Hosanna/Save us!
- 10 hours ago
- 2 min read
"Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" Matthew 21. 1 - 11
The Hebrew word for Hosanna is hoshiah na which combines yasha ("deliver/save") and anna ("beg/beseech"), essentially meaning "I beg you to save!" or "Please save us!" I don't know about you, but that is not what I thought it meant all those years when I would cry it out and sing it during Palm Sunday services. I thought we were praising Jesus, lauding him and celebrating his arrival.
Knowing that it means "Save us we beg you" gives quite a different understanding. This humble procession we remember on the Palm Sunday is headed on a collision course with the grand military procession of Roman power (See previous blog Donkey or Warhorse) coming in on the other side of Jerusalem, taking on new meaning when the definition of Hosanna is clear.
Save us we beseech thee O Lord is a cry we also might make today as we begin this Holy Week. In the face of war in the world, famine and starvation and divisiveness that threatens to destroy ourselves and each other, we cry out for salvation from "a top-down, oppressive authority" as Diana Butler Bass says, and support a "bottom-up, humble servant kingdom." The juxtaposition of these two processions represents not only the core conflict of Holy Week, but the core conflict of the world we live in today. Let us Ride on in lowly pomp, my friends, journeying with Jesus in this long week ahead, knowing that the kingdom of peace and humility is what his journey was all about.
But before we can celebrate, we must walk this dark and dusty week one sad day at a time.
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