The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Matt 21:9
The crowds and disciples of Jesus’
time were under the yoke of Roman Empire,
under the foreign rule. People were waiting for a deliverer, Messiah, to free
them from the clutches of imposed slavery. Their identity was determined by the
imperial structures. Here in Jesus, the disciples and crowds saw the
fulfillment of the long awaited Messiah. They shouted, Hosanna! Save us now!
Contemporary culture promotes
virtual reality through World Wide Web and the culture of consumerism. It is
the culture of wealth. The culture of wealth has a direct relationship with
consumerism and technology. It is manipulative and constructs our identity.
According to Ellan T. Charry (Professor of
Theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ) observes five manipulative
strategies of consumerism that keeps the system going. They are a) the breeding
of calculated dissatisfaction and alienation by manipulating individual
vanities which soothes the ego through displaying wealth, b) illusion of
personal power which inversely propagate freedom of choice; as it seems a
perfume free life is virtually impossible, c) invention of self perpetuating
need; the sugar-salt syndrome promoted by the Pepsico, d) impulsive buying
stimulated by labyrinthine store layouts; only one entrance and one exist; “the
more you see, the more you buy” is the slogan, e)craving for success; success
as climbing up the corporate ladder; “mommy syndrome”.
Virtual reality of life emerged
with vigor lately by the World Wide Web, though the same existed in the form of
library as we interact with the thought and world of other people through
books. Virtuality enables us to be in more than one place at a time, and more
than one self at a time. Through internet we are global citizens and we live in
more than one world at a time.
We live and move in this reality.
Either rich or poor cannot escape from it, or nobody is protected from these
forces. A psychological agenda has been carried out through advertisement to
promote vanity, greed, and insecurity. Ultimately it promotes virtual violence.
As a whole the system is designed to burn us out. Our identity is constructed
by these forces.
We need to get out of this
manipulating, depressing realities; we need salvation. There is another source
of the self: God. God in Jesus Christ provide salvation to us. In Jesus Christ
we received a God given identity. Salvation through Christ reassures an
identity constructed by God.
Salvation is the freedom to live beyond being constructed by the
culture of wealth, the culture of poverty, or by any other human culture for
that matter, because it offers us an identity constructed by God, who is
another source of the self.
Hosanna! Save us NOW!