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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
When the president of the United States in our time makes a grand entrance into his capital city, such as by Air Force One and a motorcade of limousines, there is division in the city between those who welcome him as their president and those who at first wonder about him but ultimately reject him. If there is such divided reaction in our time over a worldly leader, perhaps we should not be at all surprised that there was such divided reaction in Jesus’s time over a religious leader. As we heard in the Palm Sunday Processional Gospel about Jesus’s entrance into and early time in Jerusalem, while the whole city was stirred up so as to shake in their shoes, the faithful pilgrims were calling-out to Jesus for salvation and confessing Who He was. This morning we consider that Processional Gospel under the theme, “Calling-out and Confessing”.
The past few weeks we have heard Gospel Readings from St. John’s Divinely‑inspired account, including last week’s Gospel Reading about the raising of Lazarus, which event, in part, attracted the large crowds that first Palm Sunday (John 12:9-11). Today we returned to hearing Readings from St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired account, and he, like the other evangelists, reports Jesus’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem, including the faithful pilgrims’ calling‑out to Jesus for salvation, but he alone also reports the immediate reaction of the city to Jesus’s entrance and the content of the pilgrims’ confession (confer John 12:17).
Bible commentators differ about the nature of both what the faithful pilgrims cried out and what the faithful pilgrims further confessed in answering the city’s question about Jesus’s identity. To be sure, their Old Testament cry “Hosanna!” (Psalm 118:25-26) can be taken as a cry for salvation, and their confession of Jesus can be taken as their confessing Him to be the Prophet promised by God through Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15-22; confer John 7:40, 52), that is to say, the singular Prophet, the Messiah Himself. Surely at least some of the people in the crowds that went before Jesus and that followed Him, antiphonally singing back and forth, knew both that they were sinners, who by nature deserved present and eternal punishment for their sin, and that Jesus was the Messiah, Who could save them from the punishment they deserved on account of their sin and sinful natures. To the extent that others of the people in the crowds did not know that they were sinners and that Jesus was the Messiah, those other people were all the more in need of His teaching them God’s holy Law and of Jesus’s revealing Himself as the Messiah, the living Gospel.
You and I may not always recognize our sins of thinking, speaking, and doing the things that we should not, or our sins of not thinking, speaking, and doing the things that we should. You and I may not always recognize Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, and what He means for us. You and I may not always cry out to Him for salvation, and you and I may not always confess Him to be our Savior. Like those in the crowds that first Palm Sunday, we by nature deserve temporal and eternal punishment for our sin. So, God calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of not always recognizing our need for salvation and calling out to Him, and God forgives our sin of not always recognizing Jesus as the Messsiah and confessing Him to be our Savior. When we so humbly repent, then God forgives all our sin, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, Who humbly entered Jerusalem as our King in order to save us.
The God-man Jesus Christ’s humility is mentioned in today’s Processional Gospel Reading, in connection with His riding the donkey or its colt, and the God-man Jesus Christ’s humility is also a key theme in the historic Epistle Reading for Palm Sunday (Philippians 2:5-11), which emphasizes Jesus’s humbling Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Today’s Passion Sunday Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 50:4-9a) foretells how Jesus would give His back to those who strike and His cheeks to those who pull out the beard, how He would not hide His face from disgrace and spitting. And, today’s Passion Sunday Gospel Reading (Matthew 26:1-27:66) tells How Jesus in fact did all those things and more for you, for me, and for the whole world, to save us from our sins. The all-powerful Lord had need of a donkey and colt to fulfill the prophecy spoken through Zechariah, not only the part Matthew paraphrased, longer than the other evangelists, but also the part about the King’s being righteous and having salvation (Zechariah 9:9), for which salvation our Humble King then went to the cross for us.
Now, our Humble King gives us the benefits of His death on the cross in His Means of Grace, His Word and Sacraments. He Who was humbly born of a virgin, humbly rode into Jerusalem, and was humbly crucified on a cross has long since been exalted in His descent into hell, resurrection from the grave, and ascension into heaven. But, He still comes to us in the humble means of His Word read and preached, combined with water in Holy Baptism, spoken by the pastor in individual Holy Absolution, and combined with bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Especially in connection with that real, physical presence on this Altar, we, as did the Christian community quite early on (Lohse, TDNT 9:683‑684) sing, “Truly blest is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord!” (Lutheran Service Book 208). In all these humble ways, our once-humble but now‑exalted King comes to us who could not otherwise come to Him. As He enables us, we cry out to Him for salvation, and He answers our cry by giving us salvation, the forgiveness of sins, in all these ways. And then, by all these ways, He also brings forth from us the fruit of lips that confess His Name (Hebrews 13:15).
A few verses after today’s Processional Gospel (Matthew 21:14-16), St. Matthew records both the chief priests and the scribes’ indignation that children in the temple were crying out “Hosanna!” and Jesus’s replying with a Psalm verse (Psalm 8:2) about God’s preparing praise out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies. Such children are “a model and image of true discipleship” (Lohse, TDNT 9:683-684). This morning here at Pilgrim two older children, Clay and Emma, will praise God with a confession of faith in Him, vowing, by the grace of God, to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from their confession and from the Lutheran Church (LSB 273). Not only these two confirmands but also all of us, who have ever made or will ever make that vow, gently and respectfully give answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), as the crowds answered the question that the city of Jerusalem asked. The question‑and‑answer format of the Small Catechism prepares us well for our lives crying‑out and confessing!
Some may welcome the president of the United States as their president, and others may reject him as their president, but, in the final analysis, if they live in this country, he is their president—their rejection ultimately does not change that fact. To a much greater extent, the same is true with the Lord Jesus Christ. As we heard in the Epistle Reading, ultimately every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Of course, if people reject Jesus as Lord now, on the Last Day their bowing and confessing will not do them any good. However, if we cry-out to Him and confess Him now, then on the Last Day we will be part of the great multitude that no one can number standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes with palm branches in our hands worshiping God in His presence for eternity (Revelation 7:9).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +