“’Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”’ John 12:13
“But they shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’” John 19:15
It sure doesn’t seem like these two verses go together, does it? And they don’t. In fact, they’re complete opposites. The first verse happened on what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday. Jesus was entering Jerusalem, something He had done many times before in His life. But this entrance was different. This time He was entering as a king on a – wait, on a what? A donkey? What kind of king is that? Apparently, the people who were there that day didn’t care that He wasn’t riding or horse, or that He didn’t have servants and slaves to announce His arrival. They praised Him anyway. The word “hosanna” is a word of praise, but it originally meant “save us.” So included with the praise is a request to be saved from their enemies and oppressors. Can you hear a hint of desperation in their shouts?
A mere five days later, the crowd was calling for His death. It’s hard to imagine how they could have changed their minds so drastically in such a short amount of time. How had they moved from praising on Sunday to condemning on Friday? Had He done something terrible in those days? Had He committed some horrific crime that turned everyone against Him? No, he spent His days teaching on the temple steps about the Kingdom of God. I wonder if it was more about what He didn’t do. He didn’t raise an army to defeat Rome. He didn’t call down fire from heaven on Caesar. He didn’t declare the oppressors as the sinners who should free God’s people. In other words, He didn’t save them. Or so they thought. Little did they know that He would save them from something far greater than the might of Rome. And He would save in a way they couldn’t fathom: by defeating sin and death. But their minds were too little to comprehend all of that.
Before we get all self-righteous and go cross-eyed from trying to look down our noses at them, stop and think of how often we do the exact same thing. How often do we ask God to save us from something and we have a very clear idea of exactly how He should? If He doesn’t, we turn on Him. Or at least turn from Him. If He won’t do what I ask, then why should I praise Him? We act as if He’s our personal genie in a lamp for us to command and we forget that He’s the God of the universe Whose heart’s desire is to save us. But He will save us from the mightiest enemy of all. And He’ll do it in ways we can’t comprehend. Do we believe that? Do I believe that? This Holy Week, am I willing to praise Him simply for Who He is, not what He’s done? Am I willing to continue to praise, even when the crowd is shouting for His death? Will I follow Him to the cross, then the tomb? I hope so, because that’s the only way we’ll experience the joy and salvation of Easter Sunday.