A, Palm Passion Sunday - Matthew 21:9-16 "Hosanna! Save us, we pray!"

Matthew 21:9–16 (ESV) And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”

Palm Sunday gets its name from the fronds people cut from palms to line the road into Jerusalem at Jesus’ triumphal entry.  Those who had cloaks lay them on the road in homage, but others used palms, in the same way we might “make do” if we didn’t have the “red carpet” to roll out in honour of someone we recognise as royalty.

The people shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”  This was the expectation of victory and peace from a king who rode in on a  donkey as recorded in Zechariah, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9 ESV)

The expectation of the crowds harks back to the “glory days of Israel” with David as its king. When King David returned to Jerusalem after battle—victorious—the city welcomed him shouting, “Hosanna!” “You have caused us to be saved, we pray!”

Hosanna is an exclamation of adoration for being saved or delivered!  It was also a war cry for success as David and the congregation proclaimed in the temple, “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we pray (Hebrew: hoshi’ah na), O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord.” (Psalm 118:23–26 ESV)

The crowd anticipated that Jesus would become their Messiah, their King, by entering Jerusalem, the Praetorium, the official residence of the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, and throw him out to seize power and save Israel.  But instead of entering the Roman ruler’s residence, Jesus enters the temple and overturns the self-justification in which Israel had turned, away from God’s mercy.  They missed the mark, believing their ritual sacrifice would atone for their sin so they could carry on by themselves without faith in God’s merciful presence.

Just as they had used the law to justify themselves apart from faith in God and his mercy, they sought to use Jesus in the same way, to glorify themselves as a nation autonomous from God.  But they didn’t realise that the Messiah who was to be raised up as king was God’s own Son, sent to be faithful unto death, even death on a cross.  He was singled out to be alone on the cross, so Israel could worship with God in peace, so we too might never be left alone in our helplessness!

Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 ESV) Here Jesus is mirroring the cry of anyone who has ever stood alone before God, with all expectations exhausted, completely spent, with nothing more that can be done.  The ego stripped of all pride, the idols of expectation proven worthless.  Jesus became the epitome of humanity, exposed in the rawness of one’s true helplessness.

For Jesus this was the abandonment of God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit.  Jesus had put off his divinity as God’s Son and hung nailed to the cross as the bare helpless epitome of human wretchedness.  He hung there uncovering the truth of your reality—humanity’s reality.  In our sinfulness we try to hide the reality of this wretchedness and loneliness behind our pride and pleasures. 

Now Jesus has become the scapegoat, the stone the builders rejected! Yet, because of this, he is the capstone of humanity’s salvation—your salvation—when God’s help is sought!

When we as God’s children come to the point that seems like we’ve been totally abandoned, it’s not God who has abandoned us!  Rather, it’s the realisation of my false beliefs in my feelings, my abilities, and my understanding that has caused us to seek abandonment from God! Allowed to feel completely helpless, thoroughly wretched in our human state, we cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  

Although it feels horrible, it’s actually a blessed state of realisation, returning to God as the only answer to our helplessness!  That we need to be “Holy Spirit filled” rather than “human spirited” or full of ourselves.  We are blessedly helpless, and we need to be continually grafted into God, we need God to reconnect his umbilical cord of mercy that we thought we could do without and so often seek to sever.

And this is exactly what God the Father allowed to occur to his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, Son of David, the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.

The irony of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and the Passion of Jesus Christ is that on Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem the crowds welcomed him. Yet, even by the end of the day, the end of Holy week, all had turned away from “the Messiah” people wanted Jesus to be.  In much the same way we do the same welcoming him with our expectations, but our humanity gets offended when its idolatry is exposed. 

The triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem led to his triumphal entry into the grave, hell, and resurrection from the dead, raised up as the Messiah God knew you and I needed!  God allows us to arrive at that seemingly hellish dead-end place and cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The irony continues for us in that when we hit rock bottom, Christ has been lower—for you, for me—for all.  God reverses the tables for those who cry out to him for help.  When the epitome of our humanity is revealed as sin, we too seek the Son of David, pleading to God for “hosanna in the highest”—“help in the highest”—when we realise we’re the lowest.  In our sin we confess, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 124:8 ESV) “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (Psalm 32:5 ESV)

Jesus became sin, though he was without sin.  He became nothing, helpless, and through his nothingness and helplessness our help is “Hosanna in the highest”! Salvation in the highest! We no longer live as those who think we can help ourselves. We are blessedly helpless and therefore helped by the Holy Spirit to repentantly live knowing our help is in the Lord who made heaven and earth. 

We pray, “Save us Lord!” when the going seems good and when it’s bad, knowing that despite our deceptively good or bad feelings, we are never alone!  For those in Jesus Christ we have a holy helper in our helplessness. 

Jesus saves us from ourselves and our human predicament when the Holy Spirit shows us our blessed helplessness. Sometimes God needs to overturn the tables of our expectations that have become religious idols standing in the way of our salvation.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit has to stop us from  resurrecting our humanity to the place of God and robbing him who has recreated our bodies to be his holy temples through our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.  

If out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies God has prepared praise, he can help you when you realise your helplessness in yourself. As children of God the Holy Spirit moves you to suckle on his word, so our hosannas are thanksgiving prayers for what God has done, our hosannas are daily prayers for God’s guidance now, and our hosannas are prayers of deliverance through death into salvation, victory, and eternal life.  Amen.

Palm Sunday – Hosanna! Save us, we pray!

Sermon Summary:

Palm Sunday begins with crowds joyfully welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, laying cloaks and palm branches before Him as one would honour a king. Their cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, echoed Israel’s ancient longing for deliverance and victory, recalling David’s triumphs and the prophetic promise of a humble, saving king riding on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).

Yet the people misunderstood the nature of Jesus’ kingship. They expected a political liberator who would overthrow Roman power. Instead of marching to the Praetorium to confront Pilate, Jesus went to the temple to confront something far deeper: Israel’s misplaced trust in ritual, self-justification, and religious autonomy. He overturned tables not only of commerce but of false confidence.

Jesus exposes the human tendency to use God—even the Messiah—to reinforce our own agendas. But the Messiah God sends is not the Messiah we try to fashion. Jesus is the Son who becomes the suffering servant, faithful unto death, even death on a cross. His cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, reveals the depth of His identification with human helplessness. He enters the absolute loneliness of sin’s consequence so that no one who cries out to God is ever truly abandoned.

In this divine irony, the triumphal entry leads not to a throne but to the grave, hell, and resurrection. Jesus becomes the rejected stone who becomes the capstone of salvation. He becomes sin so that sinners may become children of God.

The sermon invites us to recognise our own “Palm Sunday expectations”—the ways we want God to serve our plans. God often overturns these expectations so that we may discover our blessed helplessness, the place where true hosanna arises: “Save us, Lord!” This helplessness is not despair but the Spirit’s work, drawing us back to dependence on God’s mercy.

If God can prepare praise from the mouths of infants, He can certainly sustain his children when they realise they cannot sustain themselves. Our hosannas become prayers of thanksgiving, guidance, and deliverance—cries of faith from those who know their help is in the name of the Lord.

Reflection Questions for Personal or Group Use

1. What expectations do you bring to Jesus?

Where might you be tempted to shape him into the Messiah you want rather than the Messiah God has sent?

2. When have you experienced God overturning your “tables”?

How has God disrupted your plans, assumptions, or religious habits in order to draw you back to His mercy?

3. What does “blessed helplessness” mean in your own life?

Can you identify moments when reaching the end of yourself became the beginning of deeper faith?

4. How do you respond when God feels absent?

What does Jesus being forsaken by God on the cross reveal about God’s work in healing your spiritual isolation and salvation?

5. How does Jesus’ journey—from triumphal entry to cross to resurrection—reshape your understanding of salvation?

What does it mean that Jesus became “the stone the builders rejected” for your sake? What is the capstone of your kingdom building?

6. What does it look like to live daily with a “Hosanna in the highest” posture?

How might your prayer life change if you embraced dependence on God rather than self-reliance?