William Goldman’s classic 1973 novel, The Princess Bride, sees a young farm boy, Westley, who, after leaving to seek his fortune, is finally presumed dead when he fails to return home. Westley’s love, Buttercup, heartbroken that he’s gone, reluctantly agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck, not knowing that Westley is alive and on a quest to rescue her.

In Rob Reiner’s 1987 film adaptation of the book, Westley, portrayed by Cary Elwes, is accompanied by three other travelers. Inigo Montoya, played by Mandy Patinkin; Fezzik, the gentle giant who loves rhymes, is portrayed by Andre the Giant; and Vizzini, the arrogant know-it-all, is played by Wallace Shawn.

Their journey is fraught with dangerous confrontations, such as outsmarting a cunning Sicilian criminal, facing off against colossal beasts, and navigating the treacherous Fire Swamp. Good stuff.

It also had some famous lines. If you’ve read the book or seen the movie … heck, if you’ve been conscious for a bit in our culture, you’ve almost certainly run across one line in particular. But Mandy Patinkin’s line, which he continually repeats in the movie, has vaulted to the status of cultural icon: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Another, almost as popular line comes from Wallace Shawn’s character, Vizzini, the arrogant know-it-all—who, every time a plan of his is thwarted, says, “Inconceivable!” Finally, apparently, Inigo Montoya gets fed up with the irony that every time something happens to foil one of Vizzini’s master plans, the results are entirely conceivable. After enough, Inigo Montoya says, “You keep that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Did you ever do that—say something and have people say, “I don’t think that means what you think it means.” We used to have a President who had a special knack for the malapropism. He was given to serious pronouncements that boomeranged: “We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile." He explained to Bob Woodward, “I’m the commander — see, I don’t need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president.”

The wrong word or a bad definition of the right word can cause problems. As Mark Twain once famously said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” Words matter.

Palm Sunday, interestingly, is predicated on a word. I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Palm Sunday—and the rest of Holy Week—turns on one little word.

Think about what’s been happening as Jesus finalizes his travel itinerary to Jerusalem. Go back a ways. It might help if you have your Bibles out for this. Back in chapter nine, Jesus foretells his death to his disciples by saying, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again” (31).

Mark adds a telling explanatory note: “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask” (9:32). Next, Mark tells us about an argument among the disciples about who will be the greatest, to which Jesus says, “The program I’m launching is different. If you want to play on my team, you need to understand that the first will be last and the last will be first” (9: 35).

After leaving that place, Mark tells us that they go to Judea, where people start bringing little children to see Jesus. The disciples, you’ll recall, touch their earpieces, speak into their wrist microphones, and bar the way. Jesus overrides their security precautions and tells everyone that not only are the children welcome.

Why?

They’re the kind of folks he’s looking for to fill out his cabinet because “it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (10:14).

Next, a rich man who thinks he’s got Jesus all figured out, confronts him and asks with a rather smug look on his face, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:17). When Jesus tells him to sell all he owns and give the money to the poor, everybody looks discouraged and starts wondering, “Then who can be saved?” At which point, Jesus again throws out his now famous line about “the first being last, and the last being first” (10:31).

The very next verse has Jesus and the disciples heading toward Jerusalem, where he once again predicts his death in amazingly explicit terms—“they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again” (10:34).

Apparently missing the significance of what Jesus has just said about being “like little children,” about being last, being humiliated, and being dead, James and John elbow their way to the front of the line and blurt out, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” (10:35). When Jesus asks what exactly they want, they say, “Well to be boss, of course … or at least underbosses. You know, one on your right hand and one on your left hand—when you come into your glory.”

You know, the glory ... the red carpet, limo, and paparazzi that Jesus has been painstakingly describing to them—the being-turned-over-and-being-killed glory to which every ambitious, right-minded, would-be ruler aspires. And, of course, the other ten disciples, completely missing the subtle irony of James and John’s request, try to horn their way into cabinet-level positions themselves.

With mounting frustration, Jesus says, “If you had any idea what this new world I’ve been talking about is, you wouldn’t ask such stupid questions—because anyone who wants to be great in this new world must first be a servant. ‘For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for the many’” (10:45).

Do you, by any chance, see a pattern developing here?

Jesus finds himself hounded by an army, not of the “young and the restless” but of the thick and the dim. Everyone following him to Jerusalem seems almost intentionally dull. Inveterate point-missers. Jesus continues to say one thing, and they continue to hear something entirely different—without exception.