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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.
In popular culture today, I think it is safe to say, there are far more people interested in those who are fifth and sixth in line for the British throne, than there are people interested in the coming of a far more distant descendant of David and His Kingdom. Yet, as we heard in the appointed Gospel Reading for today, the First Sunday in Advent, which begins our new Church Year, at one time and place that level or interest arguably was quite different. The Divinely‑inspired St. Mark tells us how those who went before Jesus into Jerusalem and those who followed after Him were shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord!” and “Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” This morning we primarily consider the Gospel Reading, and we do so under the theme, “The Coming King and His Kingdom”.
To be sure, St. Mark’s account of Jesus’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem can seem like an odd place to begin our Church-Year-long use of his whole Gospel account. When we hear the Palm Sunday account again at the beginning of Holy Week, we no doubt will focus more on such things as the “leafy branches” cut from the fields. But, the season of Advent highlights the multiple comings of the Lord, and so we are led to consider more what the two crowds in today’s Gospel Reading confessed about Jesus in their antiphonal (or “back and forth”) worship of Jesus: their calling Him “He Who comes” and their referring to “the coming Kingdom”.
Some Bible commentators debate exactly what the people were thinking that prompted them to say those things and what the people meant by what they said. And, to some extent, we have to admit that we do not know exactly what all the people were thinking or meant, though we certainly can take their words at face value and conclude that they were sung sincerely by at least some of the people. For example, both groups were shouting “Hosanna!”, an originally Hebrew word that means “save, we pray” or “save now”. The term would have been familiar to every Jew in the procession of pilgrims going up to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. Why would they call out for salvation? Perhaps some of them wanted temporal deliverance from the Romans, but surely others were thinking about their eternal need for a Savior from sin.
What today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 64:1-9) said about those Jewish Passover pilgrims it also says about you and me: we have all become like one who is unclean, and, apart from faith in Jesus Christ, all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. We each know our own sin better than others, and the Lord knows our sin best of all. By nature, we do not call upon the Lord’s Name, nor can we rouse ourselves to take hold of Him. The Lord is justly angry at our sins, and we might reasonably wonder whether we could be saved. But, as the Divinely‑inspired Isaiah says, God acts for those who wait for (or “trust in”) Him, those who remember Him in His ways. The Lord is our Father; He is the Potter, and we are the clay, the work of His hands. When we, enabled by Him, shout out to Him for salvation, “Hosanna!”, then He is not so terribly angry and does not remember our iniquity forever but looks on us in mercy and grace for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. Precisely because of our sin, Jesus Christ comes to us in the Name of the Lord and comes with the Kingdom of His father David.
In making the arrangements for the colt to ride into Jerusalem, Jesus is said to refer to Himself as “Lord” for the first time in St. Mark’s Gospel account, some two-thirds of the way in (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Mark 11:3, 51). And, at least some of the people seem to recognize that Jesus comes with the Lord’s Name, all of His power and authority. Certainly as God in human flesh, Jesus could have come any way He wanted to—made the mountains quake and the nations tremble at His presence—but He chose to come humbly, riding on a colt, on which no one else had ever sat (Scharr, CPR 28:1, 12). What today’s Hymn of the Day called His “heroic course” (Lutheran Service Book 332:4) took Him to the cross, in order to die for your sins and mine, veiling His power in seeming weakness, that we might, as today’s Collect put it, be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by His mighty deliverance. That is how God loved the sinful world, by giving His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)! His and His Kingdom’s coming may terrify His foes, but it comforts those who receive His forgiveness and so love Him and His appearing.
In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray for His Kingdom to come to us, or, as the Small Catechism explains it, for our Heavenly Father to give us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity. And our Heavenly Father answers that prayer! His Kingdom comes to us in the reading and preaching of His Gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. His Kingdom comes to us at the Baptismal Font, as water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word—in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God. His Kingdom comes to us after we privately confess to our pastor the sins we know and feel in our hearts, when we receive individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself—in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven. And, His Kingdom comes to us as we, in the Sacrament of the Altar, eat the true Body and drink the true Blood of the true Passover Lamb, Whose sacrifice of Himself takes away the sins of the world, including your sins and mine, when we combine our eating and drinking with faith in His words “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins”. In all these ways, our Father the Potter reworks us as His clay in order for us to be vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory and honorable use (Romans 9:20-23).
Indeed, as examples of such honorable use, the rest of the hymns we will sing this morning to greater and lesser extents put us into the events of today’s Gospel Reading: adoring the Lord with joyous songs and psalms (LSB 334:2; 350:3); strewing palm branches, spreading garments, shouting and singing “Hosanna!” (LSB 343:2; 350:3; 335:5); and bowing before our coming King and entering His coming Kingdom (LSB 335:5). Like the Jerusalem crowds, we worship Him antiphonally, confessing Who He is and shouting out to Him for our salvation. We care less about the birth of William and Kate’s third child and Prince Harry’s engagement to an American woman, and we care far more about the coming of a descendant of David and His Kingdom. For, as was the case with the Corinthians, to whom the Divinely-inspired St. Paul wrote today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 1:3-9), we are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who will sustain us to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +