Hosanna

April 2, 2023 

First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen 

Written and delivered by: Rev. Ashley Bair 

Title: Hosanna 

Scripture: Matthew 21: 1-11 

Prayer - God of the unpredictable, rest with us here today as we ponder your story. Bring us closer to you in this time of holy reflection. Amen.  

I have trouble watching standup comedy, or any comedy performance live. I just do. I can barely watch it even after its streaming on tv. I tried going to a comedy festival with a few friends a couple years ago in San Francisco, it was live comedy literally all day. They were loving it. I was surviving.  

See, I am a Pisces, and my personality is an Enneagram type 4. Which basically means my emotional status and empathy radar is always off the charts. And as much as I think comedy is an essential balm for the soul, live comedy always makes me uncomfortable. Someone or some people are up there, on display, everyone else is watching, there’s pressure building to perform. We don't know what's going to happen. Are people going to laugh with them? Or at them? What if nobody laughs? My heart is on edge. 

Comedy is one of the hardest, most daring things to do. Like all art forms, it relies on vulnerability and conflict. I recognize that part of what is necessary for comedy to succeed is actually alive in that tension. Because if we think about it, comedy is at its core, the most beautiful and courageous way to approach conflict. Every good comedian reacts to something that is hard to talk about in any other way. It finds a way for us to enter a discourse with a little humor, making it more approachable. Not just in a way of comfort (yeah, sometimes there's that old saying, if we can't cry about it, we laugh about it), as a way of truth telling.  

Comedians can highlight some of the most challenging things. Relationship conflict, workplace conflict, societal conflict. All the -isms and oppression that we face in this world have found some home in comedy in a way that embraces people, holds them and their experiences, and uses levity to bring truth to us in a way that can't be done anywhere else. Getting us to heal ourselves with laughter, saving us through truth telling; humor is more than what we hear, its power lies in the subtext. And it doesn’t just happen. Ask any comedian how many hours of writing and practice and planning goes into a comedy performance. It is intentional. It has a message. It is a tool to tell a deeper story.  

Humor is serious stuff. It exposes hypocrisy, vanity, challenges falsehoods and prejudice, and, in our hour of need, lessens the pain. When the comedy hits us right, we understand that there is more going on. The comic is making a statement. When I'm at the precipice of that maybe that’s why I'm uncomfortable. I know with good comedy, there has to be conflict.  

It’s likely also why every year on Palm Sunday, I find myself uncomfortable. Because the story is ripe with tension, and Jesus coming into Jerusalem riding on a donkey is laughable. Jesus’ palm waving, branch laying, donkey riding city entrance is often described as “choreographic street theater.” It wasn’t that Jesus couldn’t have gone into Jerusalem without the donkey, he planned it. It was intentional. It had a message. It was a tool to tell a deeper story. It was about the subtext.  

New Testament scholar Marcus Borg has spent his career studying Jesus’ last week and has a book with the same name. He explains that during this time in Jerusalem, the Holy City was occupied by the Romans. And every year, the Roman governor of Judea would ride up to Jerusalem from his coastal residence to be present in the city for Passover — the Jewish festival that swelled Jerusalem's population from its usual 50,000 to at least 200,000. 

The governor, at this time it was Pontius Pilate, would come in his imperial majesty to remind the Jewish pilgrims that Rome was in charge. Here is Borg’s description of Governor Pontius Pilate's imperial procession:  "A visual [display] of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold.  Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums.  The swirling of dust. The eyes of the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful."  

On the same day that Pontius Pilate is planning his great imperial procession into Jerusalem, comes Jesus and his crew. It feels like Spaceballs reacting to Star Wars, Hot Shots to Top Gun, Shawn of the Dead to Dawn of the Dead, Robin Hood Men in Tights, Airplane, Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  

I remember taking a film class in college where the professor required us to watch the uncomfortable humor in Blazing Saddles, highlighting that the humor used was an intentional response to the racism found in the Western films made before 1970, and probably continuing after. This moment in scripture feels a bit like that. After Pontius Pilate enters, here comes Jesus with his crew. Plotting his counter-entrance. Okay, you two go to grab some donkeys; you all, lay out some cloaks and branches. Here we go. It’s a comedy. The crowds were gathering around him, likely very curious, thinking: what is he doing? Some of us have heard about this guy, what’s he going to do now? Look at this foolery: Pontius came in on a steed, Jesus is wobbling in on a donkey.  

