Hosannas—Cries from the Heart
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

On a rocky, dusty road from Bethpage to Jerusalem, people gather to catch a glimpse of Jesus riding by.  Many with him from the start.  There are women there.  And children too.  Folks who can’t walk.  Others that can’t see.  People overlooked or pushed aside—day laborers, lepers, tax collectors.  People others call unclean.  All gathered in the crowd.  All shouting out “Hosanna.”

Voices ringing through the centuries.

“Hosanna”  “Hosanna in the Highest”

We hear the word “Hosanna” and think “Alleluia.” But in doing so, we miss the meaning of the word.  We miss the meaning of the day.

Today is not a day for “Alleluias.”  Those come later.

Today is a day for “Hosannas”—“Hosannas” from the heart.

“Hosanna”—“Save Us”

“Save us,”  the people cried that day.  “Save us,” from all that threatens us.  “Save us” from taxes that take away our homes.   “Save us” from the armies occupying our lands.  “Save us” from all pushing us deeper into debt.  “Save us,” the people cried that day.  “Save us” from those elbowing us out of the way.  “Save us” from the demons that haunt us.  “Save us.”

“Hosanna”—it’s not a shout of joy.  It’s a cry of hope coming from deep within broken human hearts.  “Hosanna”—a cry starting in pain and ending in possibility.

And don’t we, too, don’t we cry out “Hosanna,”  save us?

 “Save us” from the feeling of being stretched beyond our capacity to cope.

 “Save us” from the clutter of our lives.

“Save us,” from the daily struggle just to stay afloat. 

“Save us,” from the loneliness and emptiness a deep loss often brings.

“Save us,” from depression and despair.

“Save us from anger, save us from resignation, save us from indifference.”

“Hosanna,  save us.”

This week, I’ve been hearing hosannas.  I’ve been hearing a chorus of hosannas.   The hosannas of people I know well and the hosannas of people I’ve never  met. 

“Save us,” cry people who daily walk the streets of Albuquerque because they have no home in which to rest.

“Save us,” cry the hungry in our midst.

“Hosanna, save us,” say people giving up the search for decent work.

“Save us,” cry those who harvest our food, who make our meals, who clean our houses.

“Hosanna, save us, is the call.”

That call to Jesus, that Hosanna, is also a call to you and me. 

We are called, you and I,  to respond to the pain and deep needs we encounter in our lives.

I think that’s what this week is all about.  A call to take up the solidarity of the cross.  A call to respond to the Hosannas that punctuate our days.

“Hosanna.  Save us.”

These Bones Are Made for Living:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

There they were—a people discouraged, a people dispirited, a people defeated.  There they were a people exiled to a foreign land, a people living amidst sights and sounds and smells unfamiliar to them.  There they were—a people cut off from all that sustained them—family, friends, familiarity and even their God.  There they were—a weary people sapped of hope, sapped of life, a people weeping by the waters of Babylon..  There they were—the people of the Exile living like dried up bones settled in a valley far from home, a valley hemmed in by the rivers of Babylon. 

Living in their midst—a young priest named Ezekiel.  God says to him, “Come with me” and then God whisks that young priest off to a valley filled with dry bones, a lifeless valley absent even of the hope of a visit from God, a valley not far from the rivers of Babylon.  A looking-glass kind of valley.

Pointing to the bleached bones on the valley floor, God asks Ezekiel the question Ezekiel and those who wept with him asked themselves time and again, “Can these bones live?’’ And then God says to young Ezekiel, “Prophesy, mortal, prophesy to these bones.”

I can imagine that young prophet wondering, in the pause between sentences, what on earth he could possibly say to a people seeing themselves as nothing more than a pile of dried-up bones waiting to be buried by the soils of time in a foreign land.  What on earth could he say to a people cut off from those they loved?  What hope could he offer a people who saw themselves cut off even from God?

And yet God says to Ezekiel, “Tell my people ‘I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live, I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live....I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live....”

You and I, we live in a world of dried up bones.  We, like our brothers and sisters weeping by the waters of Babylon, sometimes find ourselves cut off from hope, sometimes cut off even from God.

We see the violence of our day—children beaten—sometimes to death, men shot, homeless harassed and we wonder, “Can these bones live?”

We see our friends, our brothers and sisters, sometimes ourselves turned away from the church we have called home and we wonder, “Can these bones live?”

We see people we know and love stretched beyond the limits of their endurance by workplaces pushing them to work harder and faster, workplaces profitting on the backs of their workers and we wonder, “Can these bones live?”

We watch with horror as this fragile earth, our island home, witnesses the ravages of a changed climate—flooded coastlands, parched rangelands, dried up fields, air unfit to breathe—and we wonder, “Can these bones live?”

Yet God says to Ezekiel, God says to us, “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live.”  What does that look like?  What does God’s enlivening Spirit look like?

Perhaps that Spirit at work, that enlivening Spirit, looks like old ladies huddled together with young kids—black and white—in Oakland, California, spending an hour every Saturday sanctifying a place where a young person has been shot to death.

Perhaps that life-giving Spirit looks like a church inviting same-gender couples to kneel as a priest blesses their union.

Perhaps that Spirit sounds like a friend calling a friend by the name they have chosen to adopt or a door being opened to a person used to being turned away or pushed aside. 

Perhaps that Spirit looks like people and  communities throughout our country planting trees, diversifying their crops, developing drought-tolerant grains we need to survive.

Perhaps that Spirit looks like people from St. Martin’s and people from Live at Five worshipping together and sharing a meal. 

God’s life-giving Spirit at work in small things that bring dried-up souls, broken hearts and our fragile earth back to life.

Send forth your spirit, Lord.  Renew the face of our lives.  Renew the face of our Earth.