#Hosanna
Palm Sunday – Matthew 21:1-11, Philippians 2:6-11
As I prepared for this sermon, I realized that I’ve preached on Palm Sunday at TUMC before. I thought it was “just the other day” but when I looked it up it turns out it was in 1997! Anyway, I was tempted to just repeat what I said, but I’m sure many of you still remember that sermon, so I couldn’t do that! 🙂
[Oh, just a minute, I have something coming in on Twitter (checking device).
@simonpeter Meet @ Eastern gate Jesus of Naz riding into Jerusalem #hosanna
@lazarusrisen RT Meet @ Eastern gate Jesus of Naz riding into Jer #hosanna
@johannatalent carry palm branches to ID others #hosanna
Sorry, I don’t know Twitter very well yet (my son Lucas is teaching me), it’s just something I’m following this morning under hashtag Hosanna, and it seems important]
Anyway, as I was saying… My sermon in 1997 did set out a couple of assumptions that I bring to my reading of this gospel event. The main one being that I have a phobia of crowds and a subsequent dislike of parades and large gatherings of people that are going to be moving around. It has to do with a childhood experience of being separated from my parents in a crowd and a deep fear of mob mentality in situations where, for instance, soccer fans can trample each other to death, or do things like looting and lynching or demanding crucifixions. Of course, those eventualities aren’t the whole event, they’re just what makes it to the news but feeds my fear of large crowds.
So, you see, before I get into this story I felt I needed to let you know that I regard crowds with a certain amount of suspicion. Which means that I work hard to get my head around the significance of this event in our scripture passage today, it doesn’t automatically draw me in.
[Ooh, another tweet, hold on …
@simonpeter BTW It’s not a horse, look for a donkey and a colt #hosanna
@simonpeter I think this is it! We’re heading to the temple. Blessed be son of David ! #hosanna
@benadam carry palm branches. RT We’re heading to the temple #hosanna
@johannatalent RT (oh, that’s retweet) Blessed be the son of David! #hosanna
Hum…]
What about you? As that crowd was gathering around Jesus, would you have joined? Would you have checked it out? Would you have avoided it? Would you have spread the word and called others?
Someone has reflected on the fact that this movement of Jesus and his followers into Jerusalem – often referred to as Jesus’ Triumphal Entry – is part parade, part protest march and part funeral procession. He reminds us that with this story we “get celebration and joy, a social conscience and a heavy heart. If we are going to be the presence of Christ in a broken world, we must embrace all three.” (Actually that someone is Dr. Robert F Browning, from Smoke Rises Baptist Church, in Georgia – Isn’t that a great name for a church?1)
Given what is about to happen to Jesus in the story – his capture, trial, torture and execution on a cross – we can, from our vantage point, indeed read this story as a funeral procession. We know what is going to happen next, and after that, and for the next 2000 years. We can’t help but read it with this story with the undercurrent of what happens next.
Liturgically, we are entering Passion Week, where we relive Jesus’ trajectory leading up to these culminating events of our religion. In fact, the writer of Matthew’s gospel also knew what would happen. It is even possible that this gospel of Matthew was written with the benefit of hindsight, after the First Jewish Revolt that ended in the invasion of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. That gives significance even to the narrative as we have it here. Funeral procession is a deeper and valid reading of this text in context.
But at face value this entrance into Jerusalem also clearly has a tone of celebration and parade.
[Ah, one more.
@stevenbenjobs Free upgrade to iAbacus 1000, made in China. #hosanna
Sheesh. Maybe I should turn this thing off.]
Where was I? Celebration. Palm branches waving, acclamation, lots of people in a Passover festival mood, children running around.
We miss a few references when we hear this story, but the writer of Matthew is very deliberate about how things are being told. In fact, there are many references to the Old Testament in this narrative.
There’s the literal quotation of Zechariah 9:9, which is actually a mash up with Isaiah 62:11: “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Matt 21:5)
(Incidentally, you would not believe how much theological real estate is devoted to figuring out why Matthew mentions that Jesus is riding both a donkey and a colt.) I’m OK with: he rode in on some sort of animal that was not a horse. He didn’t usually do that, he usually walked, so there might be some significance to his choice of transportation. We’ll come back to this later. 2, 3
So there’s a parade aspect, people are shouting: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lo
rd, Save us, we beseech you, Lord” – it’s straight out of Psalm 118. Jesus is being greeted as a king, that’s what “Son of David” means, it’s not a comment on Jesus’ genealogy, it’s an acclamation sort of like “long live the king!” The gospel’s description of cloaks being strewn before Jesus is another literary allusion to another impromptu king, King Jehu, back in 2 Kings 9. Jehu was unexpectedly anointed king and people didn’t know what to do so they took off their cloaks and spread them out in front of him.
