Psalm 118:1-4, 19-29
Matthew 21:1-11
“God’s Steadfast Love Endures Forever”
O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good;
God’s steadfast love endures forever!
Let the people of First Church say,
God’s steadfast love endures forever!
One more time:
God’s steadfast love endures forever!
On this Palm Sunday, our liturgy draws upon an ancient tradition of prayer and praise – one of the Hallel Psalms that were recited during major Jewish festivals, the pilgrimage festivals including Sukkot, Shavuot, and Passover, when ancient Jews would travel to Jerusalem to make sacrifices and honour God.
Psalm 118 begins and ends with that antiphonal call and response:
O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good;
God’s steadfast love endures forever!
It is a communal declaration of God’s faithful love, and a processional hymn that may have been sung as worshippers approached the temple gates.
One of the festivals that featured Psalm 118 was Sukkot (also known as the Feast of Booths) in which Jewish people remembered their ancestors’ journey through the wilderness after God freed them from slavery in Egypt. One of the practices of that festival, still enacted today by faithful Jews, was to set up temporary tents, booths, or shelters. They would have at least three walls and a roof, but they would be open to the sky.
They would remember how God took care of them in that wilderness time when they were so vulnerable, how God saved them and gave them what they needed as they travelled through the wilderness towards the promised land.
Sukkot is a festival of thanksgiving and joy for God’s saving help. In Psalm 118, we hear the joyful phrase: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” And indeed, Sukkot was marked by joy and praise to God for providing all good things including the harvest each year. In celebration of God’s help in the past and the present, the people would go up to Jerusalem in joyful procession, waving branches cut from the trees.
But Psalm 118 was also recited during the Passover Festival. As you may know, that’s the festival that commemorates God’s saving help for the people when they were in slavery in Egypt (just a little before the wilderness time). You may remember that God sent a series of plagues on Egypt, the last of which devastated the oppressors with the deaths of many of their children. But God gave instructions to the Hebrews to protect their households from the plague. The devastation passed over them, and soon Moses would lead them out of Egypt and into a new life.
And, of course, Passover was the festival that was just a few days away when Jesus entered Jerusalem in joyful procession with his disciples. So, it seems very fitting that the crowds that went ahead of Jesus on the road were cutting branches from the trees and shouting some of the words from Psalm 118. They knew these words well because they recited them often, like many of us know the words of the Lord’s Prayer, or Psalm 23, or some of our favourite hymns.
They shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
That word that we know so well from Palm Sunday and other hymns is not only a word of joyful praise. It’s not quite the same as shouting “Hallelujah!” as we do on Easter and other times of great celebration.
Literally, “Hosanna” means “Save us!” We hear it in verse 25 of the psalm, “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!” And while the worshippers are remembering the ways that God has saved them in the past – leading them out of slavery in Egypt, helping and protecting them in the wilderness, and later bringing them safely back from the Exile in Babylon – the cry to God to “Save us, we beseech you” is still a prayer in that moment as well.
The crowds of people who were beginning to gather for the Passover in Jerusalem were both celebrating God’s goodness and saving help, but also looking for help in their own current context. Poverty, illness, oppression, and many more issues made their lives very difficult, and they were looking for the promised Messiah that God would send to save them once again.
We can imagine that many of the people in the crowd that day had witnessed some of Jesus’ miracles and heard some of his amazing teaching. They were beginning to see in him a kind of fulfillment of God’s steadfast love and saving help in their own time. And when he arrived riding on a colt, their hope that he might be the Messiah would have been heightened.
You see, he was coming just like the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah had described – not like a powerful king on a war horse, but as a humble ruler coming in peace, riding on a young donkey.
They shouted, “Save us!” to the one they had seen healing, and feeding, and welcoming the least and the lost. They praised the God who was known for steadfast love and had a history of helping their people. And perhaps they hoped, at least in that moment, that Jesus was the one who was coming to them in the name of the Lord.
Of course, we know that the turmoil that erupted in Jerusalem that day would not stay hopeful and positive. The questions about “Who is this?” and wonderings about whether he was some kind of prophet or even the Messiah would quickly turn to accusations of blasphemy because of his bold claims.
We will recount what happened next when we continue our Holy Week services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. But for now, I want to invite you to ponder the steadfast love and saving help of the God of Israel who is our God as well.
The God who rescued the people from slavery, who guided them through the wilderness, and who brought them back from exile IS the God who came to us in Jesus of Nazareth to save us from our sin and selfishness.
On a day like today – a joyful day of celebration when we are not only marking Palm Sunday with a parade, but also celebrating the baptisms of two precious children of God – it is easy for us to sing our praise: “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it!”
But we know that many other days will follow… harder days, discouraging days, days of confusion and doubt when it’s not easy to be thankful and full of praise.
And I wonder if we can follow the example of the Jewish people of Jesus’ time. No, I don’t mean that we should follow the way many of them turned away from him in confusion and fear during that terrible week. But I mean the way that they kept on gathering for the pilgrimage festivals, how they kept on turning to God for help and strength, how they gave thanks to the Lord, remembering God’s goodness and steadfast love, how they celebrated God’s saving help in the past and looked for God’s help in their present circumstances.
Whatever struggles they may have been going through, they joined the procession with their branches to declare, “You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you.”
The good news for us today is that “God’s steadfast love endures forever.” The invitation for us today is to take up that same kind of faithfulness – to give thanks and praise in all circumstances, to celebrate God’s saving help in the past, and to look for God’s saving help in our own lives.
O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good;
God’s steadfast love endures forever!