Hosanna

At what moment does the joy turn into sorrow? In what instant does the certainty disintegrate into chaos? One minute the crowds are hailing Jesus as their Savior, and the next moment they are shouting, “Crucify him!” One minute we are parading into the church, waving our palms, singing “Ride on, ride on in majesty,” and the next minute we add, “Ride on to die” and hang our heads. One moment we are holding our loved one in our arms, and the next moment he or she is gone. One moment we are taking bread from Jesus’ hands, and the next moment we are betraying him for 30 pieces of silver. Palm Sunday, like no other time in our liturgical year, opens to us the infinitesimal space between joy and sorrow, jubilation and loss—the same strange space into which we are pulled by our own lives.

Why do we, who know that Jesus will once again be victorious on Easter Sunday, need to act out every year the ups and downs of Palm Sunday?  Because we cannot practice tragedy before it rips our lives in two. There is no dress rehearsal for disaster. We cannot practice our own deaths or the deaths of loved ones. But Jesus’ suffering and victory—his death as well as his resurrection—have been given to us. They are ours, just as, in Christ, our sufferings are now God’s. For those of us who are joyful, we are invited to practice giving God thanks in each moment for God’s blessings. For those of us who sorrow, we are invited to practice walking behind a Lord who will turn mourning into dancing, who will remove sackcloth and clothe us with joy. As we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem this day, let us remember that Hosanna is an Aramaic expression that once meant “Lord, save us!” yet also soon came to mean, “Lord, we praise you!” They are both part of the same song, our cry to the God who never leaves us. Hosanna, blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.

Ezekiel in the Swamp

         Once upon a time, there was a little brick church standing watch in the night. Members stayed awake worrying that one of the windows rattled dangerously when the stormy wind blew and that sometimes rain wafted in through the roof vents. They also tossed and turned when the old organ lost its voice. God’s faithful people gathered in the little church to whisper their prayers as they watched and waited--waited for growth, for God, for the dawn of new life. They stood together bravely in the world’s dark night, watching prayerfully as the cares of the world swirled around them.  One day, the hand of the Lord came upon them, and brought them out of their brick-steepled building by the spirit of the Lord and set them down in the middle of a swamp. It was full of broken things, things much more broken than their things at home: broken and discarded cars, tree limbs, tools, and houses. God gave them a tour of the broken things; there were very many discarded pieces of people’s lives lying in that swamp, and they were beginning to rot. The Lord said to them: “People, can these broken things sustain life?” They answered, “O Lord God, how are we supposed to know that? It sure doesn’t look like it.” Then God said to them, “Prophecy to these rotting things, and say to them, “O rotting things, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God: ‘I will surround you with my spirit, and you shall indeed sustain life. I will put paint on you and hold you together with nails and caulk and spackle. I will scrub you clean and make foundations out of your mud piles. I will breathe on you and you shall become a place of life, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’

So the people from the little parish prophesied as they had been commanded, and as they prophesied, suddenly there was a thudding of hammers and a buzzing of saws. The people looked up from their work, and there was paint on the walls that had been broken and cut grass in the yards that had been weeds. But there was still no life in the swamp. Then God said to the people, “Prophecy to the wind of change, to the life-giving breath of God, and say to the breath: ‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon what is broken, that it may live.’” They prophesied as they were commanded, and the people who lived among the broken things began to share their stories and their faith and their pain with the people from the little parish, and change rumbled beneath their feet. Everyone looked deep into the soul of the other, and God’s spirit came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then God said to them, “Listen, these broken things are like the people of God. They say, ‘Our structures are rotten, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: I am going to rip away the broken structures that bind you and bring you up from your graves, O my people; I will once again make you the community that you are called to be. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil, in your own homes, and your water will be clean and your children will go to good schools; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,’ says the Lord.