HOSANNA, SAVE US FROM WHAT? By Rev Victor Kim John 12:12-19 (03-20-16) Palm Sunday Palm Sunday. Parade Sunday. It s the last hurrah before the events of Holy Week. Children processing with palm branches singing hosannas. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest heaven. Everyone loves a parade, except it seems the Vancouver Canucks. Jesus, as he neared Jerusalem with his disciples, found a donkey and sat on it as he entered the city and the people of the city went out to meet him, taking branches of palm trees and shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel! That s an interesting word, hosanna. Do you know what it means? The phrase from John s gospel originally comes from Psalm 118 and was part of what the pilgrims would sing as they approached the temple in Jerusalem. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. It became known as a shout of praise and that is certainly how it was used as Jesus entered Jerusalem. The crowds gathered there believed that Jesus was someone very special, some even entertained the wild hope that he might be the Messiah, the one who would deliver the people of Israel from their enemies, the one who would restore the kingdom of Israel, they even called him the King of Israel. So blessed indeed would have been the one whom the people believed came in the name of the Lord, and blessed would be the coming kingdom of their ancestor David. If Jesus were to be the one to restore that kingdom, he would have been more than deserving of their praise. Originally however, hosanna was not an utterance of praise, but of prayer. Hosanna means to save, save now or save, I pray. So if we understand John s use of the Psalm in his gospel,
2 we have Jesus entering Jerusalem and the crowds shouting, Save us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna, save us, the King of Israel! Its not just praise, its not just shouts of admiration, there is a definite hope, anticipation, expectation that Jesus will save them. Save them from what? Hosanna. We will say and sing hosanna more this morning than we will the rest of the year combined. In hymns, solos, scriptures, prayers and preaching, hosannas will fill this day. But it s a word that rarely gets spoken outside of Palm Sunday, isn't it? And as we gather here for worship this morning, as we sing our hosannas, do we ever think about the fact that it is a prayer? Do we realize that every time we say hosanna, we are asking God to save us? Hosanna, save us. Save us from what? A Presbyterian minister once sat down with a group of children in seventh grade to speak about salvation. He asked them, Since salvation implies that you are being saved from something, what do you think Jesus is saving you from? The first answer that came back was hell. Jesus saves people from hell. Although he didn t think it was necessarily a bad answer, the minister also got the sense that it was a practiced answer, the answer that the kids would have thought that their minister would have wanted to hear in response to such a question. So he phrased the question in a different way. If God was on the ball, what would God save you from? Well, the conversation got very interesting from that point on. One of the young people raised her hand and said, death. Another said that God could really help him out by saving him from an upcoming math test. Another seventh grader said, pressure, then another, from my parents expectations. Still another whispered, save me from fear, I want God to save me from my fears. Said the preacher, all those answers struck him as far more sincere than hell, although if you think about it,
3 their comments gave a pretty clear picture of what hell might look like to a 7 th grader. (Illustration from Scott Black Johnston, Save Us. Day 1, 2009) So what about us? If we dare to have the same hope as the people of Jerusalem did those many years ago and believe that God in Jesus Christ could save us, where would we direct our hosannas? I can hardly imagine that when the people lining the roads shouted their hosannas, that they were hoping that Jesus would save them from hell. But I can easily imagine that they were hoping that Jesus would save them from the Roman occupiers, from the oppression and abuse they had long suffered. What oppression, what enemy do you want to be saved from? Is it sickness, is it loneliness, is it depression, is it fear, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the future, fear of death? And just how does Jesus go about saving us from these things? This is where it gets somewhat tricky. The people of Jerusalem were frenzied with anticipation. Here comes Jesus, riding on a colt, seemingly fulfilling the prophecy of the prophet Zechariah who wrote, Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. And not only does he seem to meet the conditions set out by the prophecy, news about Jesus preceded him. The crowds knew of his miracles, his wondrous teachings. They had seen him take on the religious authorities, the Pharisees, priests and the scribes. Jesus had defied them, he had stood up to them, called them hypocrites, condemned their self-righteousness and exposed them for what they were. If anyone was going to be king, surely it was Jesus. And yet, after all the hosannas, after all the hoopla and hype, John records that Jesus spoke about his death, about how unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus talks about how those who love their life will lose it,
