✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Matthew 21,1-9 0115
1. Sonntag im Advent 01 Populous Zion
Andrew, Apostle Martyr in Patras, Greece mid to late 1st c. ✠
30. November 2014
1. O God, our Creator who wisdom, help us to await the consummation of this age and the second advent of Your Son Jesus Christ as we prepare for His first advent so that we welcome Him with praise and thanksgiving. (VELKD, Prayer for 1. Sunday in Advent § 1). Amen.
2. »Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them: „Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find an ass tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say: ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.“ This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying: »Say to the daughter of Zion: ‘Behold, your king is arriving, humble, and mounted on an ass, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’« The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the ass and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and He sat on the cloaks. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting: „Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who arrives in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!“«
3. Jesus once taught in a parable that the last will be first and the first will be last. The Church Year follows this axiom as our liturgical year begins anew today. We prepare for Jesus’ advent at Christmas by focusing upon His entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
4. Palm Sunday emphasizes the themes of justification and salvation, for Yahweh made us a promise through His prophet: »Behold, your King is arriving; He is justifying and saving you; He is humble and mounted on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass« (Zechariah 9,9). This Divine King fulfills His promise, and He rode up to Jerusalem to make you righteous. This is why Jesus was born. Zechariah and Matthew tell us that Jesus saved His fallen world meekly and mildly. He rode into Jerusalem on a beast of burden; He did not lash out against His accusers and He died the death of a condemned criminal. In all this, Jesus was in complete control during Holy Week, but He exercised His authority by willingly humbling Himself and submitting Himself to others in order to redeem His fallen creation.
5. Jesus received two different receptions on Palm Sunday. His disciples and the crowd praised Him as their Messiah, crying: „Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who arrives in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!“ The Gospel according to Luke tells us that some of the Pharisees in the crowd wanted Jesus to rebuke His disciples (Luke 19,39) for saying Jesus is the Messiah. Nothing has changed today. Some welcome Jesus with loving joy, but others reject Him with either a miserly „Bah, humbug!“ or with the vilest hate. Regardless of whether people believe in Jesus, they are nonetheless moved by Him (Nagel 13,2). Christians praise Him in public, and atheists work to remove every image of Jesus from the public square at Christmas time. Even inanimate creation is moved by Jesus, for Jesus answered the Pharisees: „If this crowd were silent, then the very stones would cry out.“ (Luke 19,40).
6. Already by the middle of November the world is rushing us along to remember the little Baby Jesus peacefully sleeping in the manger. The Church responds by putting the brakes on: Whoa, let’s slow down and ponder the bigger picture of Jesus and Christmas. The 1. Sunday in Advent proclaims that Jesus is the Son of David who arrives in the Name of Yahweh. Advent prepares the way for this Jesus who arrived to justify and save. Christmas celebrates His birth. Advent reminds us that Jesus was a controversial person: the average Jew received Him, but the religious leaders rejected Him.
6. The crowds, the Pharisees and even many in the world see the signs, but fail to recognize that Jesus rides into Jerusalem to stretch out His hands upon a rough wooden cross. I wonder how many of them put two and two together: this Jesus who rides into Jerusalem is the same Jesus whom the angels sang at when He was born in Bethlehem? We have the testimony of the Apostles and the Evangelists who plainly tell us that the Baby Jesus born at Christmas is the same King Jesus who rides into Jerusalem on an ass. We have the gospel, and we either believe it or we reject it. Many reject Him with scornful unbelief or skeptical uncertainty, but reject Jesus the King they do. To reject Jesus as King and Messiah is to turn away from His mercy and grace, is to turn one’s back on the forgiveness He merited and the righteousness He imputes. Such rejection has consequences. The leaders of Israel rejected Jesus. They believed the land and the kingdom were theirs as a birthright, and so they had no need for Jesus and His kingship. They rejected the merciful Jesus who would have gathered them to Himself as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing, therefore they could not escape the wrath of the Roman eagle who snatched them up in his predatory talons (Nagel 15,7).
7. Like the crowds, we confess: „Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who arrives in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!“ We are acknowledging that Jesus saves and delivers us from sin, death and the devil, for Jesus desires to justify and save us. He has justified and saved us by suffering on cross, dying as the sacrificial Lamb and rising from the grave on the third day.
8. On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem in sacrificial humility, but at His second advent He will arrive on a white horse in righteous judgment (Revelation 19,11) to condemn all unbelievers and vindicate all believers. Jesus is Faithful and True; He has made us faithful and true through His death and resurrection. Yahweh is our Righteousness (Jeremiah 23,6; 33,16), and by His merit we are righteous too. At His second advent Jesus will cast death and the devil into hell, then He will welcome you into the eternal joys of the new heavens and the new earth.
9. »This everlasting fulfillment was inaugurated on Jesus’ triumphal entry on Palm Sunday and points us back to His birth in Bethlehem. We are three weeks away from celebrating His birth and we have begun our joyous preparations for it this day remembering that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass where He would be our vicarious sacrifice for our justification. Amen.
10. Let us pray. O Lord, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, the Son of God shines forth. Help us to welcome Your arrival so that we rejoice in the salvation that You bring from heaven above. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
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