I was raised with a high anthropology – which is to say, a view of human beings that puts a lot of power in our hands. I could choose whether or not to “accept” Jesus into my life, and evidently, my word was powerful enough to keep Jesus out of my life. If people were not “following” God, their lives would be worse, and their afterlife doom, but it’s our choice. Human beings, in this view, hold an enormous amount of power. When it comes down to it, more than God, actually. Because we can tie God’s hands. We can keep God from acting, just by our inaction! Oh well. God would’ve saved us, but we said no thanks, and there was nothing God could do about it. God seems unable to override human beings’ refusal to accept God’s saving, or humans’ basic ignorance that that decision was ever in their hands to begin with. If we don’t say Save us! Which is what Hosanna! means, then God just won’t do it.
But maybe you didn’t grow up like that. Maybe your underlying messages of human idolatry were not about eternity but about now. Maybe your hosannas were pointed inward, toward your own outstanding self. And the work of saving -whether that’s your own self, the world, or maybe even others, was your work to do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Maybe Jesus didn’t factor in, except as a motivator or an example, and God’s role was simply to serve as an ethical ideal on which to base all the world-saving work we humans need to get busy with. This is also a dangerously high anthropology, that is, this also seems to think human beings are far more capable and in control than we really are.
But the bible has a pretty low anthropology. In the bible people are portrayed as mostly having no idea what we’re doing. In the gospels, the disciples, who walked side by side with God incarnate, still had no clue what was happening most of the time. Even when Jesus told them, over and over again, how it was all going to go down, they still didn’t get it.
And when the crowds naively celebrate Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, they laid down cloaks and branches heavy with misunderstandings and expectations. Their version of Hosanna! Save us! assumed they were welcoming into town the one who was coming to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire occupying their land. Here comes power to speak truth to power and overthrow power and give power back to the powerless! Hosanna!
A high Christology believes Jesus is capable of saving. So the palm Sunday crowds were ahead of us there. Because saving is what Jesus does; Jesus saves. Not our belief in Jesus, not our patterning our lives after Jesus, but Jesus, himself, saves the world, whether we believe in him or not, whether we follow him or not. The crowds were wrong about him and what he was there to do. But so what? God does what God will do anyway.
When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he didn’t fit the people’s ideas of him; and all throughout the next week he resolutely refused to live into their expectations. He kept on undermining their hopes of glory and power with vulnerability and weakness, and then he let himself be killed, which was a killer to their dreams and plans.
When we cry “save us” what we usually mean is, we want to not feel so much pain, or we want to be freed from the consequences of our choices, we want bad people not to be in charge of things, or we want to be spared from some impending tragedy or have security – even eternally. What we usually mean by “save us!” is “give us more control!” or at least make things turn out how we would like them to. We use God as a means to our own end, a tool in our own self-development project or societal change platform. Our telos, or ultimate goal toward which our life is pointed, is usually our own comfort and well-being, the safety or security of those we love.
When we cry Hosanna! Save us, Lord! we do NOT usually mean save us from our delusions, save us from our self-centeredness, save us from our mistrust of others and fear of vulnerability, save us from pride and thinking we have more control than we do, or save us from forgetting that you are God, and we aren’t, and denying that those we most dislike are also your beloved children. We’re not usually asking to be saved from our idolatry or ego. We’re certainly not asking to be humbled and brought low like Christ himself; we’re usually asking to be propped up and protected.
But that’s ok. When we point our longings and fears toward God, God knows what we need hears our hearts, even if we can’t name what salvation is or imagine what it could look like, God brings it anyway, because this is who God is and what God does, regardless of who we are and what we do.
And even when the people who cheered his arrival on Sunday turned around and cheered his demise on Friday, it didn’t alter God’s course. We think death ends everything and is the strongest power of all, but in Christ God moves in and through death to bring new life. Because God brings life and salvation to the world. This is what God does. And nothing, no matter what, can stop God from saving the world.
So, first, here this good news, which comes as a blow to our high anthropology: You are not powerful enough to stop what God is doing. And what you do will not save the world. You’re not really in control of much of anything. None of us are. It’s part of being human. And you are too important to God to let go of. And so is this world. God’s YES is always bigger than our human Nos, or I don’t knows. All this means your most excellent actions, most generous sacrifices, highest deeds of goodness cannot bring God nearer or give you any security at all. And, your most horrible mistakes, most self-centered spitefulness, and worst deeds of cruelty, cannot make God retreat further or disqualify you from God’s love.
We are making some terrible mistakes in the world. We are hurting each other badly. Our selfishness and division have very real and heartbreaking impact. Choices we make have appalling consequences and contribute to horrific suffering. And trapped inside of time, we can’t undo what we’ve done. Nevertheless, nothing, nothing can stop God’s love and redemption. Nevertheless, Jesus saves.
We can participate in that salvation with awareness and gratitude, choosing to align our lives with the inbreaking Kingdom of God and seeking live as we were created to live, connected to God and others. Or we can participate in that salvation with naivete and ignorance, or even live our one life with deliberate malice. But make no mistake, we participate. One way or another, we are part of God’s redemption story. God will do what God is doing – in us and through us, or despite us and without our approval. God uses anything and everything to move the world toward healing and hope. God’s presence inhabits every moment. God’s voice cannot be banished or silenced, God’s work cannot be hindered or obstructed. Love prevails. Most often in unexpected and ordinary ways; most often through weakness. We can watch for it or not. We can recognize it or not. We can receive it willingly, or resist it pointlessly. But the love of God has claimed this whole story, Christ has come into this world, and turned it all inside out, and nothing can stop God.
Every year we read this text in one gospel voice or another, and every single year, we just breeze past and generally ignore a certain character that, in Mark, takes up over half the passage. This is, of course, the donkey. When Jesus tells a couple disciples to go untie a random colt from a random doorstep and bring it to him, and he gives them words for if someone asks them what they’re doing, it happens just like he says it will. What this shows us is this: They may not have any idea of the big picture, or even what’s about to unfold, even though Jesus keeps trying to tell them that he’s here in Jerusalem to die. But in this small moment with a random donkey, they DO glimpse the Divinity of Christ, and they get this small taste of their own participation in something bigger. With this act of trust and courage, their actions join what God doing in the world. They go into this strange parade having been guided and having obeyed.
God is always up to something way bigger than we can see or understand. Even though our participation is often misguided, driven by our own agenda for what being saved would feel like, nevertheless, God uses our actual experiences to bring love and healing into the world. Nevertheless, we are part of a story that reaches beyond us and yet encompasses our lives entirely. God’s healing comes into our most vulnerable and broken places, not because we are impressive and powerful but because we are not. Jesus, in vulnerability joins us, and invites us into our own brokenness alongside one another to share in God’s redemption where it comes, where it is needed.
This next week is going to suck for the disciples. And not just this next week, which ends in Jesus’ death, not to mention the death of all their beliefs and dreams and plans. Life is going to be overwhelming and disorienting for them for some time to come.
So, the week begins here, in this moment of participating, with this donkey, and this goofy parade, where a whole crowd of people says the most true thing in the universe, even though none of them have any idea what they are actually saying or what it really means:
Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes to save.
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Amen.
