Oh, Hosanna
A few years ago we learned a new song to sing during the church’s annual Palm Sunday procession. It was introduced by a child in the kindergarten Sunday School class in the following way:
Boy: “I know a song about Hosanna!”
LeAnn: “Okay, why don’t you sing it for us.”
Boy: “Oh, Hosanna, oh won’t you marry me, ‘cause I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee!”
LeAnn was able to get out, “Well . . . that’s VERY interesting,” without bursting into laughter, and I turned my face to keep from doing the same.
The ditty was on my mind the rest of the morning as I pictured the traditional scene of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, with palm fronds falling before him and the air full of the sound of plucked banjos. But then it wormed into my mind in a more serious way – and on several different levels – as the words of children often do.
First, the scene that is painted enhances the sense of just how chaotically triumphant that ride into Jerusalem may have been. People waving and shouting, clapping their hands, making noise with whatever they could find – including a banjo if such an instrument had existed back then. Heightening the excitement of the moment helps to intensify the rejection, anger and torture that came later. Have any of us ever experienced a turnabout that dramatic and horrific? I certainly haven’t. People will grow cold or indifferent, but it’s rare for adulation to turn 180 degrees to total disgust and hate.
Then looking at the song as a whole, it almost has the ring of a Psalm to it – like the ones where David implores the Lord with lyre and lute to come to him and be with him, and using “marriage” as a metaphor for the most intimate and infinite of relationships. And isn’t that what God wants with us: A marriage of our souls?
And then there’s just the sweet innocence of a child who hears a big word like “hosanna” and mistakenly injects it into another phrase or song that he’s heard. I somehow think that our adult faith would benefit from making those types of haphazard connections – putting Christ into places where we don’t usually expect him to be.
So, thanks to the boy for giving us a Palm Sunday smile. And thanks, too, for reminding us that God indeed wants to be close – so close that he sent his son down a street ringing with “Hosannas” (with or without banjos) to a death on a cross that marries us to his love forever.