Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Psalm 69,18.21.30.31.33; Matthew 21,9. Palmarum

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

se cwide þæs béaggiefan ábireþ ferhþ

Psalm 69,18.21.30.31.33; Matthew 21,9 2117

Palmarum (6. Sonntag der Passionszeit) 029 „Palms“

Mary Clopas, sister of the Mother of God, John 19,25

Dietrich Bonhöffer, Pastor and Confessor, ✠ 1945

Coptic Martyrs (30+) in Alexandria and Tanta, Egypt by ISIS on Palm Sunday, ✠ 2017

9. April 2017

1. О Lord Jesus Christ, Thou our Guide and Counselor; inspire us to receive You in glory, so that we are strengthened in our knowledge that You are pure in heart and good to Church. Amen. (Gradual)

2. Rejoice with Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who arrives in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Draw nigh to Me and redeem Me: deliver Me because of Mine enemies. They gave Me poison for food, and for My thirst they gave Me sour wine to drink. [1] I will praise the Name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs. For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His own people who are prisoners.

3. Our Introit begins with the Gospel according to St. Matthew quoting the Prophet Zechariah: »Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who arrives in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!«. This is Messianic language, and everyone knew it. The disciples and the Jewish crowds joyfully acclaim Jesus as the Messiah. The Pharisees and other religious leaders likewise cringe when Jesus was lauded as the Messiah. It is simply revolutionary, and they will not stand idly by. Many scribes, Pharisees and rabbis saw this as utter blasphemy and a violation of what the Torah says. Many Sadducees and priests saw this as a threat to the temple and the sacrifices. The Sanhedrin feared Pontius Pilate might view calling Jesus the Messiah as a political threat and an opening salvo in a rebellion against the emperor. The Gospel according to John boldly claims that the crowds dared to call Jesus »the King of Israel « (John 12,13).

4. Matthew, however, was thinking and writing theologically. »Draw nigh to Me and redeem Me: deliver Me because of Mine enemies.« Proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah is a redemptive acclamation. The Messiah goes into our midst to redeem, save and deliver us. Our enemies were not Tiberius Caesar and Pontius Pilate, nor are they President Trump and Senator Schumer; no, our real enemies are sin, death, the devil and hell. They have been our enemies since our birth; yes, ever since Adam fell into sin; these are enemies that have plagued us throughout all of human history. St. Paul tells us: »sin leads to death, and death leads to hades« (Romans 5,12).

5. Notice though how the third stanza of the Introit speaks prophetically of Jesus: »They gave Me poison for food, and for My thirst they gave Me sour wine to drink.« The Gospels tell us the Roman legionnaires wanted to give Jesus some gall to drink, but He refused it. Gall is something that is bitter; if taken in enough quantities is can kill you because it is a poison, and the Romans used it as an antiseptic and an anesthesia to help dull the excruciating pain of crucifixion. When Jesus later became thirsty, they offered Him some sour wine. The Gospels tell us Jesus fulfilled Psalm 69,21 about 1000 years after it had been written.

6. »They gave Me poison for food, and for My thirst they gave Me sour wine to drink.« is the focal point in Palmarum’s Introit. The Messiah who is God’s chosen and anointed one goes to the cross to redeem His people. In response to this redemptive vicarious sacrifice we praise Jesus to be our Messiah and Christ who has taken away the sin of the world (John 1,29).

7. The Introit declares: »I will praise the Name of God with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving.« People are religious by nature. God created us in His own Image and Likeness; that means we are created with a natural desire to praise and worship God. Judaism did so with temple sacrifices and Sabbath services in the synagogues where Scripture is read, psalms are sung and petitions are prayed. Christianity follows in the footsteps of Judaism. We gather on Sunday to worship God with Scripture readings, the singing of hymns, prayers and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Judaism looks to the testament given by Moses; Christianity looks to the testament given by Jesus. We sing and give thanks to God the Father for sending to us His Only Son, Jesus Christ.

