Hosanna!

Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 21:1-11
 

 One week ago, I was at the Hands-off protest in the little town of Lihue, on Kauai. For a couple of blocks people lined the street on both sides, cheering and waving all manner of signs, while music blared over the loud speaker: I get knocked down, but I get up again… We didn’t start the fire, the music mingling with the rhythmic pounding of a group of hand drummers, voices shouting and horns honking. I teared up, of course, picturing us here, on this tiny island way out in the Pacific Ocean, hours after everyone else, sharing in this thing that was happening all over the country. The feeling of collective action and comradery was electric.  It felt like hope, like possibility, like anticipation, like we were part of something bigger, something coming.

 
And then I saw him. The man in the tan t-shirt and fishing hat, bouncing an actual tiny palm tree in the air.  And it stopped me short. Because of course, I thought of this moment.  
 
How different are we, really from those 2000 years ago who lined the streets on Palm Sunday shouting,Hosanna, which means Save us!, protesting an oppressive regime and anticipating deliverance by this one who would restore their rightful place, and take his place as king, and rule them like King David did 1000 years before? 
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
 
Those in Jerusalem that day wanted Jesus to save them from the Roman Empire, to make Israel great again, to bring back stability, and raise up the weak, and destroy the corrupt mighty.  And maybe they even had in their minds the idea that Jesus was the fulfillment of prophesy. Because while, for Holy Week, we’ve momentarily jumped forward 600 years to join this crowd and walk this week with Jesus, we get to hear these events with their ancestors in mind.  And certainly, it’s possible that, standing there on their spread-out cloaks with their own palms waving in the air, they were recollecting the same stories we are working our way through. If we think back to Lisa’s sermon last week,we will recall that the kingdom of David and Solomon had crumbled, their homeland was destroyed by the Babylonians, and the people are in exile, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Today’s prophetic message from Isaiah comes to them fifty years in, give or take, when they’ve pretty much settled into their lives in Babylon. Some families in ongoing despair and suffering, others are getting comfortable in the empire. Into that accommodation and apathy, that acquiescing to the status quo of exile, here comes the prophetic promise of a savior who will deliver them from captivity. 
 
And with a scripture we normally read at Christmas time, we hear of the One from the root of Jesse who shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
and who is ushering in a kingdom of peace so counterintuitive to the natural order of things that fear is nonexistent – lambs and wolves hanging out, calves and cubs cuddling, children and snakes all safe together.  “No one will be hurt on God’s holy mountain” it promises. “Just as water fills the sea, the whole earth will be full of people who know and love the Lord.”
 
So maybe that day with their palms in hand they remembered the prophet’s promise to their ancestors 600 years before. And maybe, just like we do on Christmas, they’re declaring that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s salvation, and maybe, also like us, they’ve decided what that salvation looks like so they’re making Jesus into who they think Jesus should be for them. Whether we think Jesus should keep us safe and prevent bad things from happening, take away our pain, strong-arm our enemies, or make us into supernaturally good people, however our version of God’s plan goes or our view of salvation looks, they had their version too, and figured he would fulfill it.

And like his very first journey on a donkey in the womb of his young mother Mary, when the world had no idea know what was coming, once again, he will take the cosmos by surprise.  Because beyond everything we think salvation should be, God’s way of love flips things upside down and inside out, it is unrelenting and quiet, foolish and strange. Jesus wasn’t there to lead the revolution at all, he was there to die. The things the people projected onto him were not going to happen. And just a few days later this whole crowd will join in collective chanting again. This time, instead of ‘Hosanna!’ They’ll chant ‘Crucify Him!’ without even a bit of irony or self-awareness. 

But the prophetic beauty and power of this moment is that, even though they’ve got messed up motives and confused ideas and false assumptions, what they are saying is completely true, part of the fabric of all things most true. Jesus does save us. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the lord. 

