"But the Lord Helped Me"

Palm Sunday, the Sixth Sunday in Lent, is a cry for help.

In churches around the world, the words of Psalm 118 will be heard in worship services this week. One word in particular will predominate - "Hosanna." It comes from Psalm 118:25, a word that comes to the English language through a few other languages from its likely place of origin, two Hebrew words that in combination comprise a powerful request of the Lord: "Please, save us now!"

For expediency's sake, many worship services will abbreviate the Psalm, including exclusively the verses prescribed in the lectionary, verses 1-2 and 19-29. When we do so, we skip over some very important ideas, verses that actually inform the subsequent cry for salvation, verses like 10-14:

All nations surrounded me;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

They surrounded me like bees;

    they blazed like a fire of thorns;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,

    but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and my might;

    he has become my salvation.

Listen to the pain the poem describes. The Psalmist has felt such intense, relentless trauma, like bees buzzing in an angry swarm. They describe their experience not just as trying to walk through a patch of thorn bushes, but a patch of thorn bushes that are also on fire! They have been pushed hard, pushed to the point of falling. 

And at the same time, listen to the strength, the resolve, the power of the poem here. "I cut them off! ... I cut them off! ... I cut them off!" A repeated refrain, a statement that celebrates an act of overcoming, made with a slashing gesture through clenched teeth.

And notice, it is not the Psalmist whose power was at work here. No, it was the Lord's. God is the one doing the saving, then, now, and always. The adversity was cut off "in the name of the Lord." The Psalmist does not celebrate their own strength, but rather that "the Lord is my strength." 

I am not strong, says the poet, but God is. And God's strength is sufficient to get through what needs getting through. Even if it is a forest full of burning thorn bushes. 

And of course eventually, Psalm 118 gets us to the "Hosanna" and the "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord" and the "Bind the festal procession with branches" stuff. And it is so good to celebrate this sacred day - the ushers handing out leaves purchased from a worship supply store, you self-consciously waving the leaves above your head during the opening song while the kids self-consciously parade around the room, then not quite knowing what to do with it for the rest of the service, (or if you are a kid smacking your sibling with it when your grown-up isn't looking), picking it up again for the closing hymn and waving it again but a bit less energetically, taking it home with you and putting it on the kitchen counter until it gets dry and brittle and then throwing it away. You know, the Palm Sunday liturgy. It's all good.

But maybe this year, when you receive that store-bought palm, maybe you can recall a time when life felt like being surrounded by a swarm of angry, buzzing bees. Maybe the slender points of the leaflets will call to mind a season when your life required you to walk through a burning hedge of thorn bushes. Maybe for you this year that "Hosanna" can mean something deep, something you feel at the very core of your being. 

Maybe this year Palm Sunday will remind you that when you need help (and yes you do need help - all of us do), God will help you. 

I am not strong, but God is. "With the Lord on my side I do not fear. What can mortals do to me?" (v. 6) And so now I give thanks, for the Lord is good. God's steadfast love endures forever.