And then, the moment happened. The same moment that happens to us when the comedy hits us right. When we know the subtext; we know what’s really going on. Jesus was making a statement. Those who were watching were asking, “Who is this?” While those who were following were spreading the word: this is Jesus. And that changed the show.  

The Roman show was about greatness, might, material and exceptionalism. Jesus, on the other hand, aligns himself with a different kind of value. A “greatness” that is not measured by wars won, lands occupied, strength shown through fear, domination, or wealth. Jesus, the one who has made a name for himself by healing the sick, eating with the outcasts, lifting up the poor, teaching on streets and hills, has pushed against every tradition that has become mandatory at the expense of compassion, who had called himself of God (as people who have of Pontius Pilate) is now meeting the empire face to face in his choreographed street theater.  

We know that Jesus wants to display a different kind of “reign” that isn’t really a reign at all, where the very things denigrated by the empire’s values are revealed to be the most powerful sources of life: Humility. Compassion. Service. Creating communities of belonging. Practicing courage and love before oppressive powers. Jesus taught that these are the ways God delivers people and when everyday people commit to these acts, participating no longer in that which destroys, the empires values will crumble. Jesus' reaction to the governor’s entry was an act that said, what you think is great is really not great at all.  

Jesus redefines “greatness” through the lens of God. His ride through the city entices the crowd to, “come and look, come and hear, come and remember the greatness of God that turns power on its head. No wealth needed. No military needed. No ego involved. The greatness of God values all lives and is expressed in serving life and love…” And after the moment hit the crowd right, rather than greet Jesus with the resentful awe and fear that accompanied the governor, those around began crying out, Hosanna!  

“Hosanna.” Hosanna is a Greek translation for the Hebrew word Yasha, which means save, I pray... save us. “The hosannas of the people, Jewish scholar Amy-Jill Levine notes, harken to the hosannas of Psalm 118, which we read today. This is “one of the Psalms that pilgrims would sing as they came to Jerusalem.” “Save us, we beseech you, O God” is the translation. 

The cries of the people around Jesus are in a way not their own words. They are the re-telling of the pilgrims' story. They are a remembrance. They are a re-enactment of the Israelites being delivered from Egypt. They are the words of their ancestors, being spoken at this moment as a ritual of faith, freedom, and liberation that came from God for the people. And the words continue to feel so fresh. The cries, a prayer for their day, too. Watching Jesus react to the Roman governor would certainly elicit a cry for deliverance from Roman occupation, from economic struggle, from hunger and more. “Save us, O God.”  In Hosanna, the past becomes present and the pilgrims' words, their own.  

What they saw in Jesus’ ride was the promise of change that once came upon their ancestors, and now they pray for themselves. When we collectively remember this moment today, this story of Jesus vulnerably and courageously reacting to the forces of power - we too cry “hosanna!” We echo the words of those who bore witness to hope alongside Jesus - theirs an echo of the ones who hoped before. We repeat and remember as we engage in the ritual. Just like those under Roman occupation, our repetition takes on its own life. “Save us,” we cry and mean it.  

Save us, O God! From corruption,  

Save us, O God! From violence 

Save us, O God! from poverty, from racism, from every tradition that has become mandatory at the expense of compassion, from every destructive norm that rules our lands, our churches, our hearts.  

Hosanna, we cry, to the highest heaven. 

The shouts of Hosanna harken us to the pilgrims of the psalm and the crowd watching Jesus’ comedic relief. The Christ that rides in on a donkey, tree branches laid before him, palms waving. It’s a moment of purpose, of defiance, of making a powerful statement. The kind that only a humorous act like this could do. If this makes you a little uncomfortable, I’m with you. My Pisces heart is on edge. Though, it’s nice to know Jesus was funny and had good comedic timing.  

As we cry Hosanna, we remember those who came before us - their cries, their grief, their struggles - and we remember, too, the God who delivered them. Who took every opportunity to show vulnerability and courage. Who took every opportunity to side with those crying out. Christ is with us. This is our saving power. We are never without access to the very source of salvation we cry out for.  

I hope as we approach this Holy Week, we are opening ourselves to let the moment hit us right. That when we are shouting, hosanna in the highest heaven, we are looking for all the ways that God encounters us, not just the ones we expect. Amen.  

REFERENCES USED: 

Crossan, John Dominic, and Borg, Marcus J. The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem. United States, HarperCollins, 2007.  

Enfleshed Commentary on Matthew 21:1-11. Published on April 5, 2020.  

Levine, Amy-Jill. Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week. United States, Abingdon Press, 2018.