Hosanna to Crucify Him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDvtm2g-XwI

Sermon: The Rev. Dr. Maryann Amor

Hosanna in the highest.

There is so much joy… we shout hosanna as we wave palm branches and walk happily into worship. But hosanna didn’t begin with joy. In Hebrew it means something like “save, I pray,” “save now,” “please deliver us.” It is found in a plea for salvation in Psalm 118:25: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord.”

Hosanna is not, at its heart, a happy word… because as we walk into worship, as we shout hosanna, we are really shouting: save us, save us, save us. And knowing this changes so much.

In Jesus’ time, the people were living under Roman occupation. They were not free. While they could practice their faith, build families, and establish livelihoods, they did so under the constant watch of a foreign power—always knowing that if something went wrong, the cost would be great. So they looked to Jesus as the one who would come as a powerful military force, one who would overthrow Rome.

But Jesus’ mission was not about violence. It was not about military might. Instead, he brought the opposite. He came to bring healing, liberation, and justice to the oppressed. Jesus was not about force, but about love—care for the other—peace.

And it was because the people had one way of seeing Jesus—an expectation he did not fulfill—that they turned against him. Their cries for him to save them begin to change, and they start to shout instead, “crucify him.”

The cross becomes the place of ultimate rejection—the moment the people make clear they do not want what Jesus offers. They want military force against Rome, not his message.

Today, we join the crowds.

We too cry hosanna. And we too, in our own ways, cry “crucify him.” We participate in the story that sends Jesus to the cross—and that should, in some sense, make us uneasy.

Because this is not only a past event—it is a present reality. It names our real struggle to live with the gap between our expectations of faith and what it actually looks like.

We cry, “save us,” and expect one thing to happen… but it doesn’t. Healing doesn’t come. The job doesn’t come. The situation doesn’t change. And so we shift—from “save us” to doubt, to denial, even to rejection… to “crucify him.”

But this is not the end of the story.

Because we know that expectations will be overturned once again. We expect that when someone is crucified—killed in a brutal way—that’s it. They are dead, they are gone, they are forgotten. But that’s not what happens. The promise is that there is more.

And the same is true in our lives. When our expectations are not met, that is not the end of our story either.

So today, we stand with the crowds. We shout hosanna—save us—and we see how quickly that cry can shift when expectations are not met… becoming instead, “crucify him.”

But as we will see, another expectation will soon not be met… the expectation that death is the end. Because in a few short days, we will witness how even the cross—the ultimate symbol of death—is transformed into a sign of hope and love. Amen.