8. »This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.« Here the Introit says something shocking: Worshipping God pleases Him more than animal sacrifices. Such a verse trikes at the very heart of the covenant ritual the priests performed daily at the temple. Such a verse also strikes at the very heart of the teachings of the Pharisees with their emphasis on the meticulous and perfect keeping of Moses’ laws as the means to please God. The Psalmist in 69,31 prophesies that the time will arrive in the future where the animal sacrifices will cease. The one who abolished those sacrifices is Jesus who rode up to Jerusalem in the Name of the Lord as the ultimate and efficacious sacrifice for sin, and that was the truly revolutionary thing Jesus did at His Passion. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us: »But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have arrived, then through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctifyfor the purification of the flesh, then how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God. Therefore He is the mediator of a new testament, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first testament« (Hebrews 9,11-15). Jesus did not abolish the old testament with the new because the old was flawed or outdated. Rather, the old testament was our pedagogue (teacher) to prepare us for the new testament. The Apostle Paul writes: »The law was our guardian until Christ arrived, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has arrived, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith« (Galatians 3,24-26). The old faded away because Jesus fulfilled it in His Passion. The Lamb of God took the place of the many lambs who were sacrificed under the old; because Jesus is both God and man He was able to be the perfect, one-time sacrifice to forgive all sin for all people for all time.

9. »For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His own people who are prisoners.« Phariseaism, as well-intentioned as it was, placed an unbearable burden upon Jesus’ contemporaries. The Pharisees multiplied laws in order to assure the commandments were kept. They even elevate the traditions of the elders to near-equal importance. This was meant to be a means of being righteous in God’s sight and also served as a assessment of how well one was in living according to God’s will. This created in many Jews a hopeless cycle of guilt and shame for never being good enough and discipling enough to keep the laws and traditions like the Pharisees did. Jesus expressed it simply in His Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican which He told to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: »Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: „O God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.“ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: „O God, be merciful to me, a sinner!“ I tell you, this tax collector went down to his house justified, rather than the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted« (Luke 18,9-14). When Jesus said: »My yoke is easy, and My burden is light« (Matthew 11,30) He was referring to His way of the gospel over the the Pharisees way of the law. Jesus taught imputed righteousness, and the Pharisees taught a works righteousness.

10. The temple sacrifices, as good as they were, omitted the Gentiles, for Romans, Greeks and the barbarians could not go into the temple and offer up an animal for sacrifice to a Jewish priest. At best, those Gentiles who believed in and worshipped the God of the Jews were called „God-fearers“. They were given a section of the temple courtyard where they could worship and pray to the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus declared that salvation is for both the Jews and the Gentiles. He is the Lamb of God who took away the sin of not only the Jews but of the entire world.

11. Jesus entered Jerusalem on an ass for Jews and Gentiles. Truly He is the Son of David, blessed, arriving in the Name of the Lord and the King of Israel. We affirm the cheers of the crowd: Hosanna; yes, O Christ Jesus, help us! He suffered His Passion on the cross to redeem and deliver you, me and all the world. His hands pierced by nails are hands of the King who heals all mankind (Isaiah 53,5; Tolkien 842). The hands of the king are the hands of a healer (Tolkien 842). The Book of Job tells us: »For God wounds, but He binds up; He shatters, but His hands heal« (Job 5,18). Only Jesus can save those wounded by the Devil, and so the rightful Christ could ever be known by the healing He brings (Tolkien 842). Today we worship this rightful Christ who has ridden up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as the right and proper King. Amen.

12. Let us pray. O Christ, Thou Son of Man who must be lifted up, send forth the Holy Spirit upon us as we contemplate the mysteries of Your holy Passion this week, so that whoever believes in You will have eternal life. Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

Gode ealdore sy se cyneþrymm

✠

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.

[1] καὶ ἔδωκαν εἰς τὸ βρῶμά μου χολὴν καὶ εἰς τὴν δίψαν μου ἐπότισάν με ὄξος (Psalm 69,21 LXX)

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Psalm 69,18.21.30.31.33; Matthew 21,9. Palmarum

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