Hosanna! they cried. Hosanna! “Save now,” it means. Save us now! It’s a plea. A plea for deliverance. A plea to be freed from whatever heavy hand holds you down. Then it was the heavy hand of Roman occupation, political oppression of the worst kind. Not that there’s ever a “better” kind of political oppression. Who ever gave people the notion that they can lord it over others? That power and might can be used for personal gain, to satisfy the ugliest urges of human ambition? And yet our world has been plagued by such obscenity for longer than history’s story has been told for posterity. Save us now! the people cried out to Jesus that day so long ago when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Hosanna! A cry of hope to someone they believed might bring them something new. A cry, we’ve been told, not unlike the cry of some who came to Washington for the parade in late January of this year, a cry embracing the gathered pain of generations already gone by yet holding the sordid tales of racial oppression and bigotry. Hosanna! Save us now!

But there’s also a variation on the etymologically accurate meaning of the word “hosanna,” a variation that comes along for the ride. It’s the “hosanna” of pure delight and glee, the “hosanna” of celebration, not of hope for something yet to come, but unabated joy in what already has come to pass. Think Broad Street last November and the thousands upon thousands who gathered there in a sea of red to celebrate their beloved Phillies’ World Series triumph. Pure joy! That for which baseball fans in this city had longed for, dreamed about, perhaps had begun to lose hope in ever experiencing, had come to pass. And no one was about to rain on that parade. Hosanna!

I suppose, if truth be known, there was a bit of both kinds of hosannas among the crowd that day in Jerusalem which we Christians now celebrate as Palm Sunday. That day of triumph, yet also of foreboding, for we now know the end of the story. But then, in those moments that marked the beginning of the last week of Jesus’ life, there must have been both a good deal of deep and fervent longing as well as pure joy for what had already come to pass. A longing for relief from the stifling life of foreign domination, joy in the presence of one who had already shown his divine power to heal broken bodies and tortured souls. Could this be the long-awaited Messiah?

As we have come to know, this Jesus did become the Messiah for some, though simply another good and worthy teacher for others. But by our presence here today we proclaim that we are among the first of those two groups. For even though the story has been told and we know how it ends – or how it begins, depending on how you look at all of it – the story is forever new. And as the crowd gathered on the Mount of Olives when Jesus began his descent into the city in which he would meet his death, expecting deliverance and celebrating his presence, so we, too, gather once again this Palm Sunday, hoping and exulting.

Here we are, a singing, celebrating crowd, encouraging our children to join the parade in joyful glee as only children can, perhaps calling us to remember the joy we felt at the parades we first knew as children, magical, mystical, wondrous events that they were. But this is both a child’s parade and a grown-up’s parade. The exuberant glee of childhood, the deep and fervent longing of adulthood.

There’s a really serious side to this Palm Sunday parade. Here we are, a singing, celebrating crowd, still believing in the power of a small gathering to effect real change in the world. We show up this morning believing that God’s transforming Spirit is alive, moving and working among us, and that we have some part in it. Even on this side of history, knowing where this Palm Sunday story is likely to take us once again, we show up. In being here we’re saying that our presence in our time and place matters. We come to the parade to bear witness to the new life that springs up in community and to the power of God at work there.

Truth be told, in the vote at presbytery last Saturday I felt Palm Sunday. I heard a loud hosanna in the thundering sublime silence after the vote had been announced, and those of us who had come to stand with those we felt unjustly oppressed felt vindicated. We felt that our God had heard our pleas to save us. Hosanna! And yet our celebration is tempered by the struggle yet before us. For we know the story of Palm Sunday, how within a week acclaim turns into humiliation and mockery. There’s no way from Palm Sunday to Easter except through Good Friday. The triumphal Jesus is also the humiliated Jesus. And yet in the story of these two days we hold a revelation of dignity so sure that it finally overwhelms whatever would contradict it. As Paul tells us, at the center of apparent foolishness we shall behold glory, and out of what seems to be a final death will emerge the ultimate power of life. And so on this Palm Sunday we gather once again to hear the old story and to walk the parade route as if the well-worn path were new all over again.

“Just as we do not adequately understand the suffering of Jesus Christ unless we see it as it reaches down through centuries to the suffering of individuals and groups today,” writes Margaret Farley, a contemporary biblical scholar, “so we do not adequately understand the humiliations of Jesus, and the truth of dignity within indignity, unless we see them in the lives of those who are otherwise judged among the humiliated today. We know them well – those upon whom we impose humiliation because we find them ‘different’ from ourselves; those on whom we turn our suspicious stares, our demeaning glances; those who are shamed in the name of order in society, pushed to the “outside’ so that we may stand tall and pure; those we abandon and no longer want to see and those we stigmatize with our self-righteous judgments.”

Those were among the very ones shouting hosanna! the loudest the day so long ago when Jesus rode into Jerusalem to die. And there were those who stood with them, in solidarity with their suffering and their hope. On this day we bring our deepest hopes, celebrating the power of God to raise them up. And we stand in solidarity with those whose hopes are different from ours, but whose hopes we embrace as if they were our own.

Between hope and salvation in our world often stands the imposing power of political and, unfortunately, even religious authority. But Jesus cuts through all the posturing and pretense. Lampooning the political powers through a carefully planned, carnival-like parade into Jerusalem, he invites disciples to worship the God who abides in him, rather than serve any other “powers that be.” His wasn’t the only parade in town that day. Pontius Pilate staged a conventional military procession from the other end of Jerusalem, reminding people who controlled their lives and warning them not to challenge the authority.

But on the opposite side of town, beginning at the Mount of Olives, the traditional location from which people expected the final battle for Jerusalem’s liberation to begin, Jesus began his “final campaign.” The only provision he required was a donkey to ride on. Perhaps the very disciples who had lobbied for seats of honor on heaven’s throne were the very disciples he sent to fetch the donkey, a symbol of humility and peace. God has a way of turning things upside down, the Gospels repeatedly tell us. But we seem to need to hear that message again and again. We need to hear it so that we have courage to join the Palm Sunday parade knowing full well where it will lead us.

But as we hear the passion story this coming week – the story of Jesus’ suffering and death – we will be brought home once again to a cross that turns from purple into black and into brightly colored flowers of new life.

Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!