Blake Shipman
When I was a senior in college the NBC live performance of Jesus Christ Super Star (JCSS henceforth) aired the week before Holy Week. John Legend played Jesus, Alice Cooper was Herod, there was a great pit band, this show had it all. Upon their depiction of the entry into Jerusalem the gathered crowds proclaimed happily, “Hosannah heysanna sanna sanna hosanna heysanna hosanna!” This scene always strikes me as uneasy, here we have a group of people happily parading through the streets praising Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem proclaiming this word Hosanna. Here we have a group of people proclaiming that they need Jesus’s intercession, but they are making it known through the happiest song and dance number I’ve ever seen. The two scenes just don’t add up.
Hosanna is a Hebrew word that made its way into Greek and now in transliterated into English. It can be used one of two ways, a cheer of elation or a cry for help. Reading the latter definition this scene takes on a more desperate tone. The crowds of people gathered around Jesus and cried for immediate salvation, they cry out for deliverance from the oppression they faced daily at the hands of the empire, they cry out for Jesus to come and change their lives for the better, cries that seem all too familiar in our world today. In our world war rages in Ukraine, the divide between the impoverished and the rich grows wider and wider, COVID-19 continues to rage the world over while the “developed” world moves past the pandemic. The cries of hosannah to almighty God grow louder and louder as our situation grows more desperate. Our shouts, our cries of deliverance, we raise before God unceasing, and God hears our call.
In the verses of Hosannah from JCSS the Pharisees demanded the crowds to scatter, but Jesus informs them that it cannot be done. Their cries to him cannot be silenced, they shall be heard and they shall be delivered. In our plight upon the earth this is most certainly true for us
as well. We take solace in the fact that the Son of God, fully human fully divine, was sent down to live and dwell among us. We take solace in the fact that this Jesus of Nazareth heard our pleas and upon the cross took those pleas upon himself and delivered us from the grasp of sin and death. It is by his death we die to sin and death and it is by his resurrection that we are risen to newness of life.
On this Palm Sunday as we look at the bleak state of the world around us we, much like our counterparts from the gospel of John, find ourselves crying out to God, “Hosannah!”, and just like our counterparts from the gospel of John we know that God will hear us and deliver us from the iniquity we face. A blessed Holy Week lies before us. Keep proclaiming Hosannah.
