“Hosanna!”

It’s an interjection that we shout as praise in the Christian church. “Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Hosanna.

I’ve sung songs with that proclamation since I was a child (I still remember thinking, at the ripe age of 6, that they were singing “Roseanna,” and being very flattered and confused, LOL.) And like so many things that I’ve done since I was a child, I had only vague ideas of what it meant. Something about Christ as my Savior … right? That He was sent by God.

True. But not complete.

The word Hosanna has been preserved in Greek, Latin, and brought directly into English without much change. There was no attempt to directly translate it. Because the word stands on its own as a shout. “Hosanna!” We speak it as a praise, yes. But it’s not only a praise. It’s a soul-deep cry, from the hearts that most need Him.

It will be no surprise to learn that hosanna is taken from Hebrew originally, and it’s a shortening of hoshi’ah-nna, which means “Save, we pray!”

This weekend we’ll remember when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey–a humble mount instead of the gallant steed of a king. The day when the crowds whipped off their outer garments and put them in the road for him to ride over. The day they cut palm branches and waved them before him. This image, to modern society, may scream “Groupies!” in a way, right? We picture crazed fans ripping off their clothes and waving things in the air.

But when we cry out “Hosanna!” we’re not calling His name, per se. We’re not asking Him to entertain us. We’re not acknowledging Him as an earthly king.

When we cry out “Hosanna!” we’re acknowledging, rather, our own desperation. We’re calling to Him because He has the power to change it. We’re calling Him Savior … but not like a paramedic with a crash cart or a Coast Guardsman with a life vest. It’s much deeper than that. He can save our bodies, yes. But more.

He saves our souls. He saves us on levels we don’t even know to hope for.

Two thousand years ago, when those crowds called out “Save us!” they were crying it like their ancestors had. They were asking for a very physical, temporal redemption.

But Jesus didn’t give them what they asked for–He gave them what they needed.

When you cry out, “Hosanna!” this weekend, what will it mean to you? In your heart? Is it just a pretty sounding word? Is it a praise? That may be what we mean when we sing it.

But Jesus knows more than what our words say–He knows what we need. He knows that, even if we’re focused on our physical needs, it’s our spiritual ones that most need addressed. He knows that, though we think we need a good leader in the world, it’s good leaders in the Church that are most important.

He knows that, though we may cry out our praises in the pews, that doesn’t stop us from turning around and nailing Him to the cross with our sins a few days later.

But He’s forgiven that too. Because just like we don’t know what to ask for, we also don’t know how we hurt Him every time we choose ourselves above Him, every time we choose the easy way instead of the good way, every time we focus on earthly comforts instead of heavenly security. He knows us in our fleshly frailties. He knows us because He walked in our skin. He felt the pangs of hunger. He had to sort out what to wear, and to whom he could entrust the care of his precious mother when He knew He wasn’t long for this world.

He knows, friends. He knows us in our every weakness. He knows us in our strength. He knows us in our purity and in our sin. He knows us, and He loves us, and He answered, “Yes. Here I am. I heard you. I will save you.”

Maybe sometimes, when we’re really in the thick of a storm, it feels like we’re just crying in the dark. But we’re not.

We’re calling out to the Light of the world. And He has already answered that cry.

We serve a God who makes something out of nothing.

He did it in creation, taking the blank canvas of space and turning it into an ever-expanding network of galaxies, planets, suns, wormholes, black holes, supernovas, matter, energy, light, and life. In that moment that science has come to term the Big Bang, He spoke–and all that empty potential turned into everything.

He did it in the stories we know so well from the Old Testament. He took men who were nothing and multiplied them, multiplied their belongings, multiplied their faith until they became fathers of nations and the family from which would come the salvation of us all. And then He tells us to watch out, because He’s going to do something new.

