Hosanna for What? (Palm Sunday)

On Palm Sunday, today's passage deals with the scene of Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a donkey. At the time the crowds spread their cloaks on the road, waved palm branches, and cried out ‘Hosanna.’ This word was not simply praise but an earnest plea meaning ‘Please save us,’ yet the salvation they hoped for was to escape Roman oppression and gain worldly power. By contrast, the salvation Jesus truly brought was to give life to souls by dealing with human sin and separation from God.

The sermon points to the gap between the crowd's expectations and Jesus' mission, and asks whether we today are repeating a similar mistake. We live paying more attention to success and prosperity on this earth than to the salvation of our souls, which God wants to give us. Pointing out a situation in which thanksgiving and life are separated, so that God's grace has no effect on our actual lives, it urges us to hold up a mirror and see how far our thinking and outlook have drifted from God.

We must follow the path of humility and obedience that Jesus walked to bear the cross. Yet we still want high positions and try to live chasing the satisfaction of the flesh. When we realise that our hearts toward God can change as easily as turning over a hand, what choice will we make?