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I don’t know where it came from, but there has been this thing, “You’re probably wondering how I got here. It’s most fun with dogs. Most things are most fun with dogs.
But that’s kinda what we get with Jesus today.
We’ve read all the way through his conviction and sentencing, and today we go back a week, see a much more happy moment.
I do wonder if Jesus or the disciples thought back to this week before when everything seemed hopeful. Jesus had just been in Bethany. He had raised Lazarus from the dead. He had dinner with his friends and Mary anointed him with oil setting up the meal they would have later in the week for Jesus washed the disciples feet.
And when those who had been there mourning Lazarus, those who had heard about the raising of Lazarus, gathered at one of the gates of Jerusalem to celebrate the one who holds the power of life.
Scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossen wrote a book where they talked about how there would have been two entrances that day–one that was on horseback with military troops as Pilate entered Jerusalem; the other when Jesus came through the gate on a humble and borrowed donkey, with mourners who had been comforted. It’s a really good story and might be true, but there is no documentation of it.
If you remember our Hebrew Scriptures, you may remember that the area of Judea or Palestine was under constant occupation and battle. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and then Romans. The Greek occupation was ugly and violent and cruel. And there was an uprising among the Jewish people to reclaim the kingship and temple that had been desecrated by one of the Greek leaders. The Jews who rebelled, lead by the Maccabean family, won and ushered in the Hashemoneon Dynasty. It is this time that Chanukah comes from. That’s a lot of back story, there’s the point, when the Maccabeans came into Jerusalem to cleanse the temple, the people of Jerusalem who welcomed them into the city, these revolutionaries, these priests, these kings with palm branches and shouts of “Hosannah.”
It turns out those Palms were about the nation, a celebration of liberation, and the waving of hope after times of oppression.
I think it’s surprising given our songs on Palm Sunday mornings that Hosannah isn’t explicitly a word of celebration, not at its origins. It means “Save us.” Think about why they would cry out “save us” at the end of the occupation, just before the kingdom was established and just before the temple had been renewed as a place of worship to the God of Israel. Hosanna was a plea but it was also a cry of assured hope, hope they were certain would be seen, that salvation had already been and would still be.
That is the context of the palm parade the week before he was killed.
The city was just starting to see people coming in from near and far to assure their place in the city for the Passover celebration–a ritual that remembered another event, when death passed their doors and they were freed from their enslavement in Egypt. If they cried “Hosannah” then, it would have been in light of their freedom as they journeyed to Cana–they had been set free and they lived in the assured hope that what God began, God would finish.
That is the context of the “Hosannahs” at the palm parade the week before Jesus was killed.
As it turns out, even Palm Sunday has always political.
They proclaimed him king. And this isn’t the first time they have done so, not the first time that they tried to make him take on the mantle of king. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus refused it, here not so explicitly. Here he comes into the city on a donkey, surrounded by the random people who had seen him bring life from death, celebration for mourning. It doesn’t come in on a warhorse, no weapons or troops, no banners or trumpets–just the branches of trees and voices of those who were filled with hope and expectation and certainty that this was the time, this was the man, this was the one who would save them.
And I’m sure they thought that he would save them like the Maccabees, that he would take back the worship for God, that he would overthrow their oppressors, that they would have control of their lives, their land, their worship, their taxes, their nation and not some outsiders who appoint the leadership of government and religion. I’m sure they were certain about to happen next.
And then when Pilate posts a sign at the cross from which Jesus was crucified calling him the king of the Jews… Whatever we think of Pilate, he trolled them there–the religious leaders who didn’t want me to be called king, the dying man who never claimed to be king, and those who had waved branches who thought he was their king, until he died.
He was not the kind of king that they were expecting.
He was not the conqueror that they were hoping for.
He did not drive the occupiers out.
He did not overthrow the leadership.
He was not going to save them in the way that they had hoped.
I’m going to say something that might be controversial, I don’t think that the Gospel writer of John thought that Jesus was going to save us from sins so we can go to heaven. Passover wasn’t about the forgiveness of sins for the individual or the community–that’s Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Passover is about death having no power and liberation. Palm branches are about freedom from occupation. We are saved from having to live by the ways of the world, the ways of the world that are opposed to the things of God: kindness, compassion, love, justice, belovedness, abundance, joy.
So I want to spend a few minutes thinking about the things that we might cry out to Jesus to save us from, the things that keep us from fully living into the ways of Christ, that keep us from seeing the full belovedness of another, that feed structures and institutions that use, abuse, and destroy God’s creation from people to earth.
And can our cries not just be ones of desperation but ones of Hosannah, that sound celebratory because we know the one that comes on a donkey has already done the work, has already shown us what it is to live free, knows our struggles, experienced our suffering, and yet lives, that we might have life abundant.