First Sunday
in Advent – Series C (December 2, 2018)
“Marching
Toward Doom?” (Luke 19:28-40)
It’s time again for that perennial Palm Sunday
poke in the eye at the beginning of Advent when we’re all expecting something a
bit more “Christmas-y.” While the world
around us is hearing the sounds of “sleigh bells jingling, ring-ting tingling” …
while we begin to smell the sweet scents of cinnamon and sugar cookies and cocoa
… we instead imagine the sounds of a donkey snorting and braying while walking
in the midst of a boisterous crowd … and the smells we imagine are a lot less
sweet, but rather the pungent odor of a sweaty beast of burden, the assorted
aromas from the first century humans around us, and Palestinian dust kicked up by
both animal and man clogging our nasal passages.
And instead of “a birthday party at the home of
Farmer Gray” awaiting us, “the perfect ending of a perfect day,” a trial, a flogging,
and an execution await us at the end of Jesus’ journey down the Mount of Olives
and back up to the city gates of Jerusalem.
Not exactly something that Currier and Ives would have included in one
of their holiday prints. This is a march toward impending doom. A brutal death of an innocent man. The murder of the Son of God. It’s not something most people expect as they
prepare for Christmas. Did you expect
it? If you are keyed in to the Church Year,
then maybe you did. But even so, it’s
jarring. It’s quite the contrast with
the “spirit of the season,” whatever that means.
Before we can properly celebrate and appreciate
Christmas, it’s important to do some reflection in Advent. Before we dive right into Christmas, Advent calls
us to take time to take stock of where we stand with Jesus. What are we marching toward? Are we marching toward our own impending doom? With each beat of our heart, we are marching
toward death. With each passing day, we
are marching toward the Last Day, when all history will end, and Jesus will
return to judge the living and the dead.
As we prepare to celebrate the first Advent – the first coming of Jesus (for
that’s what the word Advent means: “coming”) – we also have an eye toward the second
Advent, the second coming of Jesus. The
Last Day, the final Judgment, and the return of Jesus was the theme at the end
of the Church Year the past few Sundays, and that theme carries over into
Advent as we begin another Church Year.
So where do we stand with Jesus?
And what are we marching toward? What
awaits us? Doom as the due punishment
for our sins with which we have offended our holy God, or a room in our Father’s
house in his heavenly Jerusalem?
The Palm Sunday account reminds us that the manger
of Bethlehem is not the conclusion of the Christmas story. The cross of Calvary is. Jesus was marching toward the cross. But that march did not begin on the Mount of
Olives. It began in Nazareth about thirty
years prior, when God fulfilled the promise he made “to the house of Israel and
the house of Judah” (Jer. 33:14). There,
the “righteous Branch” sprung up for David and for all humanity to be the
promised Messiah and Savior of the world.
The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her that she would conceive
by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that her Child “will be great and will called
the Son of the Most High. And the Lord
will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33).
Christmas is all about the Son of
God’s self-surrender by humbling himself to become a man for us, to live under
the Law for us, and to keep that Law perfectly in our place. Jesus showed his humility once again by
riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, fulfilling the prophecy of
Zechariah some 500 years earlier: “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous
and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal
of a donkey” (Zech. 9:9). Everyone was
aware of this prophecy and recognized the significance of what Jesus was doing. That’s why the crowd was all stirred up. In Jesus, they saw the Messiah, the promised
descendant of David, come to be their king.
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” they cried out. St. Mark, in chapter 11 of his Gospel, adds
the word they cried out that has made its way into our liturgy, “Hosanna!”
which means “save us now!” In the Sanctus,
we sing, “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the
Lord!” But with this march of Jesus
coming right before Passover, which celebrated the release of the people of
Israel from their slavery in Egypt, it’s clear that the people misunderstood
Jesus’ mission. They expected Jesus to
be the one who would release them from their bondage to the Romans who were in
charge of their land at that time. They
didn’t understand that Jesus’ came to be our King who claimed the cross as throne,
where his self-surrender reached its highest point by giving his life for us.
The Pharisees, Jesus’ legalistic opponents, were
disgusted with this display. “Tell your disciples
to be quiet!,” they said. But Jesus
replied, “If they were quiet, the stones would cry out.” Having just been in Jerusalem, I can
guarantee you, there were lots of stones on the ground there on those rocky
hillsides. The same Jesus who refused to
turn stones into bread could certainly have made them sing his praises if he had
wanted. But the cry of those stones had
to wait until the following Sunday when an earthquake struck as if to proclaim the
earth-shattering event of our Lord’s resurrection.
The people of Jerusalem sang out, “Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest!” This echoed
the song of the angels to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
Peace in Heaven.
God is at peace with all humanity through the death and resurrection of
his Son. In 2 Corinthians 5:19, St. Paul
says that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting
their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Peace on Earth.
Humanity is at peace with God through the forgiveness Jesus earned for
us. It gives us great comfort to know
that our sins have been laid to Christ’s account. He has been judged in our place. The righteous Branch who sprung up for us is
called “The Lord is our righteousness.”
We have no goodness or perfection of our own, but we bear the goodness
and perfection of Jesus by faith. As we
march toward death and toward the day of our Lord’s return, we don’t need to
fear. As we wait, we can know peace in
our hearts, and we can be at peace with one another, as St. Paul prayed for the
Thessalonians, that “our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus … make you
increase and abound in love for one another and for all … so that he may establish
your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our
Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3:11-13).
Palm Sunday and Christmas provide nice bookends
for us here in Advent. On this side of Advent,
we have the song of the people: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of
the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in
the highest! … Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” On the other side of Advent, we have the song
of the angels: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those
with whom he is pleased!” Both songs remind
us that the Incarnate Christ is with us.
Both have made it into our liturgy.
We sing the Gloria in Excelsis at the beginning of the Service of the
Word to remind us that Jesus comes to us in his Word. We sing the Sanctus at the beginning of the
Service of the Sacrament to remind us that Jesus comes to us in his Supper.
Blessed is he who comes! And he does!
Hosanna! Save us now! And he has.
And we march here to hear the Word that
gives us life. And we march right up
here to eat and drink his precious body and blood, given and shed for you for
the forgiveness of all your sins.
Amen.
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