The 2013 Hosanna Preaching Prize

The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) [IPMN] is pleased to announce the 2013 Annual Hosanna Prize*. The award recognizes preachers who challenge and inspire believers to heed God’s urgent call to justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel. Two $1,000 prizes—one on an Old Testament text and the other on a New Testament text—are awarded annually.

The prize-winning sermons will raise a vision of God’s love that embraces all people, especially those who are oppressed and persecuted, exposing the theological error of using biblical passages to rationalize injustice to or by Jews or Palestinians.¹ The sermons will demonstrate a deep understanding of the theological concerns voiced directly by Palestinians and Jews: 

• Palestinians have called upon the churches of the world to “preserve the word of God as good news for all rather than to turn it into a weapon with which to slay the oppressed,” and to renounce the “theological cover-up for the injustice we suffer.” (Kairos Palestine, 6.1)²  For instance, some Christians and Jews erroneously interpret Genesis 12:3 as a literal land grant to contemporary Jews of all of Palestine and texts in Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges as an excuse to “cleanse” Palestine of non-Jews. To support contemporary Jewish claims to Palestinian land, other texts are used to claim a connection between the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah and the current state of Israel, or a genealogical connection between modern day Jews and the ancient Israelites. 
• Jews have called upon the churches to renounce the real or apparent anti-Semitism in New Testament texts (e.g. Matthew 27:25) that are cited to blame all Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus (the charge of Deicide), texts that declare that God’s covenant with biblical Israelites and their Jewish spiritual heirs has been nullified or replaced by God’s covenant with all who believe in Christ (supercessionism), as well as texts that denigrate or appear to denigrate all Jews.  
• The prize-winning sermons will hold both peoples accountable to biblical and contemporary international standards of justice.

Sermon manuscripts must identify the preacher, the date preached, and the name & place of the congregation where the sermon was preached. For consideration, sermons must be submitted each year by September 15,  to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  

Examples of sermons by Jewish and Christian clergy that meet the prize criteria are available on the IPMN website, www.theIPMN.org. 

¹ See The Bern Perspective on biblical interpretation which declares: “The Bible must not be used to justify oppression” of anyone anywhere. 

² See Kairos Palestine

*About the Hosanna Prize: In 1915, the ten-year-old Osanna Panian walked over the mountains into Iran, escaping and surviving the Armenian Genocide. She lived her life as a refugee, always hoping and expecting to go home to Armenia. Because she was born on Palm Sunday, she was named Osanna (Hosanna in Armenian), which means “We beseech you, save us!” The Hosanna Preaching Prize is established by Noushin Framke in honor of her grandmother Osanna Panian (1905-1986), with the hope that all refugees might find their way home.

2012 Hosanna Preaching Prize Winners Announced

by Robert Trawick for PNS - Presbyterian News Service

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has announced the winners of the 2012 Hosanna Preaching Prize.  This year’s prizes are awarded to Rabbi Alissa Wise, co-founder of the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voices for Peace and to Dr. Mark Braverman, director of Kairos USA.

Rabbi Wise’s sermon, entitled “God is in This Place” was delivered at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in San Francisco.  Centering her thoughts around Jacob’s awakening at Bethel recounted in Genesis 28:16, Rabbi Wise explores her own spiritual awakening to justice issues.  This awakening leads her to affirm the centrality of tochecha, the sacred duty of rebuke found in the Holiness Code (Lev 19:17), which so animates the prophetic tradition.

Dr. Braverman’s sermon, entitled “Can These Bones Live?” was delivered at Iona Abbey in Scotland.  Working with both the New Testament account of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21) and the account of Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37: 1-14), Dr. Braverman reflects on the importance of kairos moments, those episodes in history where “God offers a new set of possibilities [that] we have to accept or decline.”  The full texts of both of these sermons can be found in left column on this webpage.

These awards represent the inauguration of the Hosanna Preaching Prize, an annual prize intended to foster the exploration of and reflection upon Biblical texts that support justice and reconciliation in Palestine and Israel.  Recognizing that Biblical texts have too often been used to foster and support injustice, The Hosanna Preaching Prize lifts up those preachers who understand and demand that the Bible must never be used to justify oppression.  Two awards will be given each year, one focusing on a text from Hebrew Scriptures and one focusing on a text from the New Testament.

The Hosanna Preaching Prize is established by Noushin Framke, a Presbyterian Elder from New York City, in honor of her grandmother Osanna Panian, who as a ten year old in 1915, walked over the mountains from Armenia into Iran, escaping the Armenian Genocide.  She lived her life as a refugee, always hoping and expecting to return to her homeland.  Because she was born on Palm Sunday, she was named Osanna, (Hosanna) which means, “We beseech you, save us!”  The Hosanna Preaching Prize is awarded by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network in the hope that all refugees might find their way home.

Robert Trawick is a Presbyterian elder living in New City, NY.  He is an associate professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, NY.

Read here on PC(USA) website, Presbyterian News Service

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