Hollow Hosannas

 

 On this Palm Sunday, many churches will take palm leaves and recite, "Hossana in the highest!" as the crowds in Jerusalem did when Jesus on the First Palm Sunday rode in on a Donkey. The problem is that these hosannas can ring rather hollow, for in a short time parishioners will find themselves as those same Hosanna crowds crying "Crucify him!" "God why did you let this happen?" "God's Will Stinks!" You see we are fickle people, one minute Hosannah and Hallelujah, the next we are saying Hit Him and How Dare He takes this from me! I am not saying that our fraility, and when we are lost in the fog of despair and loss that it is wrong to be honest about how we feel, in many cases people do lash out at God, the problem is on Palm Sunday when all seems well we cry "Hosanna," but when our Good Friday comes, we curse the One we were laying down palms before and beat him with palms of our hands, rather folding them in prayer. 

Hollow Hosannas come from a heart that does not have deep roots of our Lord, "The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away." (Matthew 13:20-21). On Palm Sunday the Rocky Grounded Heart shouts Hosanna and rejoices, but when persecutions and hardships come, they on Good Friday find themselves like the Apostle Peter denying they know Jesus or worse they become antagonistic towards their Lord. I shall be bold and say that in the United States and anywhere the false Prosperity Gospel has touched, people run the risk of having the rocky soil hearts and that when persecution and tribulations come, they will falter and burn their palm leaves, and bay for Christianity to die just as Christ died. 

The problem with the Church is that people have taught that the Christian life and walk is a perpetual Palm Sunday Celebration and Feeding of the Five Thousand, they forget that the apostles teach we are to share in Christ's sufferings, "Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." (Romans 8:17-18). To be an heir means that we don't just get to wave pretty Palm branches, it means we have to carry a cross, "Jesus said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23). There is a reason the symbol of Christianity is a cross and not the palm tree! The symbol of Christ's suffering is the true emblem of what it means to be a Christian, and the hollow hosannas on this Sunday will not sustain us in the trials to come. Life is a storm, "Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst! For I will do mine!" (The Count of Monte Cristo, 2002). 

Are you ready to go beyond hollow hosannas? To remember that Jesus' Triumphal Entry over those Palm Leaves was so that He Could be Tried, Flogged, and then Crucified outside the City. Remember what the Author of Hebrews said, "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come." (Hebrews 13:" (Hebrews 13:12-14). The Palm Leaves are suppose to the path upon which we walk to Calvary. We need to understand, to remember what Palm Sunday is truly about, its not Tropical Festival with coconuts, it is the prelude to the Center of our Faith, Christ Crucified and Risen. Amen.