Hosanna! the people cried as Jesus made His way up the road to Jerusalem crowning Mount Zion. Those thousands of Jews gathered from all over the area, making their Passover pilgrimage, had heard about this miracle worker who raised the dead and healed the blind and fed thousands with a few loaves of bread.
Wasn’t he the one they were waiting for? There had been others and even more in the future, all claiming to be the One God had sent to bring the people of Israel back to a place of independence and relevance.
In the years before Christ’s birth, the desire for a savior grew along with the hated Roman rule. So no wonder the crowds who witnessed the signs and wonders Jesus performed, who heard His stories and teaching about the kingdom of God, looked to Him and expected Him to take the next step. They wanted Him to declare Himself, to rally an army or to call down God’s miraculous power and judgment against Israel’s enemies.
They wanted to be saved.
The problem was, they didn’t understand that their real need was the enemy within, not an enemy without.
So on that fateful day when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, the people were convinced their Messiah had come. They joined the parade of His followers, adding their cloaks to the path and waving palm branches as they would for a conquering hero. Because that’s exactly who they thought Jesus was. And they cried, Hosanna!
Save now!
And He did.
But no walls fell. No fire and brimstone. No miraculous defeat of the Roman forces.
Oh, sure, Jesus chased out the money changers from the temple. That was promising. But where was the judgment hurled against the Romans?
What the people missed amid their cries of Hosanna was that the judgment they looked for was the judgment Jesus took upon Himself. The innocent one, who knew no sin became sin for us.
The people looking for victory missed the victory over death that Christ’s own death secured.
The crowds were right to cry, Save now! That’s what Jesus came to do. But the spiritual kingdom of the Christ looked far different from the one they expected.
His kingdom included Gentiles and extended for centuries into the future. In fact, it makes possible everlasting life. And it’s built on forgiveness, mercy, compassion, love. Not revenge, judgment, exclusion.
But the people didn’t know that then. They cried Hosanna because they wanted a hero. God’s man who they’d read about in the prophets and the psalms. And this Jesus was clearly from God, wasn’t he? I mean, no sinner would be able to cleanse a leper or make the lame walk.
So cry Hosanna, they did. And they were right, because Jesus does save. They just didn’t understand what He wanted to save them from, not then, and not in the days that followed when the crowd became a mob instead and started chanting, Crucify him, crucify him.
Well, today we can see the irony. Those first century Jews were saying the right thing, but they didn’t understand what it meant. We understand, but are we still saying the right thing?