The writer of Matthew has been setting things up all the way through this gospel, showing how prophecy is being fulfilled in Jesus, how he is the expected Messiah, the king that would free the Jewish people. It is clear that this is an event with socio-political dimensions.4
[Well, I guess I forgot to turn it off, last one.
@simonpeter We’re on our way. Our oppression is ending. Son of David, save us! Hosanna. #hosanna
@zealotvoice Remain at temple.#hosanna
@benadam Hosanna, hosanna! #hosanna
@johannatalent RT Hosanna, hosanna! Save us. #hosanna
@lazarusrisen RT Hosanna, hosanna! Save us. #hosanna
Off (turning it off)]
I guess it’s time to tell you what’s behind this Twitter5 thing I’ve got going this morning.
As I read the passage for today, in the context of the last several months – the G8 and G20, the protests and political turmoil in Iran, Bahrain, Egypt, Lybia, Cote d’Ivoire, China, Haiti, etc – the election in Canada – I kept on hearing the Matthew passage mostly as political protest. From that to Twitter it was an easy step. If this were happening in our day, it would be on these social networks.5
How did the word spread back then in the cramped alleyways of Jerusalem? I imagine the excitement of the disciples commandeering an animal, just like for a real king? “The Lord wants it.” Was Jesus finally going to show his true colours as a political leader? They even started arguing about who was going to be at his right hand and at his left hand. They were sure this was going to be big. I imagine the crowds who were already in Jerusalem getting ready for the festival, going back and forth making their preparations and their sacrifices in the temple and the buzz in the air as this wonky procession, led by a donkey, came closer to the city gates.
What’s going on?
What’s with those palms waving over there and all that yelling?
Who is it?
It’s that prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galillee.
What’s he doing on a donkey?
The story says that “the whole city was in a turmoil asking, who is this?” (One might say correctly that they were atwitter. :)) The other time the gospel writer uses that way of saying things is at Jesus’ birth when the Magi come asking Herod about a new king that was born and the whole city is shaken up.
There are a couple more things from the story’s immediate biblical context that also help us read this event as political protest. What comes immediately before and what comes after.
Before they climbed the hills towards Jerusalem, Jesus and the disciples already had a crowd following them. At Jericho they had met up with a couple of loud and insistent blind guys, the first protesters, the way I’m imagining it. These guys had placed themselves strategically beside the road and were yelling: “Lord have mercy on us, Son of David!” Folks were telling them to quiet down. Shush!
“Lord have mercy on us, Son of David!” They weren’t holding up a plaque – no paper, no markers, remember? – but they were sure making their point. Maybe they were waving palm branches. “Lord have mercy on us, Son of David!” And Jesus, moved by compassion at this two-man sit-in protest, stopped and asked them what they wanted. “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” And they were—immediately. I’m thinking, these newly seeing guys led the way over the hills to Jerusalem with their cries of “Son of David, save us! Save us!” They were the rally organizers.
The other reason I’m reading this as a protest is that the very next thing Jesus does after entering Jerusalem on a donkey (in this gospel account) is go to the Temple and flip out at the establishment. He speaks the truth to power. It’s the so-called Cleansing of the Temple. Jesus claims jurisdiction, chases away moneychangers, street vendors and hawkers. He’s on a roll, he’s got the crowd backing him, he’s stirring things up, he is being provocative and defiant.
The religious leaders weren’t expecting this. This could be trouble. He even lets the blind and the lame come up to him in the Temple, of all places, and he cures them right there. Matthew tells us they saw amazing things.
Meanwhile, the children have picked up on the chant and they’re running around chanting, “Hosanna to the Son of David.” Matthew has Jesus quote Psalm 8:2: “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself.”
They don’t know what they were saying, but the religious leaders do and they are mad! Time to get the authorities involved. Let’s call in reinforcements. If we explain to the Romans that he’s posing as a king, well, they’ll take notice then. The powers are threatened. The people in black and hiding behind ski masks are infiltrated to whisper – crucify! And things unravel from there.
What was Jesus up to? He knew that he was headed for martyrdom; in fact he had predicted it many times, yet he kept on going. He was acting out a living parable – like many other prophets before him – and he was coming to Jerusalem as a prophet. Jerusalem a city that notoriously kills her prophets (Matthew 23:37). As one author puts it: “Jesus appears as a ‘dead man walking,’ not because God wanted him to be killed ‘for us,’ but because his ‘triumphal entry’ into Jerusalem was a parody of the Romans’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was an anti-war demonstration, a challenge to imperial injustice, a proclamation of God’s justice ‘on earth as in heaven’!”
