John 8:
1-7
April 5, 2009
John 4: 7-26
John 14: 1-2, 12, 20
FIVE HOSANNAS FOR JESUS
FROM THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
On that first Palm Sunday there was a great crowd that welcomed Jesus as he entered the ancient City of Jerusalem. They waved their palm branches and they shouted, "Hosanna", a Hebrew word that basically was a shout of exclamation, a way of praising God for what Jesus meant to them.
And here, I would like you to imagine that you're a member of that crowd. Each one of us has his or her own particular reason for shouting "Hosanna"; we all have our own list of things in the life and spirit and teachings of Jesus that we think are worthy of praise.
Following the service today, as is our custom on Palm Sunday, we'll all go outside for our closing benediction, and then following the benediction, I will invite us all to shout "hosanna", and to do so, not because were commemorating something that happened a long time ago but rather because the life and teachings of Jesus are as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago.
And so this morning, in this sermon, I'd like to share with you a few vignettes, a few passages from scripture, a few stories about Jesus and the spirit that he exemplified that give me my own reasons for shouting "hosanna". My reasons may not be the same as yours, and that's ok, but I hope that in delineating my own, this might lead you to consider what for you in the life and teachings of Jesus is worthy of saying, "hosanna."
So, here goes my own 5 reasons for shouting "hosanna." Now, I have to say, in putting my list together I was hard pressed to come up with only 5 reasons, and so I have limited myself by focusing on only one of the gospels, the Gospel of John, and even with this limitation, there are many other things I would have liked to have added to my list. But these are at least 5 of my reasons for saying, "Hosanna."
My first stop would be the 8th chapter of John, the place where Jesus finds himself standing in between a hostile and very self-righteous mob and a poor frightened woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. It's telling and significant that all the fervor and indignation was focused on the woman and not the man and of course my assumption is that it takes two to be caught in the act of adultery -- but such was the injustice and the cultural bias of that time, and the weight of the law, that is the "bible", the Torah was clearly on the side of the angry mob. Not Jesus and not the woman. According to the law, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, and the only thing stopping them was this man of conscience by the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus could have stepped aside; he could have offered any number of rationalizations, as we all sometimes do "I have to choose my battles." "It's not good for my image if I align myself too closely with a known sinner, and after all the bible does say that such sinners should be punished, and so who am I to stand in the way of what the bible says." "And besides, there are bigger fish to fry, and I need to marshal my resources and not get bogged down trying to defend this defenseless sinner."
Jesus could have opted for any of these excuses, but I love Jesus and this morning I say "Hosanna" to Jesus because he held his ground, standing in between a helpless sinner on one side and an angry self-righteous mob on the other. Furthermore, I love and I say "hosanna" to the way in which he defused this explosive situation. Rather than engage in polemics, rather than playing a game of biblical one up-man-ship with this crowd, pointing out to them biblical proof texts, other biblical passages that mitigated against their self-righteousness; instead he held up a mirror, a verbal mirror if you will saying to them, "he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."
And with that, one by one, they all put down their stones and walked away, and I'm sure one could have built a New England stone wall out of all the stones that were left behind. And then, he said to the woman, "go, and sin no more."
My next stop in the Gospel of John would be the 4th chapter, in my estimation one of the most remarkable stories in the bible, the story of Jesus' conversation with a woman from Samaria.
Jesus was traveling from one place to another and he had to pass through the land of Samaria and so being thirsty he stopped by a place called Jacob's well and as he was sitting there, a Samaritan woman came and Jesus asked her to give him a drink.
Now, to fully appreciate this story, there are several things we need to keep in mind. First of all, Jesus was a Jew and Jews and Samaritans didn't like each other very much. Samaritans were looked down upon as 2nd class citizens, and we need to understand that hospitality, the giving and receiving of hospitality, was and is a very important thing in that part of the world.
And so for Jesus a Jew to ask for hospitality from a Samaritan was, in and of itself, something quite radical, an act of reconciliation. It was a way of honoring their community, as if to say, "you have something to offer. I am in need of your hospitality."
Furthermore, of course, Jesus was a man and in that particular culture, it wasn't respectable for Jesus to be having this casual conversation with a woman, and especially a woman from Samaria, and especially a woman who was divorced, and especially a woman who had been married and divorced 5 times, and especially a woman who was now living with a man who was not her husband.
I love Jesus for crossing over all those boundaries and barriers. I love and I say hosanna to one who says, "I am here, and I represent the love of God, and I am thirsty and I am in need of your hospitality. I love and I say hosanna to one who was always trying to show us that we all have something to offer, that no one is outside the circumference of God, that Humanity is in need of Divinity, but also, and here is where Jesus really distinguished himself Divinity is also very much in need of Humanity, no matter how broken that Humanity may seem to be. That was the wonderful good news that Jesus shared with all those who had come to think of themselves as failures, "I am thirsty; I am in need of your hospitality."
Furthermore, I love the theological conversation that Jesus had with this woman from Samaria. In those days maybe in these days as well theologians only had such conversations with other theologians. One had to have the proper theological credentials to enter into such a dialogue, but Jesus was forever engaging even the most ordinary of citizen in conversations that probed the mystery of the universe.
And so it was with this woman from Samaria. As they drank from Jacob's well, they talked about how and where one should worship God. Being a Samaritan, the woman said that her ancestors had always worshipped God on top the mountain, Mt. Gerazim. And Jesus, being Jewish, said that the Temple in Jerusalem had always been of great importance to his ancestors.
