Sunday, April 5, 2020
Hosanna Now!

John 12:12,13
The next day a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, and cried out: “Hosanna!”

Today, millions of people around the world are in lockdown. Governments and their health authorities are making up the plan as they go, in the face of a pandemic for which they were unprepared.

Today is Palm Sunday on the traditional Christian calendar and, under normal circumstances, millions of believers would have gone to churches, palms waving, to commemorate the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, to be greeted by shouts of Hosanna!

That couldn’t happen today. Instead, unlike that day when an estimated 2.5 million Jews from near and far gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover celebrations, the churches are quiet and the streets around them are deserted.

There are no choirs, no mass, no service, no sea of waving vegetation and no collective shout. The restrictions on assembly and instructions on social/physical distancing, as a weapon to stave off the Covid-19 Pandemic, put paid to Palm Sunday plans and left man’s traditions unpractised.

Things were nearing boiling point for a while now, and observers were looking to see exactly when the flashpoint would emerge. Some were surprised by the election of Mr Trump and what that revealed about the deep divisions in American society and how that would affect the world. Others were surprised by Brexit and revealed chinks in the EU armour. Still, others thought that it would be a trade war between western countries and Asian ones. Some were convinced that it would be Iran unleashing on Israel or vice versa.

There were those who felt that rising national and global inequities, highlighted by the migrant crisis in Europe and the seething nationalism in response would be our undoing. And then there were the tree huggers who predicted gloom and doom on our world unless we tackled climate change and staved off an environmental and ecological apocalypse.

Few felt that a hitherto unknown microscopic pathogen would cause a zoonosis, assumed to have originated in a Wuhan City wet market, and then start a march across the planet and bring people and systems to their knees. But we’re in the middle of it on Palm Sunday.

Our key verse today is from John’s record, but the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem as a popular hero is recorded in all four Gospel accounts. John hangs his narrative of the Triumphal Entry on the problems posed by the recent resuscitation of Lazarus. News of this was spreading like wildfire and the crowds were looking for this Jesus who could raise the dead. The leaders, on the other hand, wanted them both dead because the event undermined their authority.

The eagerness with which the crowd was ready to hail Jesus as king is very telling. They were very religions people and His coming on a donkey triggered something. There is the prophecy from Zechariah that accounts for it, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.” Zechariah 9:9

There was that history and prophecy, but there was more. The Jewish people were living under an untenable political situation, Roman occupation and domination limited their ability to express what they believed about themselves as a nation. They were looking for the king that God would send to deliver them from the Romans. For a while, that day at least, they thought that Jesus would.

Untenable political situations inevitably lead to untenable social and economic situations as well. The Jewish people were suffering from ethnic insecurities and widening economic gaps as the Romans taxed them heavily. Matthew, one of twelve disciples was a former tax collector and the short fellow Zacchaeus was a reformed one. Things were tough.

In these circumstances, Jesus came riding in on a colt of a donkey. He received a hero’s welcome because a hero is what the people wanted. This very religious people knew their scriptures, and quoted the Psalms, for they cried out ““Hosanna! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ The King of Israel!” John 12:13.

The Hebrew word Hosanna, never mind how we use it today like a word of praise, literally means Save Now! The cries of the people as they spread their garments and waved their palms were not shouts of adulation as much as they were cries for help. God, save us!

Our countries are reeling from historical circumstances that continue to force bad outcomes. Our political systems are in distress, our social fabric is unravelling, ethnic and racial insecurities are increasing, and economies are on the brink of collapse.

We live in places where the thing we need most now is for God to save us. We need shouts of Hosanna. We need to cry out to God for deliverance from the things that have come upon our countries and our world.

Today we should cry Hosanna! Hosanna now! Save us, save us God, save us now! For the same Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on the colt of an ass at Passover said that “unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” Matthew 24:22

Think on these things:

1. Do you think that if you were in Jerusalem you would have gone out and waved your clothes or palm branches when Jesus came riding in?
2. Are you able to look beyond national and global political events and see the hand of God at work?
3. What would current events cause you to do differently when we are no longer in lockdown?

Prayer focus:

Let us cry out to God today, for the elect sake, that He would save us now.

In His Grace
Pastor Alex