Jeremiah 23:5-8; Romans 13:11-14; St Matthew 21:1-9
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
“Savior of the Nations, Come.” Advent is a Latin word that mean coming. You prayed it in the collect this morning: Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come. You heard it from the prophet Jeremiah, Behold, the days are coming. Chanted then in the Psalm, Our God comes. It is in St Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome: the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. And again in the Gospel: Say to the Daughter of Zion, “Behold, your King is coming to you.”
This Gospel text is read three Sundays in the course of the Church Year. On Palm Sunday of course and later again in the summer on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity in connection with our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem. There is much to learn here, but the prophecy which the Evangelist quotes from the prophet Zechariah is the chief thing: 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 (Zech 9:9). The urgency is palpable. His advent is nigh.
But who is this King who comes to us? How does He come? In what way? With what purpose and intent? The Psalm for Palm Sunday asks, Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle. The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory (Ps 24:8, 10).
Well, the drawing near, the coming of the Lord of Hosts ought rightly to terrify us, even as it did the prophet Isaiah. For in the year that King Uzziah died, he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the Temple. Isaiah was a dead man. He had seen the Lord God of Sabaoth. Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Is 6:5).
St Paul says that it much more than just our lips which are unclean. It is our eyes, ears, and all our members. It what’s in our pants and bellies and hearts. Our uncleanness is deep down into our very flesh and bones. Try as we may to be rid of it, cover it up, discipline it, it is the still there: a stinking mess of sin that just won’t go away. The coming King brings a righteousness all His own because ours is worthless. Our righteousness is no righteousness at all.
Now, as we stand upon the threshold of another Church Year, looking back into the last year, into the whole of our lives, do we not see that of which St Paul speaks? Drunkenness, sexual immorality, quarreling, jealousy? Is this proclamation that our King is coming good or bad? Is it Law or Gospel? Does not our conscience accuse us of great guilt? Must we not expect that, when Jesus comes, He will come in wrath to punish us as we deserve? Do you not confess that you justly deserve temporal and eternal punishment?” Are we not catechized to fear God?
Repentance is indeed needed. Advent is a penitential season. It is “Christmas Lent.” By the Lord’s grace and mercy, by the work of His Holy Spirit within you, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. And here again the propers of the day, for our Lord’s word of Law is not His only or final word to you.
First, how does the petition of today’s collect finish? “Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come, that by Your protection, we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Your mighty deliverance.” The Lord God who comes does not draw near to you in order to condemn you; but to deliver you, ransom you, protect and defend you from evil, from all peril, from sudden and evil death. As you confess in the Creed concerning the Son of God who came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. It was for us men and for our salvation!
Which is precisely what you just sang in St Ambrose’s great confession of the Incarnation of our Lord. He is the Father’s Son who in flesh the victory won. He uses His almighty power not in the fury of His wrath, but to make whole all your ills of flesh and soul.
And then, as is customary for the readings and the psalm, they thematically run together. For the prophet Jeremiah goes on to say that this coming of the Lord shall bring rescue for His people, destruction of their enemies, safety and security in the Zion of the Lord.
And in returning, they shall return; that is, in repentance and faith they shall be restored. The Lord God comes. He who was enveloped in thick darkness and mighty tempest on the day at Mt Sinai, shall bring His people back to Mt Zion, to His Temple, wherein He does not desire sacrifice and burnt offerings, but a broken spirit and a contrite heart. He gathers to Himself His faithful people with whom He made a covenant, sealed with His own name and marked with His own blood, not the blood of goats and bulls.
All of this culminates in the Gospel, in the very Word of Christ, who is at pains to complete the prophecy of Zechariah, who, as St Peter says, revealed this prophecy of the Messiah and preached the good news of His coming, for you (1 Pt 1:12). For behold, dear children of our heavenly Father, see of Church of God in Christ Jesus, how your King comes to you. Humble. And mounted on a borrowed donkey! He comes as a beggar. No hat, no shoes. He comes to serve you.
For He who first came in flesh and blood and was laid into a borrowed manager, would come by way of a borrowed donkey in order to make Himself the atoning Sacrifice for sin and pour out His precious Blood and give His flesh as true food. He is laid in a borrowed tomb. For this King is a pauper. Though He possessed all the extravagance and wealth and power of the omnipotent God, He made Himself nothing, taking on not only the form of a servant, but taking on your very sin as His cloak, imputing them into Himself, as the Lawless One, as the Dark Offender, as Sin itself.