This difference had always been a cause for friction between these two cultures, and what Jesus said next might have been offered as a paper to be read at a Theological Convention with only very learned and very important theologians in attendance, but I love how this conversation occurred as these two people from two different cultures, one a man and the other a woman sat down to enjoy a cool cup of water on a hot summer day.
Jesus said, "yes, these are the differences between our two cultures, and isn't it a shame that we are divided in such a way. My people insist that you can't be any closer to God than in the Temple in Jerusalem and your people insist that if you want to be really close to God you have to climb this mountain, but believe me, the day is coming when neither the temple in Jerusalem nor this mountain will be so terribly and divisively important, but the true worshippers will worship wherever they are, "in spirit and in truth."
I love and I say "hosanna" to the way in which Jesus transcended so many of his biblical, cultural, and theological identities and limitations. I love the universalism of his spirit. I love the fact that he was forever pushing the envelope, pushing out the boundaries and frontiers of peoples' sense of identity, always trying to shake people free of their tribalism, helping them to see that there is value and there is enlightenment and there is epiphany in those who live and worship in a different place and in a different way, that Jesus was at home in the temple in Jerusalem and the synagogue in Nazareth, but also, for him, worship, communion with God was wherever and whenever, there was spirit and there was truth. And to that I would say, "Hosanna!
Moving on now to my 3rd Hosanna, I would call to your remembrance what Jesus said in John chapter 14:
In my Father's house are many mansions.
This is the King James Version, which, in this instance, I much prefer to the Revised Standard Version, "In my Father's House are many rooms." This is ok too, but I would prefer to think of God's House as being so large that many different mansions would fit within it.
Sometimes, you know, we ministers like to speak of our church, our church building, the place in which we worship as being "The House of God." And if any of our children do or say something inappropriate, we sometimes reprimand them, saying something like, "this is the House of God. We don't do those sorts of things in the House of God," which is sort of a peculiar message to give our kids, for it's as if we're saying, it's alright to do all those wicked sorts of things as long as you're not in "God's House."
But the other thing I don't like about this is that to speak of this as being God's House is too presumptuous. As beautiful as this building is, and as much as we love this place of worship, this is but one little tiny closet in the House of God.
God's House is humongous, large enough to contain all humanity, large enough to house sweat lodges and mosques and temples and synagogues and cathedrals and chapels and ashrams and a congregational meetinghouse as well. In God's House there's room for us all, and that for me is worthy of a few hosannas.
My 4th Hosanna is more abstract and more philosophical. One of the things that I love about Jesus is the way in which he challenged not only the way people lived, the way in which they interacted with one another and the values they exemplified, but also I love the way in which he challenge the way people thought, for it was as if he knew that if you could change the way that a person thought, you could change everything else in that person's life, and in the process of doing so, maybe change the world as well.
In that same chapter in which he said, "In my father's house are many mansions", he also said this, one of the strangest, one of the most esoteric, but I think, one of the most important verses in the bible. This is what he said,
In that day, you will know
that I am in the father
and you in me and I in you. .
Far too often we are all far too individualistic and narcissistic in our way of thinking, and as I have shared before, sometimes I think sin is spelled, "e-g-o."
We need to reexamine, indeed, we need to reimagine ourselves and see that the boundaries of our identities are not as sharp-edged as we think they are, that everything and everyone in God's creation is blessedly interconnected and interrelated, that at the very heart of God's creation, the creator and creation are wonderfully intertwined and if we see things as they really are, if we look past all of our subject-object dichotomies, in "that day" we will finally come to the enlightenment that Jesus lived and taught:
In that Day, you will know
that I am in the Father
and you in me and I in you.
I say "hosanna" to this for it serves as a challenge to my own narcissism and egocentricity.
For me, the 14th chapter of John must be pretty important, because I see that my 5th "hosanna" comes from this same chapter. There are many more "hosannas" that I could offer for the life and teachings of Jesus, but I'll close with this one from the 12th verse of the 14th chapter of John.
Jesus is meeting with his disciples, and he is sharing with them that he will not be with them very much longer, that the political and religious authorities are bearing down on him and that there will come a time when they, the disciples, will have to carry on with the ministry in his absence. You can imagine how anxious and unworthy and incompetent the disciples must have felt.
Jesus had done so many wonderful things, so many miracles, so many expressions of love and grace how on earth would they be able to keep this thing afloat in his absence?
But Jesus says this to these ordinary, extraordinary disciples, and by implication he says this to you and me as well.
Truly, truly, I say to you,
he who believes in me
will also do the works that I do; and even greater works than these will he do
These are truly extraordinary, even miraculous words. Jesus is saying that if we are true to the spirit that God has given us, and if we work together as we should, then we will be able to do even greater things than what Jesus was able to do.
In other words, this was Jesus' way of saying, "thank you for saying Hosanna to me, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can say "hosanna" to you. You have what it takes. You are a child of God, and if you take the love that I have shared with you, there is nothing you cannot do. You also will have the spiritual fortitude to stand in between the forces of self-righteousness and those so desperately in need of God's love. You also will find it within yourself to be a champion for those who yearn for justice. You also can take the message you have heard from me, that in God's House there are many different mansions, there is room for everyone and no one will be left out in the cold, for no one is beyond the reach of God's love. You can take this message and spread it throughout the world. You also will have the courage of your convictions to speak the truth with love, and you also will have the humility to be a conduit by which grace and forgiveness can come more fully into the world.
It is as if Jesus was saying to his disciples and also to us, "thank you for saying "hosanna" to me, but please know that I am with you in spirit, and if you listen to that spirit, that inner spirit, you will be able to do even greater works than what I was able to do." As hard as that is to believe, that surely is something to which I would want to say, "hosanna!"
Amen.
David W. Good
Old Lyme, Connecticut