through it bringing victory not by overpowering, but through surrender. 

And I think Palm Sunday confronts us with a similar tension. 

Culturally, we often look toward religious leaders, or even political leaders and want someone to lead in the way we want them to lead. We glorify aspects of leadership that align with our expectations. In many ways, this is exactly what some in the crowds did when Jesus arrived on a donkey. 

Some were looking for a conquering King. 
Some wanted a war hero. 
Some expected a crown of gold. 

But Jesus arrived in humility, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9. In humility he rode a donkey, not a horse of war. He also wore a crown of thorns, not gold. He went to a cross, not a throne. 

What looked like weakness was actually power. 
What looked like defeat was actually victory. 

The same crowd that cried “Hosanna” would, days later, turn away when salvation didn’t look the way they expected. And if we’re honest, we can do the same. We want the benefits of Jesus without embracing the way of Jesus. We want the crown without the cross. 

This year is my families first Holy Week as Anglican’s, and as Rev’d Stewart Perry says, “Anglicans do Easter hardcore.” Not just Sunday. Not just Friday. But the whole journey. Holy Week invites us to not just see Jesus in one way or how Jesus can best fit into our cultural context, but to see a Saviour who, in humility, came to bring hope. 

Palm Sunday is where that begins. 

So maybe the question this Palm Sunday isn’t, “Who will save us?” 

Maybe the question is: 
Why do we keep looking for another Saviour when we already have one?