Easter Sunday Singables: "Hosanna"

During these Sundays of Lent leading up to Easter I'll be featuring a different song focused on the resurrection of Christ. This week the featured song is one that would be great for Palm Sunday, the Sunday right before Easter.

"Hosanna" by Hillsong United, released on All of the Above (2010)

(use this clip for an idea of the melody... I've changed a lot of the words in the sheet below)

Why I recommend this song for worship-

As Easter comes each year, worship pastors scramble to find some great songs to sing on Palm Sunday. Sadly, there aren't too many written for this event. Most of our classic songs focus on Easter. Personally, I am thankful for the few songs that are written with the word “Hosanna” in them. One that we've modified to fit our service is this song, “Hosanna.” While the song itself doesn't speak of Christ riding on a donkey, it does echo that classic phrase from the crowds that day. It is a fairly singable song and a ton of bands out there have covered it. To better fit our services, I made a few changes.

Changes I've Made-

The biggest change I've made is rewriting a lot of the lyrics. I've tried to shift them to reflect more on the event of Palm Sunday and what was happening in the hearts of the people. I then take the second verse to show the grace of Christ in that He still died for us, even amidst our cursing His name. I've also written this out in the key of E. This makes it fun on a partial capo guitar (see this post for those chords) and is in a very singable key for the average person.

This song is an enjoyable one as is, and I hope the changes I’ve made to it will make it even more applicable for your worship and will help you focus even more on the wonder of what Christ did for us in the cross, despite our hypocritical hearts.

(just click and copy/paste this into a document to print and play)

This song is available from Amazon and iTunes.