Psalm 118.1-2, 19-29

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. 

Every pastor has a favorite Palm Sunday story.

Like the year when the palm branches were delivered way too early and dried out so much that when the gathered congregation shook them over their heads in worship, palm branch particles went flying in every direction resulting in sneezing and coughing fits among the people of God.

Or the time when the pastor thought it would be a great idea to dress up like a donkey and preach the sermon from the perspective of the animal that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, to which the pastor received perhaps the greatest Sunday morning comment of all time: “You know, you’re not the first donkey we’ve had in that pulpit.”

Only they used a different word for donkey.

Or the time when the children of the church processed in waving their palm branches and lifting up their hosannas only to begin smacking one another in the face with their aforementioned palms until a nearby parent had to jump in to break up the melee and mutter, a little too loudly, “Lord, save me from these kids!”

And I think the reason preachers like me like to tell a cute or funny little story about Palm Sunday is because the actual story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is rather confounding.

Put another way: Palm Sunday is perhaps the strangest Sunday of the year.

For, it begins in celebration and ends in catastrophe. It starts with “Hosanna” but it finishes with “Crucify.” It begins with life and it ends with death.

At they are approaching Jerusalem Jesus sends two of his disciples to procure a colt for his entry into the holy city. He rides in a cartoonish way, with his feet nearly dragging on the ground on either side of the animal, and the people of Jerusalem comes out in droves to see the would-be Messiah. They are overcome with reverence, so much so that they begin to take their own clothing, and spread it on on the road only to be trampled upon by the colt. They make a royal carpet as they worship the King of kings.

They take leafy branches from the fields and they wave them to and fro and they shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Hosanna. I’ve always loved that word. It’s such a churchy word. It makes me think of my own childhood and parading around the sanctuary. It makes me things of the musical masterpiece Jesus Christ Superstar and the crowds singing, “Hey sanna Hosanna, sanna sanna Hey, sanna ho sanna hey sanna.”

Hosanna is a wonderful word. And, every Palm Sunday, we reach into the vault of churchy words, we dust off this old familiar declaration, and we proudly put it on display. We shout it in our hymns, we put the word on the lips of our children, we hear it read in the scriptures. And then, at the conclusion of worship, we wrap it up and place it back into the church vault with our other special words only to come back one year from now.

We are familiar with this word. It conjures memories and songs. Churches everywhere will join us in our shouts of Hosanna today.

But do we know what it means?

Save us.

It is a declaratory pleading. It is an emphatic demand.

Save us. Now!

Saved?

That’s a word you don’t hear much in churches like ours. We’re Methodists. We sing and we eat and we sing some more. We try to love each other. Really, we do. 

Love, peace, grace, mercy, forgiveness. Those are our words.

But saved?

How many got saved on Sunday? We don’t talk like that. 

We might make fun of those other types of church that talk in such a way. 

I remember someone once asking me if I was saved, and I said something like, I suppose so, and he said he’d been saved no less than 9 times.

Hosanna! Save us!

Really? 

Well, perhaps we should go look in the Bible for this word, where else does it appear besides Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city that will kill him?

There’s a woman, suffering from a hemorrhage for 7 years. She’s among the crowd one day and she says to herself, “If I but touch the hem of his garment I will be saved.” 

Well, in our Bible’s it says, “made well.” 

But it’s the same word for saved. The same word the crowds cry out as Jesus’ enters Jerusalem. 

And she suffers from more than just her bleeding. She’s isolated, outcast, thrown away by the likes of her family and her friends. She is a nobody with no hope in the world. Until the hope of the world walks past one day and she reaches out. She’s got nothing until she gets saved.

Jesus saves.

There’s a blind beggar sitting by the roadside. Like the woman he is unseen by all because of his inability to see. Forgotten and abandoned. And when the Lord walks by he shouts out, “Son of David have mercy on me.” The disciples are quick to shut him up. The Lord has more important things to do than to waste his time on you.

But the Lord comes anyway and says, “What do you want me to do?” 

I want to see. 

