The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens - wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
(Isaiah 50:4-9a)
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I’ve read that the most important (or at least the most powerful) sense that human beings possess is the sense of smell. Different scents have the ability to touch us to the very depths of our beings in ways that our other senses usually can’t. Different scents bring back memories and affect our emotional state. They can change how we’re feeling in an instant. And I’ve read as well that studies have shown that the most powerful scent there is - the one scent that can change us and our mood and our emotional state most dramatically and most quickly - is the smell of baking bread. For some people (especially those over a certain age, who grew up in an era when baking bread rather than buying bread was the norm) the smell of bread baking transports them back into the carefree and happy days of childhood, when things were simple and responsibilities were few and there was always someone to take care of you. Baking bread is becoming a common activity for people with mild forms of dementia. It stimulates their memory and calms them. Monica Heltemes is a former occupational therapist who worked with patients suffering from various forms of dementia and who founded a company called Mind Start that adapts products to make them easier for people with dementia to use. She’s a huge believer in the power of baking bread, and she writes that
the sensory wonderfulness (probably not a word!), comes after the bread comes out of the oven. Smelling the wonderful aroma. Feeling the warm bread. Tasting fresh bread. This again, can be enjoyed by people at all levels of cognitive loss.
If certain scents could be so powerful, I started to wonder if certain words might not have just as much power - especially words that we use that are connected to faith and to certain occasions.
There are a lot of words associated with faith. I think of words like “grace,” or “amen,” or “hallelujah,” as being words that have a particular meaning to faith. As a preacher I stand firm on the importance of words in faith! But are there single words (as opposed to the generic words I just mentioned) that relate not just to faith but immediately bring to mind for us a particular and powerful image about the faith? Something we say that can “... sustain the weary with a word,” as the prophet Isaiah put it? I think there’s at least one: “Hosanna.” “Hosanna to the Son of David, Hosanna to the King of kings!”
The words we read earlier from Isaiah’s prophecy have long been linked by Christians to the events of Palm Sunday. When you read that “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting,” you can’t help but hear Jesus. I’m not suggesting necessarily that when Isaiah wrote them they were a portent of things to come. Many people think that biblical prophecy is about predicting the future, but really biblical prophecy is about the present - and how to respond to present circumstances in ways that are faithful and that give glory to God. Isaiah 50 was written during the Jewish exile in Babylon, so in that context the passage is telling the Jewish people that in spite of the hardships they were facing they would have to continue to move forward - ever forward - because God was leading them forward even as they faced their Babylonian oppressors. And once the exile was over, and the Jews were given permission to return to Jerusalem, this passage went with them. It was recited in the worship of the people, along with a number of Psalms written during that period of upheaval and uncertainty - and as the people prepared to offer the readings in their worship, they were usually preceded with a cry of “Hosanna!”
“Hosanna” is an important word. We know it’s important because it’s been preserved rather than translated in three of the four Gospels. It had a very special meaning to the people of Jesus’ day, so much so that followers of Jesus still use it today even though we no longer speak the language of Jesus. “Hosanna” was either a cry of celebration over God’s deliverance of the people, or a plea for God to deliver the people. It means “save us, we pray!” or “please, Lord, save us!” In the Bible, it’s only used in the Gospels, and only in connection with the events that we call Palm Sunday - Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem for the last time. By addressing the word (which is a prayer) to Jesus, the people were saying something very important about their understanding of who this man was who had just appeared in their midst. “Hosanna” is a prayer asking for a deliverance that the people believe is coming; “hosanna” is a prayer celebrating a deliverance that the people believe has now come; “hosanna,” addressed to Jesus, is a recognition that Jesus is the one through whom God is present and through whom God is working to bring about this deliverance.
According to Matthew’s Gospel, the crowds cried out “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” The people knew that something dramatic was happening. That one word is an expression of faith and hope and trust in the promise of God that God’s people would be delivered - whether from the Babylonians as in Isaiah’s day or from the Romans as in Jesus’ day or from whatever powers that hold us captive in the present day.
Two thousand years ago, those from whose lips "Hosanna" rose looked on Jesus as God's anointed one from the house of David of whom the prophets had spoken - the one through whom all their expectations of Messiah would be fulfilled. Those expectations may have been misguided. Jesus came not to lay a beating on the Romans, but to save all (Romans and Jews and everyone else) who understood that they were being held captive by a world that lived in active hostility to God and to God’s ways. And what all the Gospels finally reveal to us is that Jesus is indeed the promised son of David through whom the redemption announced by God's prophets has come. The word “hosanna” becomes to our faith what the smell of baked bread does to our senses: it frees us from the bondage we suffer under in the present, but rather than bread (which tends to direct us to the past for comfort) the word “hosanna” points us forward - always forward - into the future with confidence. For those of faith, “hosanna” is no longer a plea meaning, "Lord, save us." Instead, it’s become a statement of trust in what we believe God has accomplished through Jesus for us all. For us, “hosanna” is a way of saying, "Praise God and his Christ, we are saved." For us, “hosanna” is the right word at the right time.
VIDEO (sermon begins at about 35:15)
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