April 9, 2006

“Hosanna!”

Mark 11:1-11

Rev. Melissa D. Ramos

As human beings we are hard-wired to think ahead, to plan and to be ready for whatever is coming next. Most of the time this is useful and good. Most of the time being ready for what is ahead serves us well. But sometimes our planning and thinking in advance keeps us from entering into the joy of the moment.

Like when your birthday happens to fall on the day before you take the ACT or the SAT. You’re with your friends, your family, you maybe have some cake, go out to dinner, maybe you open some presents. But all the while you’re thinking about having to take that test the next day. And what if you don’t do well? What if your poor performance mars your chances for a happy future and the rest of your life is hinging on the balance? You can try to really enter into the fun of having a birthday, but it’s hard because you have this test hanging over your head?

Or maybe when you’re going on vacation, a trip you’ve been planning for a long time. And just before you leave you find out that your company is planning a reduction in the work force, and notification of layoffs will be handed out the Monday you go back to work. So the whole time you’re on vacation, in the back of your mind, you’re wondering whether you’ll go home to a job, or not, and if any of your friends will lose their jobs. It would be hard to be fully relaxed on that kind of a vacation. It would be hard to fully enter into the celebration of time away.

Or maybe when you’re going out to the movies on April 13^th, and you haven’t done your taxes yet. And maybe the reason you haven’t done your taxes yet is because you’re pretty sure you’re going to owe money this year, and you don’t even want to know how bad it’s going to be. So, you’ve been putting it off. And so you go out to the movies, but in the back of your mind is this anxiety about getting your taxes done and worrying about how much you owe the IRS this year.

I confess that sometimes I have the same feeling on Palm Sunday. I love the waving of the palms, the special music, the festive spirit of Palm Sunday worship – but in the back of my mind is the week to come, where Jesus is confronted by the Jewish officials, arrested by the Roman government, and is crucified.

As Jesus approaches the city of Jerusalem, this wonderful celebration occurs, as Jesus is finally welcomed as the king he is. A sense of excitement breaks out amongst the crowd that has been following Jesus since Jericho; there is a sense of excitement for the reader of the Gospel of Mark, for this crowd of followers are finally beginning to understand who Jesus really is.

The crowds and the disciples are finally beginning to grasp that this man who gives astonishing teachings, who heals the sick, the blind, the paralyzed, who calms a raging storm with a few words – the crowd finally understands that this is the man who is heir to the throne of David, the rightful King of Jerusalem, the Messiah of God. There is an excitement that maybe now the people really believe.

And yet as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, he knows, and the disciples know, that he approaches a final confrontation with the religious and political authorities in the city. Jesus knows that this calling is not to triumph by a military victory or physical strength, or politics, but by sacrifice.

You know, this past week I spent some time working on the worship service for Good Friday. And I had a really hard time immersing myself in the Scriptures where Jesus is betrayed, flogged, spit on, and made fun of, deserted by all the disciples, and he is crucified. I had a hard time preparing that worship service because it’s all so horrible. I have a hard time spending time in the Good Friday Scriptures because I have to imagine what it would have been like to witness these events, to be there, and it’s painful even to imagine. But Jesus’ death is also part of our faith, God’s redemption of our violent and sinful world.

And so Palm Sunday can’t for me be a day when we gloss over what is about to come on Good Friday. It’s not a day when we ignore the suffering in our world or Jesus taking on all of the pain and suffering of our world as he is nailed to the cross. And I don’t think that the crowd, the disciples, or Jesus were glossing over the struggle to come as the palm branches were cut and cloaks laid before Jesus.

Palm Sunday was, and it is, a day of celebration – a day of claiming Jesus as the rightful king of Israel, a day of joy, of triumph that acknowledges the struggle and pain to come. And it is a day to celebrate the power of God to overcome even the death of the Messiah, the power of God to overcome the deepest and darkest of sufferings.