I am about to do something new.
    Now it comes to fruition;
    can you not perceive it?
I will make a path through the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.
(Isaiah 43:19)

He did it in the most spectacular fashion when He put His words in the mouth of an angel who declared, “Hail Mary, full of grace–the Lord is with you!” and told a humble, virgin Jewish girl that He was going to put the Word into her womb, for the salvation of us all. When He made life spring up in what ought to have been a barren place, where seed had never been planted, a vine that would yield the most abundant life ever to tread the earth. Word made flesh. The ultimate something from a creation full of nothing.

He did it in the disciples, the apostles, the first believers. He took the lives they’d lived before and made them see that that had been nothing, had been vapors, had been emptiness compared to the fullness He offered through Christ. He took away the chaff, burned away the dross, and left those fathers of our faith with something pure and undefiled and completely flying in the face of conventional wisdom.

I count everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all other things, and I regard them as so much rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him. (Philippians 3:8)

He takes us, we who start out as nothing but a collection of cells, and breathes life into us. He turns us from random biology into the image of God. He instills us, all of us, with dignity and purpose.

But oh, how skilled we humans are at taking that paradise and turning into a desert! We lie, we steal, we cheat, we covet. We commit, all of us, sins that brand us as criminal in the eyes of the just Judge. We are nothing–nothing.

Praise God that isn’t the end of our story! Like the desert in Isaiah, like the wilderness that Christ willingly entered, we are, in our disgrace, potential in the hands of God. We are where He makes something new. We are the dry, acrid sands from which will spring the well of life–Christ.

We are nothing, made something in Him. And then…then we are everything. Because we are Christ. Joint-heirs. Princes and princesses of the Kingdom, endowed with all that He is, if we but claim it and operate in it and seek His about ours. Not because of anything we can claim, but because of who claims us as His own.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Don’t you love those occasions when you’re reading multiple things at the same time and they all coalesce? That’s what happened to me this week, as I was reading the Gospel of Mark and meditating on the Lord’s prayer.

Let’s start with Mark 13:30. Jesus is telling His disciples about the End of the Ages, concluding with “Amen, I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” Now, given that we view this section in light of the Revelation of John and THE end of the world, we tend to read it and scratch our heads and say, “He must have meant something different with ‘generation’ than we do.”

But read on. Verses 32-37 say this:

³² “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³³ Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ³⁴ It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. ³⁵ Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, ³⁶ or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. ³⁷ And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

Then read on a little more, into chapter 14. After the Passover meal, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to the garden to pray. You know the story. What happens?

Jesus is praying, “Father, if it’s possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.”

And what are the disciples doing? Sleeping.

I just blogged a couple weeks ago about the miracles that sometimes happen while we’re sleeping, and of course this passage was one I was thinking of. But let’s look at it from a different angle this time, in light of that warning from a mere chapter earlier.

“Keep awake,” Jesus had said in chapter 13, talking about the “end” and the coming of God’s kingdom.

“Keep awake,” Jesus tells them a couple days later in the garden, as He’s praying about his own death.

“Your kingdom come, your will be done,” He taught us to pray.

“Your will be done,” He prays that night in the garden.

Because He knew that this was the coming of God’s kingdom. This was the end of the old world, the old covenant, the old way. And surely that generation did not pass away before they saw it come—the New Kingdom. The New Testament. The New Covenant.

The new creation.

My friends, we’ve probably all heard it said that we’re living in the last days—it’s been said since Jesus’ days, and for good reason. Because He ushered in those last days when He offered Himself up for us on the cross.

But there’s another way of looking at it too. We’re not living in and looking to the end of the world—we’re living in the new one.

Do you know why Christians have worshipped on Sunday since the first days of the Church? Because Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath, fulfilled the old creation when He was killed on Friday and rested on Saturday. Then He did something amazing on the first day of the week—He rose from the dead. He created something new, a new world, a new generation, a new life. A life that has no end. Ancient texts sometimes refer to Sundays as “the Sabbath’s Sabbath.” The Eighth Day. Early Christians didn’t just view it as “the first day” anymore, they viewed it as the day that the old world was completely recreated. And since this new world, this new Kingdom—the Kingdom of God—will have no end, they couldn’t commemorate it on the last day, so they did so on the first.