This same author, with reference to our second scripture reading this morning, notes:
“Paul’s hymn praising Jesus’ faithfulness has been perverted by those who think they have found in it God’s will and desire that Jesus die. But what would Jesus’ dying prove or accomplish unless it showed his faithfulness to serving God’s solidarity with the l
east, who also suffer?”6
By riding in on a humble donkey, still able to look people at eye level, Jesus was acting out a meek power, a servant approach. The underestimated (the least) are the ones who really know what is going on in God’s world. He himself had said that it is the meek who would inherit the earth (Matt 5:5). But it’s even more complicated than that, this submission that Jesus is showing sets the Romans up to temporarily miss what’s really going on. It’s kinda subversive, kinda tricky. Those acclaiming Jesus were living under very real political oppression. There was no freedom of expression back then. They were being kinda sneaky too. With this entrance, “Jesus stirs up hopes that lived deep in the Jewish people.”7
What intrigued me most this time is what the crowd was chanting. Hosanna. It is a shout of royal acclamation and worship, yes. But it also means save us! Save us!
I guess my own reaction to the recent protests in the media, with the attempts at repression, the violence – even in downtown Toronto – (plus my suspicion of crowds) made me realize how quickly things can go wrong. And I too have often prayed when I see these reports: Save us, save them.
Years ago I remember meeting a Coptic Egyptian woman at the New Life Centre. She told me she had been part of a peaceful protest in Cairo, where the Christians were marching and chanting Kyrie Eleison. I was so moved that such a profound protest would chant, Lord have mercy, the Jesus Prayer. Wow.
But it turns out she didn’t know what it meant, she just knew that it was part of her liturgy and that it was what folks were chanting, so she chanted too. I’ve since read an article about a different violent clash between Coptic Christians and Muslims where they were each respectively chanting Kyrie Eleison and Allah Akbar (Lord have mercy, God is the greatest) while attacking each other.
God is great and Lord have mercy, indeed! Clearly, saying the right words is not enough.
Hosanna (Hoshiana) that folks were chanting in the Matthew passage is a Hebrew word that comes out of a liturgical context as well. Did the people around Jesus know all the layers of what they were saying? Maybe it was a code word in hebrew, so that the Romans wouldn’t catch on. Maybe it’s just what everyone was saying. Maybe it was a genuine cry from the heart, save us, save us. An expression of deep, deep longing. Save us, get us out of this mess, Hosanna. In today’s political climate this longing and this hope still find resonance.
As you make ready for what lies ahead this passion week, parades, protests or funerals, the question I leave you with is: How do the hosannas and kyries speak to your deep longings today? What do you, what do we, cry to our God? What do we long to be saved from?
Let us pray.
Hosanna, hosanna.
Save us from apathy
Save us from despair
Save us from thinking we never have enough
Save us from ourselves
Save us from greed, from selfishness, from violence
Save us from thinking we have it all figured out.
Hosanna, hosanna. Save us.
Amen.
1 You can find his sermon at http://www.smokerisemedia.org/Sermons/Sermon20080316.pdf
2 Was it a circus trick and he rode both? Did Matthew misunderstand Zechariah’s poetry? Did the colt need to ride along with its mother? Was the colt under the donkey so that Jesus rode both? The most amusingly titled is the article “The Two Asses Of Zechariah 9:9 In Matthew 21” by David Instone-Brewer Tyndale Bulletin 54.1, 2003).
3 Just for the fun of it here’s something I came across in my research: Another Sufi tale. Nasrudin had a neighbor like many of us who borrowed but somehow never seemed to remember to bring back that which had been borrowed. One Saturday morning this neighbor shows up at the door wanting to borrow his donkey. Nasrudin exclaimed, “If only you had asked yesterday I lent my donkey out this morning.” At that moment the donkey brays from the back yard. “What is that?” the neighbor exclaims! Nasrudin replies, “Who are you going to believe, me or a donkey?” (http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Discipleship/Stewardship/Stewardship-Now/Sermon-Starters.aspx#1
4 John Howard Yoder says that if we did seek to reach behind the canonical gospels to “the real historical Jesus, such an effort would surely increase rather than decrease the socio-political dimensions of our picture of his work.” (The Politics of Jesus).
5 They are supposedly “ideal for a mass protest movement, very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control,” much like gossip, really. “So what exactly makes Twitter the medium of the moment? It’s free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It’s also built to spread, and fast. Twitterers like to append notes called hashtags — #theylooklikethis — to their tweets, so that they can be grouped and searched for by topic; especially interesting or urgent tweets tend to get picked up and retransmitted by other Twitterers, a practice known as retweeting, or just RT. And Twitter is promiscuous by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen and a network connection.” (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html#ixzz1JXdgrQfC)
6 http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearA/2010-2011/2011-PalmSunday.shtml
7 Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Matthew. P. 114