Hosanna Hospitality
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – April 2, 2023, Palm Sunday
Hosanna Hospitality – Matthew 21: 1-11
There’s a strange scene that’s been taking place in my kitchen this winter. It involves me standing over the stove and screaming at the top of my lungs. I’m not yelling at my kids or my husband. I’m not even crying out in despair at God for the state of the world. No, I’m screaming at my virtual assistant: the smart speaker mounted on a kitchen shelf that supposedly searches the internet and sets cooking timers for you–all through voice activation. The scene starts calmly enough with me making my breakfast and optimistically once again setting a timer for my morning tea through the wonders of virtual assistant technology. Approximately three quiet minutes later the timer alarm starts beeping. I start asking it to stop. It keeps beeping. I keep asking it to stop. And it keeps beeping and I keep asking it to stop and it keeps beeping and I keep asking it to stop until I realize I’m screaming at artificial intelligence that I could simply unplug from the wall.
Recently, Parker pointed out that it seems to respond better when you actually turn to face it, when you’re speaking to it. For me, this means putting down my kitchen tools and turning my whole body to face the back wall where it's perched to ask it nicely to stop. And magically, it does now on the first try. It must have something to do with the way the microphone works, but I joked that it must like to have my full attention.
Even if it is the artificial intelligence becoming sentient and emotive, which I suspect it's not, it wouldn’t be alone would it in wanting our full attention? Children, friends, partners, parents, so many of us seem to like it when the person we’re with stops doing all the other things they’re doing and pauses to give us their full attention.
The parade Jesus was with demanded attention as he entered Jerusalem in full view of much of the city down the path from the Mount of Olives. According to Matthew, the crowd must have been hard to miss, too, as they shouted “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Now, hosanna isn’t a word commonly thrown about in American English parlance. It’s a word that comes from ancient Jewish Temple liturgy, and it means literally “save us” though it also came to be used as a shout of praise. In the context of today’s story, it could be understood as an urgent plea though it is just as likely meant as overwhelming praise–perhaps an acclamation that this Jesus is indeed the Messiah. He is indeed the one who offers holy salvation.
Did those in the crowd all perfectly agree on what they meant when they cried out Hosanna? I suspect not. I suspect they had as diverse beliefs, expectations, and motivations as the twelve named disciples who included everyone from tax collectors to would-be terrorists. Yet, they all cried out “save us!” and praised Jesus together.
In the non-creedal Christian tradition that is the Church of the Brethren, we have room among us for different understandings of what it is that the word salvation means, how Jesus does indeed save us, and from what it is that we need to be saved.
However we define it, perhaps we can find some agreement around the idea that in this world that is both beautiful and broken, there is precious healing to be found in connection with others and with God.
In her 2014 book, Cooperative Salvation: A Brethren View of Atonement, Manchester University professor Kate Eisenbise Crell reminds readers that early Brethren were less influenced by the idea of original sin than their theological neighbors, which was part of what allowed them to reject infant baptism in favor of adult baptism. They were less concerned about baptism as a means of salvific cleansing of original sin and more concerned about baptism as a faithful and freely chosen response to God’s already extended grace.
Both Anabaptism and Radical Pietism, from which our spiritual ancestors drew, held in common a “fairly optimistic view of humanity,” writes Eisenbise Crell, believing that patterning our lives after Jesus not only changes us as individuals but also changes the communities of which we are a part and, I would argue, by extension, the world in which we live. Choosing baptism and a life of following Jesus then and now was well understood as a means of finding a spiritual home both in God and with the people of a faith community.
In her book, Eisenbise Crell writes “...the chief problem with humanity is that we are isolated and alienated from one another, not just by our individual actions, but also by the systems and structures that order our lives.”
Personally, I believe that Jesus, through his life and ministry, including his death and resurrection, offers the healing salve that leads us toward reconnection with God, with each other, and with our own spiritual well-being.
There is something about turning toward each other, turning toward God, and turning toward our innermost selves with our full attention that I believe does put us on the road home toward wholeness and healing.
According to the scripture story, “a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,” in front of Jesus, and others “cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.” This would have been a scene that recalled other festivals of the time and place. But it puts me in mind of rolling out the red carpet or doing special things to make someone feel honored and welcome. Holding any sort of gathering at my house growing up meant special cleaning and cooking chores that I didn’t appreciate having to do but that I came to see as an act of hospitality.
Our spiritual cousins, the Quakers, have long held dear the belief that there is “that of God in everyone” and have often spoken and written of this belief as the inner light of Christ. Many Quakers even consider this idea to be synonymous or in kinship with the wider Christian understanding of grace.[1]
How do we offer hospitality for Christ in our midst? How do we believe he shows up? If it is that he often shows up in our lives as a light within ourselves and within others, what kind of welcome are we providing? Are we ready to throw our cloaks on the road?
In a recent Christian Century magazine, Lynn Jost recounted a story of grace-filled welcome shared by a leader in her Fresno, California community. The leader described coming home to visit his parents and to attend church with them. The visit was complicated by the fact that he was coming out as a gay man. He struggled as it came time for the congregation to celebrate communion, considering himself perhaps unwelcome or unworthy at least in the eyes of the church. As the elements came to him in the pew he decided not to take them and let them pass by. But his father, sitting next to him, stopped, turned to face his son, took his own bread and broke it in half. “The Lord loves you and accepts you,” the father told his son and gave him half of his own bread.
I understand that as a moment of healing for both the parent and the child in that story, as they turned toward each other and toward God. I don’t think it would be too bold to call it a moment of embodying God’s saving grace.
Salvation doesn’t arrive in today’s story on a red carpet or a silver platter. It comes in the flesh and blood, riding a lowly donkey and colt. Yet, it was no ordinary moment. When we practice Hosanna Hospitality like the crowd in today’s story, maybe we, too, will come to turn more and more of our full attention toward the way the ordinary moments of our lives can be filled with the extraordinary grace of God.
Sometimes I rush through meals, especially if there’s somewhere I need to be. I don’t always say grace. I don’t always pause and acknowledge that this act of eating is keeping me alive. I don’t always stop to feel the connection that eating brings to all the places this food has been grown and processed and prepared. I don’t always stop to feel the connection that eating recalls to the Source of all that nourishes life. But there are times when I do stop. There are times when I am just about to dive into the first bite when I stop, and I remember. Alone or with others, there are times when I can speak or sigh or sing a word of grace and in so doing feel my full attention fixed on that connection I have to God and to every other living thing. Jesus embodied that connection and taught us how to turn in full toward that saving grace.
Indeed Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest heaven. Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] https://quaker.org/the-inner-light/
