Save Now, We Pray!
It is Holy Week. The week begins remembering Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. When he fulfilled prophecy by riding into the city on a donkey while the crowds, gathered for the coming Passover celebration, praised him waving palm branches and singing, “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” At the same time it is a day when we remember that all of this happened just a week before he would be betrayed, arrested, and crucified as a criminal. The crowds that shouted Hosanna a week earlier were now shouting, “Crucify him , crucify him!” It is a week of great contrast, especially when you consider the situations and the crowd.
Very often when you go to many churches on Palm Sunday it seems like a great big celebration. The people are waving palm branches and singing very joyful sounding songs, and this is not necessarily off. It is true that on what would become Palm Sunday two thousand years ago the crowds were rejoicing because finally the greatly anticipated Messiah had arrived. He was entering the city, and they were thrilled because he would finally liberate them. All they had waited for for literally centuries was finally coming to pass. The Christ was here, the Holy One of God, and he was going to set things right. Just listen to what they were singing as he entered the city: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:9-10) They were full of expectation, but their expectations were rather specific.
They sang “Hosanna.” And we echo their cry every time we celebrate communion and we most certainly sing it every Palm Sunday, but I think we have lost its true meaning when we use it. I don’t know about you, but most of the time the songs that use Hosanna have a rather dated feel to them. Growing up in the church I have these flashbacks whenever I hear Hosanna songs to a church full of people waving palm branches kind off rhythm and dressed in early 80s attire. I see it all through a soft lens like a soap opera flashback…basically in word I think cheesy. Sincere, but cheesy. So I’ve got that baggage, hopefully you don’t. But the other thing is that it always seems to carry this celebratory emphasis to it, which has colored the word for me. It’s always associated with praise, which I said is not completely off, don’t get me wrong. BUT “hosanna” is very different when you learn its definition. It is a Hebrew word that literally means “save now, we pray.” “Save now, we pray.” It is a cry for deliverance, and immediate deliverance at that. “Save now!” There is desperation to it. It is much more complex than the way we use it in the church today. It’s not just a bunch of badly dressed people with feathered hair smiling as they sing Hosanna. Rather it is a word of desperation, a plea, begging God for deliverance.
Understanding the meaning of that word alone changes the day for me, but there’s more too. The crowd was crying out for deliverance, but they got even more specific by singing, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.” They wanted political and national deliverance. They expected the Messiah to come and restore the greatness of the kingdom of Israel. What they are singing is not wrong, surely Jesus did bring with him the promised kingdom, but they thought it was going to be political. They thought it was going to be congruent with David’s kingdom centuries earlier. They thought the Messiah was going to take them back to the good old days when they had it all. We can hear a lot of similar sounds in our context today too. Just consider the fighting in Ukraine and the fear that exists in the Baltic States. There is an incredible amount of nostalgia about Mother Russia and the glory days of the Soviet Union. Everyone is worried that Putin, who has never been shy about his love for the communist era, is going to want to try to get the band back together as it were and try to take back all of the former Soviet block in eastern Europe. Is Ukraine just the beginning?
That’s just one example, but we have them in our country too. Every election cycle you hear similar rumblings about how we’ve lost our moral grounding as a nation and we need to return to the good old days, which almost always refers to the time before Vietnam, Woodstock, and the sexual revolution of the late 60s. That’s when everything was better. Leave it to Beaver and the Andy Griffith Show were on tv, and everything was a little more wholesome. Watching Mad Men should cure us all of believing in a more wholesome time. Or maybe it’s ever further back, Little House on the Prairie…? Regardless, we can relate somewhat to the desire for political deliverance or some sort of restoration of a national identity. In the Jews’ case, they lived in an occupied state. They wanted the Romans out, and they wanted the restoration of the promised land from the days of Joshua. And as we sadly know too well, the fight still goes on today.
They wanted political deliverance, and they thought Jesus would finally bring it. But he didn’t. He rode into Jerusalem triumphantly, and they waited, but nothing happened. He didn’t go after the Romans. He didn’t start a revolution. Instead, he was arrested a few days later, and he didn’t even put up a fight. He was not who they expected him to be and so they lost patience with him. They didn’t have time for another phony Messiah, and so they went along with the religious leaders prodding and demanded his crucifixion.
As I said, Holy Week is full of contrast. The focus is usually on the crowd and on us as a part of that fickle crowd. But there is also something else to consider and that is Jesus himself. We’re headed to Good Friday and the passion account, and it rightly confronts us with the cost of our sin. We hear about the torture and ridicule that he suffered and we cannot escape the fact that it was for us, on our behalf. The resulting feeling of guilt and remorse is appropriate, and if I just left it there, this would be a very solidly reformation focused Christian message. But while our role in the whole drama is important, more important is Jesus’ intent this week. His intent: what he was doing, and why he was doing it?
The crowds cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna!” And as is often the case in the Bible they spoke better than they knew. Their words carried a deeper meaning and greater significance than they could have ever possibly imagined. Better than any restoration of any political standing and better than any sense of national pride and nostalgia was the true reason why Jesus rode that donkey into Jerusalem that day. He heard those cries of Hosanna, “Save now, we pray!” and he intended to do just that. His purpose was indeed deliverance for his people, for the world, from the power of sin and death, form the forces that actually rule us, the true occupiers as it were. He had come to truly set his people free and his entire creation and nothing was going to stop him from doing it.
A phrase from Isaiah 50 captures his intent perfectly: “therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.” I have set my face like flint. He would not turn to the side or be dissuaded. Whatever would come up against him would deflect off of him. He was determined and resolute. His face was like flint, hard and set. He would not flinch no matter what. I want us all to be thinking of Jesus’ intent this week when we remember the amazing events of Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Jesus’ intent was to save us, to save you.
And thinking of the crowd and all of the factors at play in their behavior and thinking of our own guilt and complicity in his death, I want us to remember Jesus setting his face like flint. Unlike us when he looked at the crowd waving those palm branches and crying out for political deliverance, he loved them. He knew what was coming at the end of the week. He knew how the temperature of the people would drastically change. He knew he was riding into Jerusalem to live his last week before fulfilling all he had come to do. He knew no one understood him. He knew everyone would desert him. He did not expect respectful behavior, he expected rejection. He told Peter and all of his disciples as much just a couple days before he rode into Jerusalem. He knew that he was going to be betrayed and that he would have to go it alone. He knew the entire world would reject him, and he had compassion on them. He loved them. That was precisely why he came…because he loved his creation. He loved his people. His love was the motivation for all of it. His love is why his face was like flint, why he was so set and determined to accomplish all that the Father had given him to do. He had no bitterness. He did not reject the crowd as hypocrites or feel any pause about what he had come to do. Instead he was compelled by love for you.
Mysteriously and miraculously he knew of you and me in those moments too. He knew of our brokenness and our pain and fear. He knew of our guilt too, and He had compassion on us. He went for us. He was determined for us. He heard our cries of “Hosanna Lord! Save now, we pray!” And He set his face like flint toward the cross. He said, “I will. I will save you. I will not stop. I will not turn aside. I will go for you. I will make sure everything is done so that you are saved. Nothing will stop me.”
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