Palm Sunday B March 29, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Zechariah 9: 9-10 + Philippians 2: 5-11 + Mark 11: 1-11
Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who comes riding in humility, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
When was the last time you shouted Hosanna? No, really….when was it? If you are like me, it was last year on Palm Sunday. Hosanna! Blessed is the One who comes in the name of our God! Blessed is the coming reign of our ancestor David! Hosanna!
But what does it mean? Is it just a word that we shout together once a year in church? Well, we shout Hosanna and “Don’t wave that palm branch at your brother, you might put an eye out?”
For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing, this year we did not read the full Passion Gospel – the entire story of Holy Week. About twelve years ago those people in charge of liturgy in our Church (big C) decided that folks weren’t coming to worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday anymore, so they were going to start giving us the entirety of Holy Week in one worship service – Passion Sunday. And so a straight up Palm Sunday service largely became a thing of the past.
But this year I wanted us to return to an observance of just this day. Just this event. Just this strange parade with Jesus on a donkey, palm branches waving, and the people shouting their Hosannas.
So, what about that word….Hosanna? What does it mean anyway? Basically, Hosanna is a contraction of 2 Hebrew words from a Psalm, and means, essentially, “Save Us.” So, what happened wasn’t that the crowds offered some sort of triumphal cheer to Jesus as he entered the city – like a basketball team in the Final Four. (Go CATS) Instead, they put their coats on the road, waved branches they grabbed from the nearby trees and cried out to him: Save Us! Save Us!
And it may be exactly this understanding of Hosanna and Palm Sunday that explains why we need Palm Sunday to stand on its own as we enter into this Holy Week.
Very often when I teach confirmation, the students become a bit stuck when we talk about salvation. And if it makes them feel any better, pastors and parents and theologians and professors can get stuck there, too. Because if we say that Jesus saves, or if we cry out to Jesus to save us, what are we asking Jesus to save us from?
Those who had lined the road on that first Palm Sunday were clearly asking him to save them from the oppression of the Romans. They wanted Jesus to save them from a corrupt government and an occupying army. But what are we asking Jesus to save us from?
All too often the easy answer, especially from our confirmation students is “hell”; we want Jesus to save us from hell. But when pressed, what is it that we want God, who is very present with us, to save us from in our lives right now. Right this minute, with the palm branches still in our hands and the Hosannas still on our lips?
If we are honest with ourselves I would imagine that the list is long.
Save me from this illness. Save me from feeling useless. Save me from this growing debt. Save me from being so lonely. Save me from this addiction. Save me from this violence. Save me from being afraid. Save me from myself.
And just like that, we have gone from pageantry and parade and palms to sitting before God in our brokenness and our vulnerability and our pain. We plead for God to take the broken places and broken things of our lives and piece them back together again. Save us. Hosanna.
But if we are asking God to save us, we must be ready for the follow up questions. Does God respond to our cries for salvation? And does anything God does actually save us? And the answer to those questions is to be found squarely in the journey through the great mystery and tragedy of the days that are ahead of us in this Holy Week.
Of course, what we know, standing on this side of the Easter story, is that salvation did not come dressed like what they’d expected it to look like. The people expected power and domination and what they got was a teacher on the back of a donkey. And when it became clear that this teacher would not, in fact, save those watching the parade from the Roman occupation, their shouts of Hosanna/Save Us, turned to Crucify him. So it is with some fear and trembling that we consider how Jesus responds to our cries of Save Us/Save Me. What does it look like to be saved by God?
What we know of the story of Jesus is that it is a story of presence. It is a story, the greatest story, of God’s presence with God’s people in actual bodily form. And we all know that there is something very deep and real about being with someone in the flesh. One of my colleagues talks about the ministry of showing up. God is with us when we are with one another in ways that matter.
Eighteen years ago this September I was lying in a hospital bed at the renowned UAB medical center in Birmingham Alabama. I was being told that the mass in my abdomen exhibited every sign of being cancer and although they would have to confirm that in surgery two days later, I should use the days to put my affairs in order. I was a young mother of three children. I was not ready to leave this life just yet. I was a person of faith, but the only prayer I could muster was something like Save Me.
At one point in those days, I awoke and saw at my bedside Ed and Bettye. Ed and Bettye were members at my church, an older couple with health issues of their own. I didn’t know them particularly well, other than to speak to them in worship on Sunday mornings. But Ed and Bettye were there, sitting on either side of my bed, holding my hands while I slept. I do not remember anything they said other than “when we heard your news we knew we had to come.” And come they had, driving the two hours each way to sit with me for a brief time. But they were the presence of God to me.
If we had the time today, and I so wish we did, I would ask each of you to come and share your Ed and Bettye story. How you were reminded of God’s presence through the solidarity and ministry of presence that pours out mercy and grace on every place in us that cries out Save Us/Save Me. This is a part of how God saves us. God doesn’t phone it in or send us an email. God comes to us in Jesus, comes to us as one of us, comes to us and stands beside us in the places that range from awkward to awful to experience life and death. God answers our cries of Hosanna in ways that let us touch God as our friend hugs us or holds our hand or just sits beside us and as Jesus rides in front of us, riding on a donkey.
And this is why we need Palm Sunday….this is why we need to wave our palm branches and shout our Hosannas….because we need to embark on the sacredness of this Holy Week by reaching into the deep and fear filled places that exist in each one of us and asking God to come and Save Us. Because what comes next to us in this week ahead is God’s answer to that cry.
Thanks be to God. Amen.