On the Sabbath, they remembered the old with sobriety and solemnity. On the Eighth Day, they worshipped their risen Savior with joy and jubilation, praising Him for making us ALL a new creation.

I pray the Lord’s Prayer every day, several times. And as I mediate upon the phrase, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” I couldn’t help but view those words in this context this week. When we pray that prayer, we’re praying that the Lord will help us continue that work that Christ already did—continue the work of the cross. Continue the Kingdom He already brought to fruition, continue it through the price He paid with His blood.

Because the will of God is not achieved by twiddling our thumbs. It’s achieved by vigilant prayer—prayer to the point of sweating blood. It’s achieved by sacrifice. It’s achieved by loving others more than we love ourselves, by loving God most of all. And when we love like that, we act like that.

We act like Christ. We give our all for this Kingdom. Knowing that the will of God will make this new creation good.

I’ve been a C.S. Lewis fan for decades. I, like most kids, started out reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and when I reread the books to my own kids a couple years ago, I realized how much of my faith life was formed by those books–especially by The Last Battle. In some ways, the final book in the series is odd and different from the others…but it’s the one whose theology messages stuck with me through thirty years of growth and discovery.

Several times in that book, one or another of the characters points out that Aslan “is not a tame lion.” Keeping in mind that Aslan is the Christ figure, really let that sink in. Jesus is not tame. Jesus is not civilized. Jesus is not cultured. Jesus is not predictable.

My husband recently read On Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterston, an author that Lewis read and admired, and we could see Chesterton’s influence in those beloved passages from The Last Battle. Chesterton points out that Jesus is not a safe God to follow–He’s dangerous. He isn’t full of pretty philosophy–He’s full of violent contradictions.

The Man who overturns tables in the temple and then draws a child onto His lap. The One who instructs His followers to strap a sword to their side, but tells them to turn the other cheek. The Eternal One who chose to take on flesh and let himself be killed. Killed. Think about that for a second–an eternal being, suffering a very human death.

As my husband chatted through the Chesterton book with his friends in their book club, they dwelled a good bit on the kind of faith this sort of untamed God demands of us. The answer is pretty obvious, is a way: an untamed faith.

But what does that mean?

It means that we don’t just accept these seeming contradictions in Jesus, we embrace them. It means we don’t just say that He’s the God of the impossible, we prepare ourselves to live the impossible. It means we don’t just come expecting that the Spirit will move, we come KNOWING that Jesus is there with us.

It means embracing the hard-to-believe. It means clinging to the illogical. It means walking out the incredible.

So many teachings of Christ, many of which we learn to recite without really pondering the depths, are hard. They don’t make sense. The “bread of life” discourse in John 6 is a perfect example. Jesus told the crowds they would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood–and they FREAKED OUT. Said, “You’re speaking symbolically, right? RIGHT?” But He was very clear. So clear that most of His followers left Him.

It was too hard. Too illogical.

In the early church, heretic after heretic had to be rooted out and dismissed, because they were trying to make Jesus fit their human understanding. He couldn’t have been both fully God and fully man–it makes no sense! He must have not really been physical…or, if physical, not really God…

Nope. That doesn’t fly either.

Faith in Christ–true faith, the kind He will recognize–is crazy. It’s wild. It’s nonsensical. Illogical. It’s dangerous. It’s fantastical. It is completely untamed and untamable.

And that’s the point. Lions are not tame. The one that lies down with the lamb–it’s a wild, dangerous beast. The God who fashioned the universe cannot be put into our human boxes of understanding. He will break free, burst through, tear those walls to pieces.

There are those who do not believe miracles happen after the age of the disciples–but when, then, did God become tame? How is that not changing His nature, to claim it?