And Jesus says, “You faith has saved you.”

He has nothing to show for anything. He’s desperate. And in a moments notice, he is in the parade of the faith. Dancing and shouting for joy. 

Jesus saves.

There’s a rich man, well to do, Mr. Z they call him behind his back. While his fellows get poorer and poorer he gets wealthier and wealthier. He’s a tax collector. One day he climbs a tree to see Jesus. And the Lord calls him down and says, “Got any plans for lunch?”

They go to Zacchaeus’ house and the crowds are incensed. How dare the Lord go to eat with that sinner! What do they talk about over lunch? We don’t know. We only know that as they leave the house the tax collector is changed. He says, “I will give back everything that I have taken with interest.” 

“Salvation” Jesus says, “has come to this house.”

Jesus saves.

It’s no wonder the crowds grew and grew and grew. It’s no wonder the strange new world of the Bible talks of people leaves their plows in the field and their bread in the oven when the Messiah shows up. 

Because the Messiah is the one who saves.

And there’s no such things as being a little bit saved, or partially saved. It means a total and complete salvation. 

So when they wave their palm branches, when they place their cloaks on the road, they scream for salvation from the only one who can bring it.

Hosanna! Save us Jesus!

Save us, from what?

Jerusalem is occupied, the Roman garrison enters the holy city on the other side. Pontius Pilate comes riding in on a war course while Jesus enters on a donkey. The people of God, therefore, are living as strangers in a strange land in the very land God had promised. Their way of life is fracturing, their faith is under scrutiny, they have no bright hope for tomorrow. 

And here comes the Messiah! The one who makes everything right! He’s saved others and now he’s going to save us. He’s going to give us our city back. He’s going to bring back our way of life. He’s the new king!

The crowds grow and grow, and the shouts of Hosanna echo through the city streets, until they see the cross.

It is strange and not so strange to know that those same people who shouted Hosanna at the beginning of the week were shouting crucify by the end.

It’s all too easy for us to cast Jesus into role of our own choosing.

It’s all too easy for us to put words, our words, into Jesus’ mouth.

We would still like to see him parade around into the madness of our circumstances to champion our hopes and dreams, to disrupt and frustrate the plans of our enemies.

But Jesus doesn’t come to bring us more of the same.

Jesus comes to save us.

He doesn’t enter the holy city to establish yet another political machine that result in one group lording it over everyone else.

He doesn’t pass out swords and shields to storm the temple walls.

He doesn’t even offer programs of personal morality that will make the world a better place.

One of the craziest parts of Palm Sunday is that, according to the strange new world of the Bible, Jesus doesn’t say anything.

He merely rides into the city that will kill him.

But it’s Palm Sunday. We don’t want to have to think about Friday yet. We like the images and the sounds of our children waving palm branches high in the air. But there is no jumping from today to Easter Sunday.

Put another way, we do well to remember there is no resurrection without crucifixion.

It’s in our hymns and in our creeds and even in our prayers, but we try to stay away from the crucifixion as much as possible. And for good reason – it is the sign of our total and utmost depravity. But it’s also the heart of God. 

God, the creator of the cosmos, lays aside almightiness to come and dwell among us in the muck and mire of life, to be one of us.

God becomes vulnerable for us.

And how do we return the favor?

Crucify, Crucify!

Why? Because we want salvation on our own terms. We want to take matters into our own hands. We want to save ourselves. 

We don’t want to be saved in our sins, we’d rather lord it over other sinners who are worse than us. The only problem with that is, according to the kingdom of God, none of us is righteous, no, not one. 

You see, we crucified Jesus not because he was God, but because he was God and then failed to come up to our standards in doing so. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t the one we were looking for.

We’re fine with being saved only so long as it fits neatly into our expectations of what it means to be saved. 

The crowds wave their branches and they shout their hosannas. Save us Jesus, save us! And, by the end of the week, that’s exactly what he does, whether we deserve it or not, whether we like it or not.

Jesus saves.

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Even on the cross.

Jesus saves. Amen.