“HOSANNA”
Saint Matthew 21: 1-9
Palmuram: 14 April Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! The Name! What is His Name? It is Hosanna, isn’t it. The Nazarene riding on the ass is named Jesus by His Mother and guardian in accordance with the Angel’s word—God’s own word. Words mean things but also, here, WORDS are Things. The Messias IS Jesus. Jesus, or is the New Testament Greek translation of Joshua, i.e. The Lord Saves! Savior! The Saving One!
Do you need to be saved? You “feel” in your bones and gut, a need to be healthier, firmer, leaner, more well rested, energized, busy, and youthful. You want life. Do you want salvation? Do you know your sins? Do you know your sin? Do you confess your transgressions to The Lord? Do you only prefer the joyous parade of Palmarum without desiring more deeply to receive and “be in” The Crucifixion?
The Lord wants you saved. He wanted you saved, with Him, in Him, since before eternity. You are saved, predestined to be His from before creation. Your names are written in His very palms, because of His Name: Jesus—Hosanna! Save NOW! When? 30 AD? Well, yes, but better than that. Where? Riding into Jerusalem to start Holy Week/Passion Week, or nailed to the cross on Good Friday? Well, yes, but even better than that—“For You!”
“Be not Thou far from me, O Lord” writes the Psalmist. “O my Strength, haste Thee to help me.”
That is your daily prayer, your Kyrie Eleison.
The crowd strewing their garments and “branches from the trees” (Palms) thought that Christ’s entrance, His popularity, His powerful—nature defying—miracles, and the surge of the events (the tide of human history), would save them. Save them from Rome, from servility to a foreign presence, from all of their real and imaginary “mammon” needs and concerns.
No. He came to save them and you from sin; and from your sins. No one gets a medal or award for starting to run a race, but only when they finish the race—when they win!
So, let us dispense with the transportation mode and look at the cargo. It is God Who comes to His Holy City. Jerusalem then, The Church this morning! Let us fix our eyes not on the celebration of arrival but rather to the Cross of His departure; His Exodus to bring you to The Canaan of Salvation. Children love parades and animals (yes, dogs, but who doesn’t love a cute young donkey too). But it’s all flash and glitter, and gaiety. Singing shouting palms and garments. Children don’t like cleaning up, leaving the action, going home and going to bed. Childish Christians who never grow up into disciplined warriors of the Cross tend to be easier prey for the old wicked foe. Thus, talking, shouting, even singing good things: “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of The Lord” must give way to the HOW of Hosanna. We preach Christ crucified! What do you think The Sacrament gives you?
You receive the Palms, the cooling relief of shade, because He took on the thorns and the heat of your sin and The Father’s wrath against all unrighteousness. You receive the white-stallion and eternal victory gallop because Christ rode slowly, lowly, on an ass. You are, this day, a King, a Queen, a Royal Priest, because that day, and especially on Good Friday, He was the thief, the insurrectionist traitor, the blasphemer, the loser, the slain blood beast.
Hear the Good News! Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest is now! It is not just the “highest” of The God/Man lifted by the cross on Golgotha, but NOW, the God/Man lifted by a pastor on Christ’s present throne of Chalice and Ciborium. You were saved from the “lion’s mouth and delivered from the horn of the unicorn” 2,000 years ago—when your Hosanna let Himself be punctured by the horn, the spear, of a Roman, that He might “beard the lion Satan” in his own serpentine den of death. But this morning, this beginning of Passion Week He covers you with + His clothes. You are clean. You are forgiven. You are loved.
“Ride on, ride on, in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die.” Right now, He bids you to come as majesty to His altar that He may ride into your mouths to live forever in you!
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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