Most Christians I know say miracles do happen, of course…but many times we name small things, everyday things. I always shook my head at that, but you know what?

A miracle that happens every day is even more amazing than a once-in-history kind, isn’t it? What’s more amazing–that God parted the Red Sea once, or that He dwelled with the Israelites in fire and cloud and provided daily manna for forty years? That Jesus died once and rose from the dead, or that He promised to be present in the bread and wine every time we partake of it?

He is a wild, unpredictable, huge, dependable, consistent God. All those things, even when they contradict. He is a God that calls us to believe what we don’t know how to believe. To walk when we cannot see. To cling to the hand we cannot touch. And to do it, knowing He will always be there with us.

What can we do but cry out like the father in the Gospels, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

Have you ever paused to think about all the things God does while we sleep? The Bible is full of examples of dreams and visions that come to people while they’re in their beds. From Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph to the prophets like Isaiah and Joel; and then of course, in the new testament we have Joseph and the magi starting us off with instructions and warnings in their dreams too.

And the disciples. More than once, they’re fighting sleep in the worst possible moments. Let’s take a look at Luke 4:1-2 though…

About eight days after he had said this, Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up on a mountain to pray. ²⁹ And while he was praying, the appearance of his face underwent a change, and his clothing became dazzling white. ³⁰ Suddenly, there were two men talking with him, Moses and Elijah, ³¹ who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which would come to pass in Jerusalem. ³² Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake they beheld his glory and the two men standing beside him.

I’ve read this passage countless times, but I hadn’t paid much attention before to the fact that the disciples were fighting sleep here. They were dozing. Groggy. Enough asleep that they had to “come fully awake,” but not so deeply that they were completely oblivious to their surroundings. And weren’t they glad?!

Had they been more deeply asleep, they would have missed seeing Christ transfigured. They’d have missed beholding the glory of God. They’d have missed that miraculous appearance of Moses and Elijah.

Later in the Gospels, they are again with Jesus while he’s praying, and this time they are truly asleep. They do miss out–they miss the opportunity to keep watch with their Savior in his most wretched hour. They miss being true friends and brothers in that moment. They earn a rebuke–“Can you not watch even one hour?”

I get it. It’s understandable. They’d just hiked up a mountain…had a big meal after a long day of preparation… They were tired. Worn out. Exhausted. They wanted to stay awake, but their bodies betrayed them. They were tired. So tired.

We’ve all been there. And physically, this is unavoidable. We have physical bodies, and they require rest. God knows that–he designed us that way. He’s used it, time and again, to His purposes and His glory. He does speak through dreams and work on our hearts while our minds are still. He uses that time of rest to restore us.

But here’s the thing: there’s a time for rest. And there’s a time for keeping vigil with Him.

Paul warns us in Philippians that many are living as enemies of Christ. That they’re more concerned with the call of their bodies–what food they’ll eat, what clothes they’ll wear, what earthly glory they’ll achieve–than with the things of God. He tells us that when we make our stomach our god, we’ll ultimately find only destruction. He tells us to focus on the heavenly things, and then we’ll find restoration for these tired and broken bodies.

There is a time for rest. And there is a time for keeping vigil with Him.

My friends, we must all find rest, yes. But we must be careful to find it in Christ. We must be seeking the rest he gives, the kind that we find in communion with Him, not in our own earthly ideas. We must be vigilant, always, in every moment–even while we sleep–seeking and being open to whatever He reveals.

Because if we sleep too deeply in this life, we’ll miss it. We’ll miss his appearances in our lives. We’ll miss his glory revealed. Even when it’s right in front of us.

I know I’ve had times in my life when I felt like I was sleepwalking. Going through the motions but not really aware. So determined to just get through another day that I don’t really see what it brings.

I think we’ve all had (or will have) those times. Times of grief or mourning. Times of illness and pain. Times of anxiety and worry. Times when this is so much, we can’t even think about that.