To better understand the frame of mind and the actions of the crowd, we need to know some of the Old Testament symbols and references. The events of Palm Sunday can seem strange and foreign if they aren’t connected to Old Testament practices and Scriptures. Otherwise it can be like watching a game of cricket or rugby when you don’t know the rules. Well, rugby doesn’t really have any rules. But when I lived in England, there were a lot of cricket games on tv. And occasionally, I got desperate enough to watch them when I was avoiding working on my dissertation.

So I tried watching cricket, but I didn’t know the rules; I didn’t know how the game was played. So I couldn’t really enter into the fun of the game. I couldn’t cheer or boo because I had no idea what was happening. It’s the same for us with Palm Sunday if we don’t know the symbols. We might wonder “Why did Jesus ride a donkey? Why not something more elegant like a horse or an elephant? Why were people waving palm branches instead of ferns or flowers like people did for Princess Diana? Why was this whole crowd of people going to Jerusalem with Jesus? Didn’t they have jobs they needed to show up to?” So let’s address these questions and discover the meaning of the symbols.

First of all, let’s ask why this large crowd of Galileans is following Jesus to Jerusalem. In the previous chapter of Mark, chapter 10, Jesus and his disciples are in the city of Jericho. The Scriptures say that “Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho,” and a blind beggar named Bartimaeus called out to Jesus. Bartimaeus used the title “Son of David” for Jesus, and Jesus heals him and Bartimaeus regains his sight. Then the Scriptures say of Bartimaeus “Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on the say.” This phrase “on the way” implies that Jesus and the crowd were already on their way to Jerusalem.

The reason they were “on the way” was not only to follow Jesus, but to make a customary pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover to be celebrated at the temple in Jerusalem. It was Jewish custom for those living outside the city of Jerusalem in smaller cities and the countryside to travel to the Holy City for various religious observances and festivals. So this crowd of Galileans are doing what they would customarily do, travel to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. That’s also what Jesus and his disciples were doing. In the church we also remember that Passover Supper Jesus celebrated with the disciples during Holy Week, as we celebrate Maundy Thursday with a service of worship.

So now we understand that the crowd surrounding Jesus on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but what about the palm branches? Palm branches were also a part of the festival of Passover for Jews. In the same way we decorate with poinsettias for Christmas or lilies for Easter, palm branches were celebratory decorations used at different Jewish festivals, including Passover.

If we remember the first Passover celebrated by Jews in Egypt, God commanded the people to put the blood of a lamb on their door lintels as a mark of their belonging to the people of God. When the plague against the firstborn children came and took many Egyptian children, the Israelite firstborn children were spared because the mark of blood caused the plague to pass them over. Shortly after this plague against the firstborn children took place, Pharaoh in Egypt was finally convinced to let the Israelites go from their bondage in slavery.

And so, in celebrating the Passover each year, the Jews remember how God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and brought them to the promised land. Each year at Passover, Israel remembers their redemption by God, and looks forward to the coming of the Messiah, the heir to the throne of David. So when the crowd lays their palm branches before Jesus as he rides up toward the Holy City, the crowd is again celebrating God as Redeemer, God who has come to them in the person of Jesus.

The people believe that Jesus is bringing God’s salvation to them in the same way God saved them from Pharaoh in Egypt. And so they lay their palm branches before him, as a way of proclaiming their faith that in Jesus God has finally come to save them. And as we wave our palm branches, we are asking God to save us, too.

The donkey that Jesus rides also carries a weight of significance because it is a reference to an Old Testament prophecy in the book of Zechariah. In this passage Zechariah the prophet addresses Israel in a time when the people have just returned to Jerusalem from their exile in different countries, mostly from Babylon. The people have rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, rebuilt the temple. But Israel is still an occupied territory, and the people have no king, no sovereign rule of their own. The people mourn and long for the days when David was king in the land, when the people were united, and the borders were kept safe from enemies.

And in this time God speaks to the people of Israel through Zechariah and says that a day is coming when people from many nations will come to the city of Jerusalem to seek God. And God will give to Israel a king. Zechariah gives an oracle to Israel as a sign of this coming day with these words: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

And so as Jesus approaches Jerusalem with a crowd of people making pilgrimage for the Passover, Jesus acts out this very prophecy, a living drama of Zechariah’s oracle of Israel’s king returning to the land. The people see and rejoice that Jesus is bringing the Kingdom of God to Jerusalem, and the people shout praises to God and a quotation from Psalm 118, a psalm of David, as they say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

There is an outburst of celebration as Jesus is recognized as Israel’s prophesied king, the heir of David to the throne of Israel. Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies, he is the Messiah, and this crowd knows it.