So I return to that fellow in the bucket hat at the protest last week, bobbing his palm up and down in time to the music. He didn’t bring a sign that said one thing; he used his foliage to affirm everything, to say ‘here, here!’ to it all, a bouncing exclamation point to every the messages surrounding him on cardboard, to all the stop doing this, bring back that, cruel and mocking jokes, heartfelt pleas, clever slogans and desperate longings, held by people joining together and projecting our desires, despairs, and prognostications into the air alongside one another, all of us shouting all our various Hosannas and Save uses into the atmosphere. 
 
Who were we aiming them all at? I guess we were aiming them at each other, at the collective consciousness, the universe, the far away government on the other side of the ocean. Perhaps at all those people in all those other time zones who did this before us, like some kind of call and delayed response. 
But mainly, to be honest, we were aiming them at the passing cars. If they honked and gave us the hang-loose hand out their window, the cheering got louder. We got a response! They agree! They’re with us! It was like facebook “likes” and Instagram hearts in real life -the literal thumbs up right to our faces, a feel-good echo chamber of our shared discontentment and frustrations, elevated by peppy music and comforting companionship.  And that is not a bad thing – making our voices heard matters, and it felt good. And then it pittered out, and eventually we tossed our signs in the back seat of the car to be recycled later and wandered off to a noodle house for lunch.
 
But it made me realize that as heartening as that was, it only goes so far what I was really craving was thisrally. The one where the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee when God incarnate meanders on a donkey through the middle of people’s expectations and projections to bring us the salvation we need, and not the salvation we think we want.  
Because if our salvation is up to us, to shout it back and forth to each other, to cajole and persuade other selfish, broken human beings to do the right thing, we have no hope. Left to our own devices, we’ll just grasp onto stability enough, a sufficient status quo of empire apathy that lets us turn away from our human siblings, slowly destroy this beloved planet, and perpetuate cruel injustice and dismissive division with maybe a veneer of civility.
We’ll wave our Yes at whatever makes us feel heard and seen, and fear will keep being our driving force. We’ll keep hating our enemies, and flapping our competing signs and propping up our conflicting causes and getting a thrill from the responses we solicit and calling it progress. We’ll elect good people, and bad people, and good people again, and if we get our way, life will go on pretty much the same with a few tweaks, while the threat of death looms as large as it ever has.  We need something from outside ourselves to do the saving.
 
Palm Sunday can feel a bit weird and superfluous, like a mini-Easter. Hooray! Jesus is the coming King! But really, Palm Sunday the culmination of Lent. It's the false finale that draws out all our counterfeit redemptions.  We wave our palms and shout our hosannas and save uses, thinking This is it! It’s going to happen like we want it to! and take all our self-deception and salvation projections—all we think we want and need, who we think God should be for us and what we think God should do for us—and we aim it right at Christ. We load all our misguided intentions, our self-centered solutions, and our sureness of what will save us, onto his shoulders, while he rides by us, perched atop that little donkey.  And Jesus welcomes them into himself, absorbs all of them, and carries these sins to the cross. There our cries for salvation will be answered, just not how we think they should be. 

There God incarnate submits completely to the human experience of suffering and death, so that nothing can separate us from God’s love. God has come, God is here, God loves this world and everyone in it far more than any of us do, and despite us, God is redeeming it all. As Lisa and the prophets reminded us last week, “we live in hope, because we know that God will act. We don’t know the why, nor the how, nor the when. We cannot predict God’s miracles, but we live in the certainty of God’s redeeming power.”
 
However, our hosannas get shouted, or whatever our palm branches represent for us today: God is breaking in, that God has come to share this life with you and me, and something irreversible is about to take place.  
Salvation is what God does and will keep on doing until it is complete. We don’t compel it, and we can’t thwart it. God is saving the world. So, bring your needs and longings and ask away. The Holy Spirit will translate our prayers, and God will bring the saving that we need. 
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest.
Amen.