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Hosanna
- Apr 5, 2009 | Dr. Teri Thomas
- Passage: Mark 11:1-11
"Hosanna." It is not a word we use everyday. In fact, most of us probably have not said it since last Palm Sunday when we waved the branches and shouted in church. Hosanna. It isn't even a common word in scripture, other than in the Gospel accounts of Jesus entering Jerusalem. So what does it mean anyway?
Hosanna actually comes from two Hebrew words- yasha meaning to save, rescue, help or preserve and Na meaning beseech or pray. So you might translate the shouts of the crowd as: "We beseech you to deliver us." Or more simply- Save us.
So you are up in the tree waving your palm and shouting, "Save us Jesus, save us!"
And what is it, exactly, that we want Jesus to save us from?
Last week I sent out an e-mail to about 50 people and asked that question. When we say- "Save me Jesus" what are we asking Jesus to save us from?
I expected most people to say hell, or sin. And some of you did. But more than 80% of those who responded to my question said, "We are asking Jesus to save us from ourselves."
I don't believe that the people lining the streets of Jerusalem were primarily concerned with hell, or sin, or their own shortcomings when they were shouting out to Jesus. They are in Jerusalem for the Passover, a celebration of liberation. Passover is the acknowledgement of God's power to conjure freedom in the midst of the darkest enslavement and oppression. God saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. That is why they are in Jerusalem. And now they want deliverance from the Romans.
But we aren't worried about the Romans. If we are really honest with ourselves I doubt we worry about hell too much either. Most days we are more concerned with living than with dying.
So on a day like today, when we wave our palms and boldly cry out, "Hosanna," our shouts rise up from the most vulnerable places inside us.
Save me from anger. Save me from cancer. Save me from depression. Save me from debt. Save me from the strife in my family. Save me from boredom. Save me from staring at the ceiling at three a.m. wondering why I exist. Save me from bitterness. Save me from arrogance. Save me from loneliness. Save me from my fears.
Take the broken places in me and make them whole.
Find the emptiness deep within and fill it to overflowing.
Catch me when I stumble and hold me when I fall.
Tear down the walls that separate me from those I want to love.
Save me, God, save me from myself.
This week is our reminder that God has heard our prayers and answered. Jesus saves us by coming into all the realities of our lives. This week he comes to the place we worship, he eats in our homes, he suffers at the hands of our justice system and our rulers, he prays with friends, and dies with strangers. He will suffer. He will feel pain. He will be betrayed and abandoned and forsaken. In Jesus, God will step into the nastiest, messiest, most painful parts of our lives.
God doesn't sit on a gold throne behind some pearly gates and send us a text or a tweat. God comes. In living, breathing, dying, flesh and blood God comes into our lives. God leaves the heavenly throne, perfection and peace to come into awful times and places in our miserable lives.
I wonder... Is there any better way to commence Holy Week than with palms in our hands and "Hosannas" on our lips? Is there any more faithful way to embark on this sacred journey than to ask God, out of the deep, honest places inside of us, to "Save us... please, save us"?(Scott Black Johnson, Save Us)
Amen.