Sometimes we hear in sermons that although this crowd is shouting “Hosanna” and “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” it’s the same crowd who later shouts “crucify him!” when Pilate presents Jesus after his arrest. But it seems to me, and to recent New Testament scholarship that this isn’t exactly true. This crowd following Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem is not the same crowd that shouts “crucify him!”. They are two distinct crowds of people.

Here Jesus is surrounded by supporters who have been following him since Jericho. They are fellow Galileans making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And you might notice that Jesus never actually enters Jerusalem until after the palm branches are laid, and the cloaks are set before him. We usually call this event “The Triumphal Entry,” but in fact, it probably should be called “The Triumphal Approach” because all the celebrating and the fanfare happen before Jesus enters the Holy City, not after.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jerusalem is portrayed as a hostile, scary place, even while it is revered as the city of David, and the sacred site of the temple. Once Jesus enters Jerusalem, the welcome is over. The conflict begins with the religious authorities the very next day when Jesus enters the temple and turns over the tables of the moneychangers. On that day a plot is hatched to kill Jesus, and one of his disciples conspires with the plot as the betrayer of Jesus into the hands of the temple authorities.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus warns the disciples, those with him on the road to Jerusalem of the conflict to come. In chapter 10, before the palm banches and cloaks are laid before him, before the Hosannas! Jesus speaks these words to the disciples:

“See we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit on him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

So the disciples and Jesus may have had a sense of foreboding, having been warned that hard days would be ahead. But they had been following Jesus, witnessing the miracles, and the hope Jesus brought to every city and village. They heard the preaching about a new kingdom, the kingdom of God breaking into the world. Not only the disciples, but all of Israel was longing for this kingdom of God, in the same way that we are.

We are tired of hearing about bombs exploding in mosques; we are tired of hearing the death toll every day in Iraq; we are tired of hearing the names Katrina and Rita and the stories of lives upheaved; we are weary of hearing about AIDS in Africa and famine in Kenya and genocide in Darfur; we are tired of hearing about empty cupboards at the Food Bank.

We’re weary, not because we don’t care, but because we do care. We’re not weary because we think it’s hopeless -- we are actively collecting food during Lent to fill empty pantries, we are sending work teams and care kits to the Gulf Coast, we are sending donations to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and we are sponsoring poor children in China. But we, too, are longing for a new kingdom to come. We, too, are looking for a king who can bring, not only peace to the nations, but a new heaven and a new earth.

We are looking for a kingdom where no evil and no suffering can stand in the face of the glory of God, a new kingdom where no one is hungry, no one is lonely, and where there are no tears or death or pain.

As Jesus rode up the hill toward Jerusalem, the crowd laid palm branches before him, and spread their cloaks on the ground. They cheered as they saw their king bringing a new hope, a new covenant, a new faith, the promise of a new kingdom, God’s kingdom. And the crowd shouted “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The word “Hosanna” is a shout of praise, like Hallelujah. But Hosanna is more than a praise, it is also a prayer. “Hosanna” means “Lord save us.” The crowd shouts “Hosanna!” in anticipation of being saved. The crowd knows, they have been warned that hard days are ahead. And yet they believe that Jesus is ushering in the kingdom of God which we all long for.

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, we shout Hosanna, along with the crowd. And these are not just words of celebration. Hosanna is not a word that masks over the struggle of life in a world of violence and hunger, but Hosanna is also a prayer for Jesus the Christ to save us. It’s a celebration of our faith that God will save us – save us from our challenges and struggles, from ourselves and our own guilt and sin, from this decaying world into a new heaven and earth promised by God at the return of Jesus in all his glory.

Let us stand and affirm our faith together using the prophecy of Zechariah about the return of God’s King.