Hosanna in the Highest!

This week is arguably the most important week of the year in the life of a believer. It begins with worship just as this week began two thousand years ago. On the day we refer to as Palm Sunday, people gathered to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with the words “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Their shout of praise, worship and adoration, spoken in recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus (Hosanna!), literally means, “Save us now, Lord." We, like they, recognize our need of a Savior, for now and for eternity.

Dr. Robert Webber has said, “Worship is the ‘summit’ toward which we always proceed. For we take to worship the issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis with an expectancy that God will bring healing into our lives. But worship is always the 'fount' from which our lives flow because worship not only brings healing to our life issues, it also empowers us to face the realities of our life in the world with the conviction that the last word is not the death evil brings, but the resurrection Jesus gives.1

Christian Furchtegott Gellert wrote these words to this hymn in the early eighteenth century:

Jesus lives, and so shall I
Death, thy sting is gone forever!
He for me hath deigned to die.
Lives the bands of death to sever.
He shall raise me from the dust.
Jesus is my hope and trust.

Jesus lives – and death is now
But my entrance into glory;
Courage, then, my soul, for thou
Hast a crown of life before thee.
Thou shalt find thy hopes were just:
Jesus is my hope and trust.

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” I Corinthians 15:54-55

1 Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 205.