I wasn't expecting a crowd on Saturday afternoon.

They had spilled out of a bar near the ballpark — jerseys, drinks, loud in that particular way a city gets loud when it believes something good is about to happen. The Giants were playing. Sun off the bay, people pressed together with a shared reason to be there. I stopped for a moment and watched. Not with judgment. More like recognition. There's something I love about a city that still knows how to gather.

And then I thought about Palm Sunday.

I've been sitting with that story anyway, as this week arrives. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while people lined the road, waving branches, shouting. A crowd. A procession. A city gathered with a shared reason to be there. Expectations running at their highest. The one they had been waiting for was finally here.

What they wanted, mostly, was rescue. A king who would fix things. Set things right. Drive out the occupiers, restore the nation, return the city to what it was supposed to be. The branches they were waving weren't only celebration. They were demand. Do what we brought you here to do.

I find myself thinking: we haven't changed much.

Not because San Francisco is politically naive — it isn't. But because the shape of the hope is the same. We carry things into a week expecting them to deliver. A relationship, a career move, a season opener. We arrive with noise and branches and a specific outcome in mind. We want the story to go the way we need it to go.

What's strange about Palm Sunday — what makes it worth sitting with — is that Jesus didn't correct the crowd's joy. He let them wave. He rode in. He received it. And then the week went somewhere no one in that crowd had planned for.

Perhaps that's the hardest part of Holy Week. Not that hope is wrong. But that the hope we carry in is rarely the hope that comes out the other side.

I don't know what you're carrying into this week. I'm carrying a few things myself, and I'm not sure any of them are going to resolve the way I'd like. But there's something in this story I keep returning to: the crowd wasn't wrong to gather. They were wrong about what gathering would cost.

Maybe the week ahead isn't about having the right expectations. Maybe it's about being willing to stay when ours don't pan out.