Listen

Many people spread out their clothes on the road while others spread branches cut from the fields. Those in front of him and those following were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessings on the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest!”

Mark 11:8-10

Think

Hosanna, it seems to me, is such a specific word. We tend to save it for a once-a-year celebration, complete with palm branches and crowds, and if we’re lucky, an actual donkey! We approach Palm Sunday with not only a vivid picture in our head of how it was but also how it should be again this year.

That’s the risk we take in ritualizing the Bible story, or in dramatizing our worship, especially in these last weeks leading up to Easter. We risk becoming re-enactors, play-acting events from millennia ago, rather than watching and waiting for Christ to come and save us here and now.

That is, after all, what “hosanna” means: come and save us. If we’re honest, we can each name several areas of our lives that we need Jesus to reconcile, to repair, or to rebuild. When we shout “hosanna” this year, let us put those situations front and center in our hearts and minds. Let us call to Jesus to come and save again.

Peter Hanson

Pray

Help me welcome you with joy and expectation, Lord Jesus. Help me to call on you to come and save me in the situations of my actual life. Bless me by your presence. Amen.

Go

God calls you to shout out loud that the love and mercy of Jesus never end.

Go with strength and courage.

Go with a new “Hosanna” on your lips.

Go, be a blessing in the name of the Lord.