Palm Sunday, Protesting, and Desperation in Search of Leadership

The massive anti-Trump protests in the United States and around the world were powerful displays of desperate people resolving their own cries for help.

“Hosanna” is a word that originated in Aramaic (the language Jesus of Nazareth and his earliest followers spoke) that meant, “Please, save us!” It was a one-word prayer. For reasons that are not clear, the word and its Hebrew sibling became a word of excited respect for one who could effect rescue. When did the transition occur? More specifically, did the Jews excited by Jesus’ humble donkey-ride into the Jerusalem Passover celebration in CE 27 pray to God aloud as a group in the presence of someone through whom God might work to answer their prayers, or were they, as most modern Christians seem to think, already honoring Jesus as the one or one of the ones who could deliver them from subservience to Rome and Emperor Tiberius?

Clearly Christianity got ahead of itself. The people were praying as they spread branches (probably not palm branches) on the pathway over which the little donkey carried the Jewish handyman turned preacher and healer. There wasn’t anything about Jesus’ appearance that led much of anyone to believe he had the capacity to overturn Rome’s rule. A few of his closest followers thought so, especially Judas, but not the rank and file observer. Perhaps enough of the people in the crowd knew Jesus or of Jesus by reputation, and many among them accepted his identity as a devout person of God. In this regard, long shot, he might become the one they hoped for, the leader for whom they were desperate.

The dynamics of the original Hosanna scene have been duplicated countless times worldwide since Jesus initially juxtaposed himself to Tiberius and the imperial henchpeople. Freedom loving US Americans right this minute are the desperate ones; Trump is the Tiberius figure—power-thirsty, godlessly wealthy, and eventually willing to give one of his most notorious sandal-lickers, Pontius Pilate, the OK to execute Jesus on the basis of unsubstantiated ICE-like concocted accusations.

Here’s the thing. However sincerely intended, God doesn’t answer Hosanna prayers. The massive anti-Trump protests in the US and around the world were powerful displays of desperate people resolving their own cries for help. It is easy to see God empowering people to reclaim their freedom and along with it their God-intended sense of self-worth. This means that God is by no means passive in the picture; God neither slumbers nor sleeps, after all. But active engagement against oppressors is up to the oppressed and their unafflicted allies (those whose freedoms are not stolen or suppressed at the moment).

Furthermore, no one leader, even Jesus during his last visit to Jerusalem, can unoppress the oppressed. Leaders like Zelenskyy and AOC and Mandela are invaluable in guiding us through dark oppressions; but they alone, as much as we need them, cannot effect the needed change. The desperation we feel when we are politically abused can at times cause us to be willing to messianize any promising, in our eyes, leader or leaders. A leader willing to be so enthroned should be deposed before coronation.

Those yelling, “Hosanna,” as Jesus rode by them were correct about Jesus being the leader they needed, but they were not correct about the kind of leader they needed; had he lived more than a few more days after being tossed into an ICE detention center, he would have continued intentionally not to be or even try to be the kind of leader for whom his contemporaries longed.