4 and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. That s it? Save us, save, we pray, they shouted. And Jesus in response to all their hopes, talks about dying, about hating life, losing life? What kind of messiah is that? How is Jesus going to save his people by talking about his death? What kind of plan is that? As the week unfolds, the people will grow in their disappointment and disillusionment with Jesus. If he is really their king, there seems to be nothing triumphant or victorious about him. He has no army, he has no plan to overthrow the Romans, in fact he spends most of his time arguing with the religious leaders and ultimately loses that battle as well. So, as tragic as it is, it makes sense that the same people who cried, hosanna, would later in the week also shout out, crucify, crucify. Don t we sometimes feel the same way? Don t we sometimes think to ourselves, if this is God s way of saving, then I must be missing something! We pray to be saved from lots of things, but if we re honest about it, more often than not, not a whole lot seems to change. People still get sick and die. People still have to deal with their depression and loneliness. The bills still have to be paid and someone else always wins the lottery. We fail, we get rejected, we have no idea what the future holds and how we re going to manage. Our fears still haunt us and death still scares us. So what s the point of our hosannas, how exactly does Jesus save? Our assumptions about how we expect God to save say a lot more about us than about God. We tend to have a definite preference about what we d like to see as God s plan of salvation for us. Most of the time that plan would include exemption from pain, from hurt, from unnecessary hardship and unpleasant people. The problem with Jesus is that he doesn t seem to get it.
5 He also could have avoided all that unpleasantness, all that unnecessary pain and anguish, the betrayal, the humiliation, the rejection, the condemnation and ultimately the crucifixion. He could have called down an army of angels, heck, if he had chosen to do so, he could have mobilized the vast majority of the population of the city to follow him, especially if he threw in a miracle or two on the front end. When you are the messiah, when you are the Son of God, things could be so easy. But Jesus won t avoid the darkest parts of life, he won t choose only the easy way, the pleasant path, he also accepts the difficult choices, the ugly decisions and their consequences, because those are also part of our reality and if Jesus avoids them, if Jesus won t face that part of our reality, then we will never know what it is to be saved in the hardest parts of our human existence. Jesus accepts what we would never accept, so that even those ugliest, more horrible parts of our existence can be redeemed by his perfect love. We aren t saved from having to face the hardships of life, but we are given the greatest gift, the most necessary resource to deal with those hard realities, the gift of love, unconditional, unwavering, death conquering, life affirming, love, perfect love that casts out all our fears. This upcoming week, this Holy Week, is the answer of God in Jesus Christ to all our hosannas, to all our prayers for salvation. In choosing peace over war, compassion over entitlement, mercy over merit, grace over privilege, humility over pride, love over hate, by riding into the city on a donkey of peace rather than the horse of war, in giving up his life so that all would have true life instead of keeping it for himself alone, Jesus may have disappointed the crowds, he may disappoint some of us, but it is his way, it is God s way. Love, sacrificial, unconditional, love is God s answer to our prayers for salvation. To all the hosannas from every corner from every people, to all the pleas for salvation, varied as they are, varied as we are,
6 God s one answer is love. God s consistent answer is the love shown in Jesus Christ, God s only Son, our Lord, our Saviour. What do you want to be saved from? Maybe that s not the right question. Maybe the point isn't to be saved from the hard places and realities of life, but to know that when we have to face them, we do so with the love of our Savior, a love borne out of sacrifice, a love forged in the crucible of crucifixion, a love that the tomb could not contain, that the authorities could not deny, that the occupying forces could not subdue, that the darkness could not overcome, that death itself could not hold, a love that gives life, true life, eternal life, a love that fills us with courage, compassion, gratitude, joy and peace, in the face of whatever life can throw at us. When we sing our hosannas today, and every day we call out our hosannas, when we ask God to save us, as seventh graders or as seventy year olds, may we do so with the grateful knowledge that God does save, God has saved, God will save again, not by shielding us, but by providing for us what we need, by providing for us who we need, Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, who is our salvation. Thanks be to God, Amen. By Rev. Victor Kim Preached at Richmond Presbyterian Church on March 20, 2016 (Palm Sunday)