But know that even when we succumb to that numbness, that oblivion, Jesus is still there. Praying in the garden. Sweating blood on our behalf. Taking on the ultimate pain so we can be spared it. Praying for us.

When we pray in the name of Jesus, that means we’re joining our prayers to his…that means he is praying for us to the Father. Every cry of our hearts, every sleepy murmur, every wordless yearning–our Savior takes that and presents it, pure and as it should have been said, even if we said it wrong, to God.

While we’re sleeping, he’s working. While we’re sleeping, he’s praying. While we’re sleeping, his glory is being made manifest.

And then, my friends…then we have only to open our eyes and see it.

Yesterday was the official start of Lent. Depending on your faith tradition, perhaps you marked it with ashes and fasting…perhaps you took some special time for prayer…perhaps you decided to give something up for the next 40 days, or add something into your faith life…or perhaps you didn’t even realize it was Ash Wednesday and don’t observe Lent.

I grew up in the United Methodist church; we had an Ash Wednesday service, and while it wasn’t obligatory to give up anything for Lent, I usually did as a teen. That tradition got away from me when I had small children, but in recent years I’ve taken to viewing the season of Lent as one meant for contemplation; one meant for dwelling on the sacrifice our Lord made for us and preparing ourselves for it; one meant for emulating through some form of fasting of my own the 40 days He fasted in the wilderness before beginning His public service, in the hopes that it will prepare my heart for the next year of service to Him.

This is the passage I find myself contemplating as a new season of Lent begins:

Yet even now, says the Lord,
    return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.
¹³ Rend your hearts and not your garments,
    and turn back to the Lord, your God.
For he is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger, rich in kindness,
    and always prepared to relent from punishing.
~Joel 2:12-13

The above-quoted passage from Joel is the liturgical reading for Ash Wednesday, and I think it’s a great one for speaking to the purpose of the season. It isn’t about foregoing chocolate. It isn’t about whether or not you eat meat on Fridays, per se.

It’s about our hearts. It’s about not just looking at the sin around us, but about admitting the sin within us. It’s about ripping those hearts to pieces and laying them before God on the altar.

Rend your hearts.

Rend is a word we don’t use much these days, so it’s easy to just skip right over it, knowing it means “to tear.” But it’s more than that. According to Merriam-Webster, rend means:

This thing we’re called to do to our hearts…it’s not a gentle process. It’s not easy. It’s not a matter of going to a service or jotting down a note to yourself. This rending isn’t about saying, “Oh, right. Sorry, God.”

It’s violent. It’s painful. It’s destructive.
It’s supposed to be.

Why? Because being penitent means breaking apart the stubbornness inside us, cracking open the walls we’ve built around our sin to keep others (or ourselves) from judging us on it. Being penitent means shattering each and every thing that stands between us and God…and then laying those pieces before him as our offering.

This is what God calls us to do. Not just during Lent of course, but all the time. Whenever we become aware of something standing between us. Whenever His Church has stumbled or faltered and made the world leer at God because of us.

Wait, what?

That’s right. When you look at the Old Testament calls to penance, they aren’t just calling the idol-worshipers to repent–they’re calling the faithful to repent too. On behalf of their neighbors, sure, but also for their own sakes. Because we rise and fall together. We sink or swim together. We cannot go merrily about our way and blame everyone else for all the trouble in the world. We need to repent for every word we speak that we shouldn’t, and for every silence we hold when we should speak. We need to repent for every time we judged someone as undeserving of redemption.

The other week in church, the pastor said something that stuck with me. “We are called to judge–yes, we are. We are called to name sin for what it is…and then to judge the sinner as worthy of redemption.”

Do we? Do we look at our enemies and call them “Beloved of God!”? Do we try to turn them toward the truth because we love them and want them to be saved? Or do we just want to stop them?

There are 39 traditional days of fasting between now and the holiest day of the year, when Christ defeated death and the grave and sin. How are we going to spend them?

Are we going to spend those days living for ourselves…or for Him?