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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As many of you know, a group from our Pilgrim congregation yesterday got together to prepare a float for the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce Christmas Parade that steps off at 6-o’clock Tuesday night. There are a few days between our preparations yesterday and the parade Tuesday, but in today’s Gospel Reading no such time passes between Jesus and His disciples’ preparations and a “parade” of a different sort. The content of this Gospel Reading for today, the start of the new Church Year with The First Sunday in Advent, and the continued newness of our walk together as pastor and people here at Pilgrim Lutheran Church together prompt me to list as the theme for this sermon, “He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord”.
“Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord” is just part of what the participating Passover pilgrims proclaimed in the “parade” for which Jesus and His disciples prepared. They were a mile or two outside of Jerusalem, at the Mount of Olives, the site for all sorts of expectations about the Messiah, God’s Anointed One. From there Jesus had previously walked into Jerusalem, but this time is different, as Jesus seems to have in mind fulfilling the prophecy God gave through Zechariah, of the Righteous King coming on a colt, bringing salvation and thereby restoring God’s people. So, Jesus sends two of His disciples to find and bring back to Him a colt, on which no one has ever sat, in keeping with the holy use it was about to have. The two disciples bring back the colt and make a saddle of a sort for Him from their cloaks, and Jesus sits on the colt. Thus the preparations, and then the “parade”. As their ancestors had done at King Jehu’s inauguration, many spread their cloaks on the road in a sign of submission and honor, while others spread leafy branches to help the colt step down the steep slope (though that would seem to me to make the steep slope more slippery!). Those who went before and those who followed were perhaps chanting responsively words of praise from the Psalms associated with Passover, beginning and ending with the shout “Hosanna!”, the Hebrew word that means “Save” or “Save now!”
We are now just under one year away from our next U-S presidential election, and the latest political analysis suggests a toss-up between support of the Democratic incumbent and a Republican challenger. I expect that most of us have opinions about which would be the better political “savior” for our country today. In some cases in Old Testament times the shout “Hosanna!” was for salvation from a certain political situation, but, as time went on (and certainly by the time of the New Testament), the shout “Hosanna!” was for salvation from the power of sin, a call for forgiveness and the defeat of Satan. Regardless of our political loyalties that may differ, we are all alike when it comes to sin and the need for forgiveness. We are by nature sinful and unclean, and that condition leads us to sin against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We and others may do things that appear good to us, but as our Old Testament Reading reminds us, before God, apart from faith “all of our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment”, or “filthy rags” as our previous translation rendered it. If there is going to be salvation, an answer to the shout “Hosanna!”, then there has to be the change that we call “repentance”, part of what the season of Advent is about.
The season of Advent—today, The First Sunday in Advent in particular—begins the new church year, and Advent’s nature as a penitential season is appropriate for our closeness to Christmas. At first, the Gospel Reading may seem to be out of place, as if we are jumping into the middle of the story about Jesus Christ, or at least the part more-closely connected to Lent and Easter than to Advent and Christmas. Yet, as we in some sense continue to focus on our Lord’s final coming in glory to judge the living and the dead, we do well to remember that “His long-expected first coming is the promise and guarantee” of His final coming. We do not so much prepare ourselves for His coming in the flesh of the Virgin Mary, for that happened nearly two millennia ago. Rather, we prepare ourselves both for His coming even this day in Word and Sacrament and for His final coming that could occur at any time. We prepare both by turning from our sin in sorrow and by trusting God the Father to forgive our sin. We who understand God’s steadfast love turn to Him for salvation, His love in action for us. When we so repent, God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be; the Father forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake.
People of Jesus’s day had previously identified Him as the Son of David, but today’s Gospel Reading is said to be the first time people associate Jesus with David’s “coming kingdom”. While some biblical commentators have difficulty with that reference, that the crowds associate Jesus with the coming kingdom of the Messiah should not really be a surprise, since the crowds recognize Jesus as “He Who comes in the Name of the Lord”. In effect, the Lord’s Name, person, and work are all ascribed to Jesus, He is the One Who is fulfilling the promise of Israel. He takes upon Himself what we deserve and gives us what we could not obtain for ourselves. He answers the shout “Hosanna!” or “Save now” with His death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. On the cross, God’s righteousness triumphs over wickedness, and so you and I can receive the forgiveness of our sin, whatever our sin might be.
The crowds declare “He Who comes in the Name of the Lord” as blessed by God, and in the same way they greet Him and in turn are themselves blessed by Him with the forgiveness of sins given in specific ways. In Holy Baptism “the Name of the Lord” is spelled out further and put upon us with water and the Word, “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” People of all ages who are baptized into Christ Jesus are connected with His death and resurrection for our forgiveness, but little children who sang His praises that day He entered Jerusalem are especially striking models and images of true discipleship. In Holy Communion “He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord” is really, physically present on this altar in bread that is His body and wine that is His blood, given and shed for you and for me for the forgiveness of our sins. Here we join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, as the Sanctus of our liturgy joins together the heavenly song “Holy, Holy, Holy” of Isaiah chapter 6 with words from today’s Gospel Reading, “Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord”, even as the Gospel Reading itself calls for the same shout of “Hosanna!” both on earth and in the highest, that is in heaven. “He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord” blesses us with forgiveness through Word and Sacrament.
“He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord” is first and foremost Jesus, Who has the Lord’s Name, person, and work. Yet, in some sense others also can be said to come “in the Name of the Lord”, for, by His commissioning and in fulfillment of His will, they call upon and proclaim His power and presence. Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on a colt recalls the inauguration David arranged for his son Solomon, and thereby it can remind us of the beginning of our walk together here at Pilgrim as pastor and people. By some standards, I suppose, my “inaugural sermon” last week was short on the kind of content some might have expected, especially in comparison to the presidential inaugural addresses with which I likened it, though I doubt any would have sat for a sermon that ran as long as a presidential inaugural address! In my sermon I did try to communicate indirectly such things as my love for you all as redeemed children of God and the importance of law-Gospel preaching, and I tried to communicate directly such things as ministry as the seeking out, gathering, and feeding of God’s scattered flock; and how my specific calling relates to bringing you the forgiveness of sins Christ won for you. Furthermore, in my December newsletter article I have written more about our mutual expectations, and in future sermons I may well touch on still more of those, though Pastor Keistman also discussed expectations of both parties in the installation sermon, and you are welcome to see the full listing in the call documents hanging on the wall of my study here at church. To some extent, your already receiving me as one who in some sense “comes in the Name of the Lord” makes less-necessary my need to spell out what that entails, though I am also confident that God will provide opportunities through the course of my regular preaching and teaching to touch on all the various aspects of our life and walk together.
Tuesday night when the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce Christmas Parade brings in the holiday season for the community, our float will be one of more than 75 making its way through the streets. We pray that God blesses all of our preparations and uses the float to make people in the community more aware of our congregation, so that through us He might better reach out to them with the good news of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. However, from what I understand of our float’s experience in last year’s parade, people seeing it will be far more likely to shout out “Hello” to Cooper than “Hosanna!” to Jesus. Yet, Jesus is “He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord”, and salvation is only available to us and those in our community by seeking it from Jesus. When we do seek salvation from Jesus, we can be sure, as St. Paul writes in our Epistle Reading this day, that He is faithful and so will sustain us—not only this day, this Advent, and this Church Year, but also—to the very end.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +