A sermon preached on April 13, 2003, by the Rev. Deana Frances Dudley

at Christos Metropolitan Community Church, Toronto, ON

I have a friend who, out of her own lived experience, has learned a lot of sayings that she applies to her life, and I’ve found some of them to be applicable to mine, as well. One of them is this:  "An expectation is nothing but a planned resentment."

I’ve found that this is often true. Sometimes, we get this notion in our heads about how things OUGHT to be, and when they turn out NOT to be that way, we resent it. Now, the crowd in Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday had a notion of how things ought to be. Jerusalem was filled with people right before the Passover holiday. And pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem for the Passover feast would be particularly conscious of God as the one who liberates the people. Passover is about liberation. It’s about freedom from oppression. It’s about justice. It’s about redemption.

You know the story.... how God delivered the Israelites from slavery and oppression in Egypt. And that miracle was celebrated by the Jewish people when they were wandering in the wilderness, and when they came into the land of Canaan, and even when they were in exile in Babylon, and when they were oppressed by the Romans in Jesus’ day. And it’s still celebrated to this day. So, when they saw Jesus riding into town for the Passover celebration, they thought they knew what was going on.

They certainly knew what had been happening in their land for many years under Roman rule. Like the Israelites of old, they were enslaved and oppressed. And they expected that, like the Israelites of old, they would get a leader, someone like Moses or David, to lead them into victory over their oppressors. So they think that it’s clear to them what Jesus is planning to do – they think! On this day, by riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, in fulfillment of the words of the prophet Zechariah, they thought they saw Jesus, proclaiming himself to be the long-awaited Messiah and claiming the holy city of Jerusalem for his throne. This was going to be a Passover that they could REALLY celebrate. A deliverance as in the days of old.

So they sang praises, and they pulled out all the stops. And part of the traditional Passover celebration is singing something called the Great Hallel. Hallel means "praise" in Hebrew. You already knew that. You say it almost every week. Hallelujah. Praise God.

So part of the Passover was to sing praises to God, and the traditional praise songs were the Psalms, specifically Psalms 113 through 118. Psalm 118 in particular is a Psalm of the community, the congregation giving thanks for a great deliverance from the oppressing enemies that surrounded the people. So, in addition to it being traditional for the Passover, it would have seemed kind of the natural thing to sing when you’re expecting God to deliver you from your oppressor.

And in Psalm 118, we find another word we recognize. We’re told in Mark’s gospel that the people sang and shouted "Hosanna!" Hosanna is from the Hebrew hoshienu, which probably came out hoshana in Aramaic, which is what the crowd likely spoke. So we get Hosanna. And it means "save us!" Sometimes, I think folks think it’s a word of praise. And it’s NOT, actually. Basically, it means "Help!" Save us. They hoped that the Jesus would save them, help them, by casting the oppressors out of their land.

It was a time of celebration, but also a time of anticipation and supplication, a time when people felt that they might receive a new life. And they would, but not necessarily in the way they expected. It was, indeed, to offer new life, that Jesus came. But God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. Our worship today recognizes this fact, and we rejoice in it. Blessed, indeed, be the one who comes in the name of our God.

Only Jesus is aware of the impending failure of expectations. There’s going to be a disagreement between Jesus and the crowd – Jesus knows it, but the crowd won’t figure it out till later in the week – a disagreement about deeply held truths. Jesus has committed his life to a truth that’s fundamentally at odds with that to which those who hold power in his world are committed. His truth and their truth are going to collide. They contradict one another. They’re mutually exclusive. So, what do you think? Is the crowd setting itself up for a planned resentment?

Well, they certainly had an expectation. This bunch of happy campers fully believed that Jesus was sent by God, but they misapprehended entirely the purpose for which he was sent. The glorious reign of their expectation was very different from the reign Jesus meant to found. His warfare was not with the legions of Rome. Rather his warfare was with principalities and powers a thousand-fold stronger: the demons of hatred and jealousy,... of exclusion and violence,... of lust for money and power,... of greed and selfishness,... of paralysing anxiety and fear. This is not what they expected. It may be what they needed. It may be what WE need. But it’s not what they expected.

