April 1, 2007
Background Scripture: Revelation 1:1-8; Luke 19:28-40
Devotional Reading: Psalms 118:21-28

I always knew what to preach on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday. Good Friday is clearly the experience of deep sorrow – God enduring the full force of sin. Easter, on the other hand, is the experience of joy – God conquering the worst that death and evil can offer.

But what about Palm Sunday? There is joy here, but it is tempered by the realization of the terrible betrayal and passion to follow. To be sure, in worship services, the tone is one of celebration. In many churches, the clergy, choir and whole congregation will process with palm branches and exclamations of “Hosanna!”

Still, as I prepared my Palm Sunday sermons, I usually had the nagging thought that after the loud “Hosannas!” what followed was a superficial explosion of emotion that would not be backed up with tangible support for Jesus on Good Friday. I wondered whether it was just me, or if others felt the same uneasiness.

A pageant
Yet, later I found that in commenting on Matthew 19, the late Prof. Paul Scherer wrote: “It was a pageant, but it was God’s kind: A procession, at once splendid and dreary. It was something to rejoice over and something to mourn about. Like life itself.”

Those last three words put the whole thing into perspective for me: “Like life itself.” Palm Sunday is like life itself, “at once splendid and dreary.” Life is a mixture of rejoicing and mourning, joy and pain, gain and loss.

So, even in the context of the betrayal and passion that was to come for Jesus, the hosannas of his disciples and followers on Palm Sunday were entirely appropriate. It didn’t matter his followers did not realize what lay before them; that they still did not fully comprehend who and what Jesus was. Nor did it matter that some were simply swept along on the emotion of the moment.
Jesus was worthy of every palm branch strewn in his way, every hosanna uttered for him. So, whenever we bow in prayer or come to worship, we do so not forgetting what life is really like, nor attempting to find exemption from it, but remembering the sweet and the bitter.

We celebrate, anticipating both joy and sorrow. There is a desperate need within us to do so. We can celebrate the moment because even though we know that after the hosannas there is a cross and a sepulcher, they are not God’s last words.

A humble Messiah
“Hosanna” is a Greek rendering of a Hebrew word meaning “O save!” or “Save now!”

The term was sung in the liturgy of the Feast of the Tabernacles, and the congregation accompanied their hosannas with the waving of leaves of palm, willow and myrtle. “Hosanna!” came to be associated with the coming of the Messiah. We can see the Palm Sunday procession as a messianic demonstration, glorifying the one whom God sent as Savior.   

Jesus, however, was careful to demonstrate that his messianic role was not necessarily what was expected. He appeared that day, neither as military conqueror nor as all-powerful king. Instead, he emphasized that his messianic role would be spiritual and apolitical.

He came in meekness and peace, riding among them in humble majesty.

After the hosannas, he climbed a cross and showed humankind once and for all a way of peace that has largely been rejected, even by Christians.