Hosanna! Save us NOW!

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!

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*
Theology Today, October 2004.