This is how you must learn to take hold of Christ. Not as you perceive according to your sins, in terror and dread, fearful of His advent. But according to the prophet’s portrayal; according to His Word and promises, as your Savior and Redeemer who has come for your sake to help you. He was promised to Adam and all the patriarchs, and comes now for your comfort and salvation.
“Thus He bears this two-fold title, Righteous Judge and Savior, as the prophet says. He declares you righteous and free from sin, desiring to save you from death and give you eternal life. This title belongs to our King, to Christ. Truly if God were to deal with us strictly, according to our sins, we would die and be condemned. But Christ, the King, stands as the Righteous One for us, takes away our sin, and gives us everlasting righteousness. To be, as the prophet Jeremiah says, This is the Name by which He will be called: “The LORD is our Righteousness,” that is, our Lord who makes us righteous” (Luther, House Postils: First Sunday in Advent - Third Sermon, p33).
For our righteousness is no righteousness at all, as I said. The Law conflicts and condemns us of this truth. The Ten Commandments indeed show us what is true righteousness, but they cannot give it. They are God’s holy and perfect, eternal Will and Word. But we are unable to keep them. Thus we are not righteous before God on account of doing them or any good works.
Rather, only through Christ the Lord’s death and shedding of Blood, which is given to us by the Holy Spirit through faith, which is also a gift, we believe and hold fast to His Word, Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved (Mk 16:16). That is the way we are declared righteous.
This blessed and wonderful Gospel is set before us on the First Sunday in Advent, then, that we may be properly oriented toward the heart and center of God’s Word, the good news that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them (2 Cor 5:19). Not only at Advent and Christmas, but at all times. Casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light, walking properly as in the daytime; having put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is your Light which no darkness can overcome, and by which you make no provision for the flesh, allowing it to gain the upper hand, but mortifying and drowning it.
And behold, dear ones, He who came in flesh and blood, laid in the manger, who who shall come again in flesh and blood, upon the clouds, comes to you now, even as He did in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: meek and lowly, mounted on paten and in chalice, humbly in and under the bread and wine, His Body and Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.
And how do you meet Him? Singing the song of Isaiah’s angelic vision and the song of the crowds greeting Zion’s King. Now there’s a great mash-up. The Sanctus is joined to the Hosanna in the song of the Sacrament. For heaven and earth meet in the flesh and blood of the Lord who comes now to you. Fear not, daughter of Zion, for your salvation is near to you now.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
“Savior of the Nations, Come.” Advent is a Latin word that mean coming. You prayed it in the collect this morning: Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come. You heard it from the prophet Jeremiah, Behold, the days are coming. Chanted then in the Psalm, Our God comes. It is in St Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome: the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. And again in the Gospel: Say to the Daughter of Zion, “Behold, your King is coming to you.”
This Gospel text is read three Sundays in the course of the Church Year. On Palm Sunday of course and later again in the summer on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity in connection with our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem. There is much to learn here, but the prophecy which the Evangelist quotes from the prophet Zechariah is the chief thing: 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 (Zech 9:9). The urgency is palpable. His advent is nigh.
But who is this King who comes to us? How does He come? In what way? With what purpose and intent? The Psalm for Palm Sunday asks, Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle. The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory (Ps 24:8, 10).
Well, the drawing near, the coming of the Lord of Hosts ought rightly to terrify us, even as it did the prophet Isaiah. For in the year that King Uzziah died, he saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the Temple. Isaiah was a dead man. He had seen the Lord God of Sabaoth. Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Is 6:5).
St Paul says that it much more than just our lips which are unclean. It is our eyes, ears, and all our members. It what’s in our pants and bellies and hearts. Our uncleanness is deep down into our very flesh and bones. Try as we may to be rid of it, cover it up, discipline it, it is the still there: a stinking mess of sin that just won’t go away. The coming King brings a righteousness all His own because ours is worthless. Our righteousness is no righteousness at all.
Now, as we stand upon the threshold of another Church Year, looking back into the last year, into the whole of our lives, do we not see that of which St Paul speaks? Drunkenness, sexual immorality, quarreling, jealousy? Is this proclamation that our King is coming good or bad? Is it Law or Gospel? Does not our conscience accuse us of great guilt? Must we not expect that, when Jesus comes, He will come in wrath to punish us as we deserve? Do you not confess that you justly deserve temporal and eternal punishment?” Are we not catechized to fear God?
Repentance is indeed needed. Advent is a penitential season. It is “Christmas Lent.” By the Lord’s grace and mercy, by the work of His Holy Spirit within you, cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. And here again the propers of the day, for our Lord’s word of Law is not His only or final word to you.
