Delivered by Seminarian Mark Gaschler.
Grace and mercy be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the season of the church year where we await the coming, the advent, of our Lord Jesus Christ. And today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark is about Jesus arriving in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the way the people of Jerusalem reacted to his arrival should inform us as we await his return on the last day.
When the disciples told the owners of the donkey colt that the Lord had need of their donkey, they may not have heard of this Jesus of Nazareth. They may not have heard of his miracles and teachings. But they knew the words of the prophets. They had heard what Zechariah said: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! 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. They knew that the Lord was coming. They had awaited this day, when the king would come, and they were watching for his advent. They had faith that in giving their colt to Jesus, they were fulfilling the will of God, that their colt was part of the events that had been foretold.
And the people of Jerusalem, when they saw Jesus coming, they threw their cloaks on the ground. And they went before him and they followed him and they shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming of the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” They too knew the words of the prophets, they knew the arrival of their king would shake the heavens and the earth. For centuries the Jews had awaited the advent of their king, and at last he arrived. Their salvation was come, and this son of David would liberate them from their heathen occupiers and reestablish the Kingdom of Israel, a kingdom that would be blessed by God and would have its vengeance on the nations. And because of this, they praised Jesus as the son of David and they shouted for joy at his advent.
For they too knew the words of the prophets, that the Lord would not abandon his people, that God would send a king of the line of David. They heard the cry of Isaiah: Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence–as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil–to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence. For six hundred years, the Jews had suffered under invaders and heathen empires and calamities. Now here, at last, was the man who would save them from their despair. They trusted that Jesus, the Messiah of God, would destroy their enemies once again make the people of Israel the crown of creation and raise them from their fallen estate.
For the Jews knew despair. For the Jews, they saw their captivity to the Roman Empire as a sign that they had lost the favor of God. Well they understood the words of the Psalmist: O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure. You make us an object of contention for our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved! The Jews cried to the Lord to save them. And can’t we, living today, understand their wretchedness? Driven into isolation by a virus, living in a country divided by hate, we too cry aloud to our God, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and your are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. We cry to the Lord, we ask him to remember what he himself promised to us: that he would be our God, that he would not forget us in our misery. That he would send to us a mighty one who could face death and the devil and deliver us into his kingdom. We cry to the Lord that he would send us a savior.
And truly, God has not forgotten his people, or his promises. Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, both God and Man. In him we see the face of our God, in him our sins and iniquities are forgiven. The people of Jerusalem, who saw Jesus arrive on the back of a donkey’s colt, they cast their dirty robes before him, polluted garments laden with sin. They threw away their earthly clothing for heavenly, eternal clothing that would allow them to approach the Lord, to joyfully work in righteousness before him. For Jesus provides new clothes, washed white in the blood of the Lamb. He came to Jerusalem to give the Jews more than an earthly king, an earthly kingdom where men would still live under the weight of sin. He came to show them the kingdom of heaven, himself.
And the same Jews who cried out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” would, in only a few days, cry out, “Crucify him!” The advent of their Lord had come, and the Jews failed to see it. Because he did not see why David’s Son and David’s Lord had come to earth. Before their eyes Jesus was raised on the cross, suffering a criminal’s death, and all they saw was a man who failed to establish the kingdom of David.
They did not see that this death was what gave them entrance into the Kingdom of God. For Christ’s death is a grand exchange: in it, all sins are paid for in a single, horrifying sacrifice, so that all men and women on this earth can become children of God, citizens of the kingdom. Our God, the Lord of hosts, shone his face upon us from that blessed tree so that he would save us.
And he has saved us. By baptism, our dirty, unclean garments were cast before our Lord, and he himself dressed us in robes of righteousness, covering over our sin in the sight of God. And we now await the advent of Jesus, as those Jews had waited for him in Jerusalem. We wait for him to establish a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth, his holy kingdom of the resurrection. A kingdom where death has been driven out, where sin has no place, where we live in the light of our resurrected Lord. A kingdom which is not divided, because all who live in it are part of the body of Christ. We don’t wait for an earthly king to watch over us here and now. Instead, we await the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that when he returns to us here on earth we may join in the throng that cries out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” Amen.
Now may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.