By the Way: Shouts of ‘Hosanna’ will ring Sunday
By Medicine Hat News on March 24, 2018.
This Sunday Christians remember Palm Sunday around the world churches will ring with shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”Children will parade with Palm Leaves as we recount the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Palm Sunday gets its name from the fact that people believed the King should not travel on the ground, so the people spread their cloaks in front of Jesus, and when there were not enough cloaks they stripped the leaves from the Palm trees. This coming of Jesus is a big deal for first century Jews who were living in hope of a Messiah, a prophet like Moses, a king like David. Here in this one moment they thought deliverance had come. Yet we know that once the parade had gone much like in our time we only see and feel glimpses of the revelry that was. In the week we dare to call Holy that we begin with parade we see at its end another parade. This parade is very different it is led with a cross along the Via Dolorosa, The Way of Sorrows. It end at Golgotha the place of the skull not in hope but in death. There are not enough street sweepers in the world to clean up the mess of the Crucifixion. However in the midst of the death, and the betrayal, and the seeming absence of God once the temple curtain is torn. We can still hear in the distance “Hosanna!” We can call to mind the faith as small as mustard seed and trust in the promises of God. We can acknowledge that God is in all things even the messes we create, in our broken hearts, and our broken relationships. God invites us at times to lament because let’s face it, sometimes life sucks and in our world of quick fixes and easy answers, hardly anyone sees any good in weeping and donning sackcloth and ashes. Yet from lament and loss can come a lot growth and change as the words of oft used hymn for funerals in my denomination proclaims “In our end is our beginning, in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity, in our death, a resurrection, at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” Maybe, just maybe, deliverance has come after all. Praise be! Rev. Dave Pollard is minister at Fifth Avenue Memorial United Church. 6-5