First, how does the petition of today’s collect finish? “Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come, that by Your protection, we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Your mighty deliverance.” The Lord God who comes does not draw near to you in order to condemn you; but to deliver you, ransom you, protect and defend you from evil, from all peril, from sudden and evil death. As you confess in the Creed concerning the Son of God who came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. It was for us men and for our salvation!
Which is precisely what you just sang in St Ambrose’s great confession of the Incarnation of our Lord. He is the Father’s Son who in flesh the victory won. He uses His almighty power not in the fury of His wrath, but to make whole all your ills of flesh and soul.
And then, as is customary for the readings and the psalm, they thematically run together. For the prophet Jeremiah goes on to say that this coming of the Lord shall bring rescue for His people, destruction of their enemies, safety and security in the Zion of the Lord.
And in returning, they shall return; that is, in repentance and faith they shall be restored. The Lord God comes. He who was enveloped in thick darkness and mighty tempest on the day at Mt Sinai, shall bring His people back to Mt Zion, to His Temple, wherein He does not desire sacrifice and burnt offerings, but a broken spirit and a contrite heart. He gathers to Himself His faithful people with whom He made a covenant, sealed with His own name and marked with His own blood, not the blood of goats and bulls.
All of this culminates in the Gospel, in the very Word of Christ, who is at pains to complete the prophecy of Zechariah, who, as St Peter says, revealed this prophecy of the Messiah and preached the good news of His coming, for you (1 Pt 1:12). For behold, dear children of our heavenly Father, see of Church of God in Christ Jesus, how your King comes to you. Humble. And mounted on a borrowed donkey! He comes as a beggar. No hat, no shoes. He comes to serve you.
For He who first came in flesh and blood and was laid into a borrowed manager, would come by way of a borrowed donkey in order to make Himself the atoning Sacrifice for sin and pour out His precious Blood and give His flesh as true food. He is laid in a borrowed tomb. For this King is a pauper. Though He possessed all the extravagance and wealth and power of the omnipotent God, He made Himself nothing, taking on not only the form of a servant, but taking on your very sin as His cloak, imputing them into Himself, as the Lawless One, as the Dark Offender, as Sin itself.
This is how you must learn to take hold of Christ. Not as you perceive according to your sins, in terror and dread, fearful of His advent. But according to the prophet’s portrayal; according to His Word and promises, as your Savior and Redeemer who has come for your sake to help you. He was promised to Adam and all the patriarchs, and comes now for your comfort and salvation.
“Thus He bears this two-fold title, Righteous Judge and Savior, as the prophet says. He declares you righteous and free from sin, desiring to save you from death and give you eternal life. This title belongs to our King, to Christ. Truly if God were to deal with us strictly, according to our sins, we would die and be condemned. But Christ, the King, stands as the Righteous One for us, takes away our sin, and gives us everlasting righteousness. To be, as the prophet Jeremiah says, This is the Name by which He will be called: “The LORD is our Righteousness,” that is, our Lord who makes us righteous” (Luther, House Postils: First Sunday in Advent - Third Sermon, p33).
For our righteousness is no righteousness at all, as I said. The Law conflicts and condemns us of this truth. The Ten Commandments indeed show us what is true righteousness, but they cannot give it. They are God’s holy and perfect, eternal Will and Word. But we are unable to keep them. Thus we are not righteous before God on account of doing them or any good works.
Rather, only through Christ the Lord’s death and shedding of Blood, which is given to us by the Holy Spirit through faith, which is also a gift, we believe and hold fast to His Word, Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved (Mk 16:16). That is the way we are declared righteous.
This blessed and wonderful Gospel is set before us on the First Sunday in Advent, then, that we may be properly oriented toward the heart and center of God’s Word, the good news that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them (2 Cor 5:19). Not only at Advent and Christmas, but at all times. Casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light, walking properly as in the daytime; having put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is your Light which no darkness can overcome, and by which you make no provision for the flesh, allowing it to gain the upper hand, but mortifying and drowning it.
And behold, dear ones, He who came in flesh and blood, laid in the manger, who who shall come again in flesh and blood, upon the clouds, comes to you now, even as He did in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: meek and lowly, mounted on paten and in chalice, humbly in and under the bread and wine, His Body and Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.
And how do you meet Him? Singing the song of Isaiah’s angelic vision and the song of the crowds greeting Zion’s King. Now there’s a great mash-up. The Sanctus is joined to the Hosanna in the song of the Sacrament. For heaven and earth meet in the flesh and blood of the Lord who comes now to you. Fear not, daughter of Zion, for your salvation is near to you now.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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