Those of you who are on the Internet, may at some point have gotten this prayer, which has been making the rounds for a few years. It makes a delightful change from all the spam and ads for how to spy on your neighbours, and how to enlarge your whatever, and how to make $1000 a day sitting on your butt at the computer. I don’t know who to give credit to for it, but it goes like this:

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve

I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health, that I might do greater things

I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.

I asked for riches, that I might be happy

I was given poverty, that I might be wise.

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of people,

I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life

I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I asked for -- but everything I needed.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

And I am, among all people, most richly blessed!

So... If God is about doing the unexpected, what CAN we legitimately expect from God, without our expectation becoming that "planned resentment?" Well, when we say "Hosanna," I think we CAN legitimately expect God to save us. We just need to remember that God may bring that about in unexpected ways.

And on Palm Sunday, we see that there’s a precedent for that. The salvation that God brought about in Jesus Christ was salvation through tribulation, not through triumph. So even though the crowd was in a celebratory mood that first Palm Sunday, Jesus knew there was a cross in his future. And he knew a truth that was so deep that he committed his very life it: that those who are the least in the eyes of the world are closest to the heart of God,... that where there is the greatest suffering there God is in the midst of it,... that there is at the centre of all creation a love which can draw out of us a commitment to embody a different way to live and a different way to die.

And he was so committed to that truth, that he spent his life declaring and embodying that unmerited and unconditional, all-embracing love of God. And when I say "spent his life," I mean, he spent it... exchanged it in his death... living out that truth even as he faced the reality of his own dying, knowing that God was with him even then. And by living out that truth, Jesus also proclaimed that there are worse things than death in the world, and that living in fear is near the top of the list.

You know, I preached on fear the other week. You know what some of mine are. That fear of snakes. Well, I have to admit that I also have a fear of failure. And that’s the most paralyzing fear of all for me. When I get caught up in my fear of failure, I can’t get anything done. Because if you don’t start anything, you can’t finish it, and if it never gets finished, it can’t be judged.

And I talked about how facing our fears is the way to be healed of them. That was the truth Jesus proclaimed to his disciples, proclaims to US, as we seek to follow after him. As we follow the story of Christ this week, beyond Palm Sunday, when things begin to turn bad for Jesus, when he struggles at Gethsemane, when he suffers torture and death in the systemic violence of his opponents and oppressors, we’ll see that he lives out a way for us to follow, to face our fears and be healed. He taught his disciples not to fear. If they were going to let fear run their lives, then fear would be their god.

But that wasn’t the only choice they had. Instead of surrendering themselves to fear they could trust the God whose truth Christ embodied. They could deny the panic-stricken voice inside of them, the one that kept telling them to play it safe, and listen instead for that other voice, the one that said, "follow me and fear not."

I don’t know about you, but my experience is that my own courage and commitment to following God kind of wavers when I let my fears take over. And I suspect, that each of us has something of which we are deathly afraid, something that keeps us from committing ourselves to follow, to enter our own Jerusalems.

It may be the fear of standing up for something we believe in, or telling the truth about who we are to people who are going to damn us for it. Maybe it’s the fear of tackling a memory that still has the power to suck the breath right out of us. Or maybe it’s a fear of admitting an addiction that’s eating away at our life. Maybe it’s the fear of death, of someone we love, or even our own. It’s hard to believe in God more than we believe in our fears.

But remember.... Hosanna.... hoshienu.... save us, God. We can expect, we can RELY, on God. We can rely as the Israelites who were delivered from Egypt. And we can rely as Christ relied, knowing, and living out, the truth that God is with us, in the joy and in the suffering, and in the coming resurrection. A God to whom we can bring not just our Hallelujahs, but our Hosannas also. So blessed indeed, is this one who comes in the name of our God.