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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.
Freed this year from the choices made by pre-purchased bulletin inserts, we have been able to exercise another option today, Palm Sunday and Sunday of the Passion. Normally in addition to the Processional Gospel we would have heard as our Gospel Reading the complete Passion according to St. Luke, all of which we have already heard over the last five midweek Lenten Vespers and parts of which we will hear again this coming Holy (Maundy) Thursday and Good Friday. So instead, we opted today to hear a significant section of the twelfth chapter of St. John’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account, including St. John’s narration of Greeks’ wanting to see Jesus and Jesus’s response about His being lifted up on the cross and so drawing all people to Himself. As we heard in the Processional Gospel (Luke 19:28-40), the Palm Sunday pilgrims sang of glory in the highest, and, as we heard in the Gospel Reading, Jesus later spoke of His being glorified and of the Father’s glorifying His Name, and St. John wrote of Isaiah’s seeing Jesus’s glory and of people loving the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. This morning in considering the Gospel Reading, we realize that “The glory we seek on Palm Sunday is revealed on the cross.”
We begin with the glory that we seek. Near the end of the Gospel Reading, St. John tells us that many of the authorities believed in Jesus but for fear of the Pharisees they were not confessing that belief so that they would not be put out of the synagogue, for, he says, they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. I would imagine we can all relate! No doubt we would not want ourselves, our loved ones, or people whom we are friends with or care about to be put out of any organization that we have in common, which organization might afford us connections in our communities or a certain prestige. After all, who does not love to be praised or honored by their peers? Whether or not our confessing with our mouths the belief in our hearts (Romans 10:9-10) actually might get us put out of any organization does not mean that we all do not still fail to confess our belief, perhaps in order to avoid ridicule of our coworkers or classmates, friends or family. Loving and receiving the glory that comes from our fellow human beings, Jesus had said earlier in St. John’s Gospel account, can get in the way of our not only confessing with our mouths but even our believing with our hearts (John 5:44). Of course, since we are all born sinful and by nature are dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5), none of can believe and confess on our own to begin with. We walk in darkness and on our own have no idea that the way that we are going leads both to death here in time and to torment in hell for eternity.
But, God wants to give us His glory! God’s glory is the glory that we should seek! When He is lifted up from the earth on the cross, Jesus draws all people to Himself. God calls and enables us both to turn from our sin and to follow and serve Jesus and so, in what seems to be an equivalent expression to receiving God’s glory, to be honored by the Father. Judgment is not only something that happens the day of our death or the day that Christ comes in glory, whichever happens first, but judgment is also something that in a sense is happening even now. Either you do not repent of your sin and believe in Jesus and so are already condemned, or you do repent of your sin and believe in Jesus and so are not condemned (John 3:18).
None of us human beings knows the day or manner of our deaths, only God does. But, remarkably, as God in our flesh, the human being Jesus knew the day and manner of His death. When Jesus spoke of being lifted up from the earth and so drawing all people to Himself, St. John says Jesus showed by what kind of death He was going to die. The long-awaited time had come, and, oddly enough, Jesus pointed to His death on the cross as His being glorified and, like the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies, His bearing much fruit. The Father already had glorified His Name through Jesus’s life and ministry, and the Father would glorify His Name again through Jesus’s death and resurrection. The glory we seek on Palm Sunday is revealed on the cross! If Isaiah had not also seen the Christ’s glory in his vision of the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1), Isaiah, as St. John described, at least saw the Christ’s glory in his prophecy of the Suffering Servant’s being high and lifted up (Isaiah 52:13). Christ Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 2:5-11), Christ Jesus humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Christ Jesus so humbled Himself for all people, including you and me: He died in our place, the death that we deserve. On the cross is the fullest expression of God’s compassion, of which we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 32:36‑39); God’s law may kill us, but His Gospel makes us alive, and there is none that can deliver out of His hand.
Sadly, not all people believe God’s Gospel and so let themselves be in His hand. Although God works through the resistible means of His Word, God nevertheless seriously and efficaciously extends grace to all people, for Jesus died for all and draws all people to Himself. However, not all people permit themselves to be so drawn. We do not need to imagine wrongly that God predetermined who would be damned, or that Jesus only died for some, nor can people rightly take credit for their believing, when they only rightly deserve the blame for their disbelief. And, if people persist in not believing, then God may make it so that they are unable to believe. God so spoke to Isaiah; St. John pointed to the Jews of Jesus’s day as a further fulfillment of that prophecy, and we see it among all people in our own time.
That we are not among such people who do not repent of their sins and trust God to forgive their sins for Jesus’s sake is only because of God’s compassion, His love, mercy, and grace. Through the reading and preaching of His Holy Word God reveals His saving will to all of us together, and through Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar God applies that saving will to us individually. In Holy Baptism, by water and the Word, we are made children of the light by faith; with God’s Name put upon us, we have a concrete connection with Him, a personal relationship. We confess to our pastor the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, like the Greeks who went up to worship at the Passover and yet, apparently instead of going to the Temple, came to see Jesus, we come to where He is truly, physically present with His Body and His Blood under the forms of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. Where He is, there His servants will be. In such fellowship with Him and with one another, we love everyone else more than we love ourselves, and so we keep our lives, even through suffering and the troubles of our own souls, for eternal life. As Jesus ultimately was not afraid to die but looked forward to His resurrection, we ourselves likewise are not afraid to die, nor do we grieve without hope when those we care about die in the faith (1 Thessalonians 4:13), for that which is buried perishable, in dishonor, and in weakness will be raised imperishable, in glory, and in power (1 Corinthians 15:36-37, 42-43).
This morning we have realized that, although we sin by loving the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God, when we repent and believe, then God forgives those and all our sins for Jesus’s sake. For, “The glory we seek on Palm Sunday is revealed on the cross.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +