Hosanna!

Rev. Debbie Cato
Luke 19:28-40
Fairfield Community Church
April 15, 2022 Good Friday Reflection 

Let us Pray:  Holy God, sometimes life feels like a parade rushing by us as we stand on the sidelines and try not to miss it! There are hundreds of things that catch our eye, but the thing we fear missing the most is you. So slow down the speed on this parade. Paint the colors of this world a little brighter. And dance through the words in our scripture passage until it is almost impossible for us to miss you there. God we are here. We are trying to pay attention. Gratefully we pray, amen.   ( Rev. Sara Speed santifiedart.org)

Hosanna!

 

Thank you for obliging me and getting out of the pews and marching around the church with your palm branches while we sang  “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” as we started our worship this morning!  Today, we dared to allow our faith to be a bit brazen; a bit extravagant as we moved, and sang, and waved our palm branches!  A fitting start for Palm Sunday and our entry into Holy Week. 

Today, we begin a journey that holds the fullness of our human story.  Holy week includes the highs and lows, the hopes and fears of what it means to be human.  In the span of just seven days, we do it all.  We feel it all. We praise, we process, we break bread and we wash feet. We make promises and we break promises.  We deny, betray, condemn, abandon, grieve, despair, disbelieve, and celebrate.  

This week, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we lose our vision of it entirely in the grimness of death, and then we find it again, drenched in glory.[1]  Wow!  That’s a lot.  Holy Week is an emotional week.  But we must be willing to walk the distance with Jesus riding on a colt to Jerusalem today, all the way to dying on a cross on Good Friday.  We must be willing to walk the distance if we want to fully appreciate the joy, the wonder, the sheer glory of Easter morning.  It’s worth it.  Easter morning means so much more if we have gone the distance.

 As Jesus rides into town on a colt, the crowd is shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna!”   It sounds so happy! I felt happy marching around the sanctuary.  Did you?  Hosanna! Hosanna sounds happy, but it isn’t.  Hosanna doesn’t mean “hooray” or “we love you” or even “It’s Jesus, It’s Jesus!”  or anything else exciting and wonderful.  In both Hebrew and Greek, Hosanna means “help us,” “save us.” Tthe people are shouting “Save us now!” as they wave the branches to get Jesus’ attention.   It’s like saying, “Lord, we’re desperate.  We’re frantic.  We’re in trouble.”   Perhaps you know what that’s like.

Perhaps you resonate with this plea as we come to the end of Lent.  It’s okay.  All of this -- all of this hope wrapped in all this fear – it’s okay.  It’s what Holy Week is about.  If the Palm Sunday story is about anything, it is about astounding hopes and disillusioned expectations.  It’s a story about what happens when the God we want and think we know doesn’t show up, and another God — a less aggressive God — shows up instead, and saves us in ways we didn’t think we wanted or needed.

The people welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem and waving leafy branches are calling for Jesus to deliver them.  They want to be saved from their Roman oppressors, from physical ailments, from the unjust legal system. 

Yet, Jesus is a different kind of King.  Jesus rides on a colt that has never had a rider.  By riding a colt with no previous rider, Jesus is revealing – perhaps too subtly – that what he brings is very different from what previous rulers have offered.  The crowds miss it.  Most of his disciples do not understand it.  The people are too busy calling for salvation, and they know exactly what they want that to look like.  I think we miss it too.

This is one of the greatest challenges of Holy Week:  letting go of what we want salvation to be and allowing ourselves to be open to what it is.  Julia Seymour wrote an article in Gather, a ministry magazine.  She wrote that a person shared with her the thought that Easter is supposed to help us not be afraid of death.  Someone responded that “I’m not afraid of death.  It’s the dying part that I don’t like.”[2]

 Julia goes on to say, “Holy Week has a lot of dying.  Remembering the betrayal, the false accusations and the crucifixion causes us to tremble.  But the dying actually begins, as we enter the week with shouts of Hosanna and palm branches in our hands.”[3]

Dying well takes total honesty.  How honest are we prepared to be?  Are we prepared to be honest with the emotions we feel this week?  The discomfort and uncertainty we feel with the story of the crucifixion?  The fact that Jesus is not the king we are expecting?

This year during Holy Week, are we ready to let die any notion that our goodness, our right behavior, can save us or make us right with God? Are we prepared to honestly admit that we don’t always look for Jesus in other people, and we don’t always let people see Jesus in us?  Are we ready to die within ourselves and our actions, die to our prejudices, blind spots, fears and insecurities?  Are we prepared to crucify injustice, anger, judgment, and mistrust?  Will we cry out, “Hosanna! and mean “Save us from ourselves, our possessions, and our efforts to control?”[4]

If we want rebirth, something must die.  And the dying is scary.  But Holy Week really is all about dying …. in particular, dying so that we might live.  And who can help us with that?  Whom can we cry, “Hosanna!  Save us!”?

Well, to Jesus of course.  Jesus, who comes to us at the table.  Jesus, whose death brings the possibility of resurrection.  Jesus, whose resurrection brings the promise of new life.

Welcome to Holy Week.  Here we are, and here is our God.  Riding a young colt. Here are our hosannas, broken and earnest, hopeful and hungry.  Here is all that is unbearable, and all that promises to end in light brighter than we can imagine.  Blessed is the One who comes to die so that we will live.[5]  

 I want to end with a poem that was written by Rev. Sarah Speed for Sanctified Art.  During Lent I’ve been using the liturgy and art work written and developed by Sanctified Art and various clergy associated with them.  I hope it has enriched your worship experience.  This is a poem written for Palm Sunday called Even the Stones Will Cry Out, by Rev. Sarah Speed.

Even the Stones Will Cry Out

 

The Pharisees found Jesus;

 they said, “Order your disciples to stop.”

 

It’s not the first time

 justice was almost silenced.

People stood on the sidelines shouting hosanna

which means, “Save us,” “Save me.”

It’s not the first time we’ve heard that cry from the street.

The Pharisees said stop. They wanted the people quiet,

but some things can’t be silenced.

 

Justice will bubble up,

hope will raise its head,

love will rise to the surface.

Hate and fear will try to drown them out,

but you cannot silence what was here first,

which was love, and it was good. It was so good.

So even the stones will cry out.

 

Remember that at your parade. Justice will bubble up,

hope will raise its head, love will rise to the surface.

Amen.                          

 Written by: rev. sarah speed | sanctifiedart.org

 Let us pray:  Loving God,  This is no ordinary week ahead of us.  Help us to walk the journey we are called to walk this week.  Give us the courage to feel all the feelings we need to feel and process all the thoughts we need to process. Help us to somehow begin to understand all that this week means, all that Jesus truly did for us, and help it to change us and grow us so that on Easter morning our faith will be brighter and greater than ever before.  In your Son’s precious name.  Amen.

---

[1] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2958-save-us-we-pray.  Debi Thomas.  March 21, 2021.  Save Us, We Pray.
[2] Gather Magazine.  March/April 2022.  “The Meaning of Hosanna”  By Julia Seymour.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Gather Magazine.  March/April 2022.  “The Meaning of Hosanna”  By Julia Seymour.
[5] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2958-save-us-we-pray.  Debi Thomas.  March 21, 2021.  Save Us, We Pray.