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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.
Perhaps too easy to pass by in today’s Palm Sunday Processional Gospel Reading, and too easy to forget after today’s Sunday of the Passion Gospel Reading, is that the Lord of heaven and earth had need of a colt, the foal of a donkey. To be sure, the Lord could have spoken or even thought a colt into existence right before His disciples’ eyes, but He did not do either. Instead, because of His need and an apparent desire to use ordinary means, He sent two disciples with His authority to press a colt into His service, with the promise, presumably fulfilled later, that He would send it back. Whether or not the Lord previously had made arrangements “to borrow” the colt, the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark does not tell us, although Jesus hardly would have needed to have done so, perhaps, as an alternative, He relied on His omniscience, or on His authority as the Lord and Messianic King, or on both. Regardless, roughly half of the Processional Gospel Reading narrates fulfilling the Lord’s need for a colt—including possibly St. Peter’s eyewitness details unique to St. Mark’s account, such as the colt’s being tied at a door out in the street and those standing there’s letting them go—then the rest of the Reading tells us precisely what the Lord needed the colt for.
As the Reading continued, we heard how the disciples threw their cloaks on the colt and Jesus sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. Clearly Jesus needed the colt in order to ride into Jerusalem, something, to the best of our knowledge, He had not previously done. Of course, having heard today’s Old Testament Reading, you know that Jesus needed to ride the humble colt into Jerusalem in order to fulfill prophecy—unlike the other Gospel accounts, St. Mark’s does not refer directly to God’s Word through Zechariah but is full of links and allusions to it (Michel, TDNT 5:286). And, while Jesus in some sense needed to fulfill that prophecy in and of itself, that prophecy was about the Lord’s righteous King coming to save His people, so, ultimately, Jesus needed to fulfill that prophecy for us. In other words, Jesus had need of a colt because we had need of a humble Savior.
Now, there may be a lot of things that we think that we need—a better school or job, better friends or coworkers, better health—things that might be better called “wants”, but, from God’s point of view, we need only one thing: forgiveness of sins, and the life and salvation that that forgiveness brings. We all are sinful by nature, and so we commit countless actual sins—things that we think, say, and do that we should not, and things that we fail to think, say, and do, that we should. For our sinful natures and for our actual sins, we deserve death here in time and torment in hell for eternity.
But, our King comes to us, righteous and having salvation, humble and mounted upon a colt, the foal of a donkey. As His coming enabled those who went before and those who followed after Him to shout to Him that day on the way down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, so He enables us to shout to Him, “Hosanna!” (Confer Kretzmann, ad loc Mark 11:8-11, p.226.) Usually transliterated, the word familiar to every Jew, when translated means, “Save us now, we pray!” They quoted from the great Halel, a group of Psalms used in processions like that going up for Passover, and, in directing their cry to Jesus, they seemed to recognize that He met every expectation of the Messiah (Lohse, TDNT 9:683). We do likewise: crying “Hosanna!” “Save us now, we pray!”—seeking the forgiveness that we need and receiving it because of His mercy and grace.
They welcomed Jesus as the Messiah: the Blessed One Who comes in the Name of the Lord, and the Blessed One Who embodied the kingdom of their father David. Like St. Luke’s Gospel account, St. Mark’s account stresses the colt’s appropriateness for holy use (Michel, TDNT 5:286, referring to Numbers 19:2; Deuteronomy 21:3; 1 Samuel 6:7), something the majority of the crowd may not have known, but that did not stop them from honoring Jesus and submitting to Him as their ancestors had honored and submitted to King Solomon, who rode his father David’s donkey (1 Kings 1:38, 44); King Jehu, for whom they made a way with their garments (2 Kings 9:13), and perhaps also Simon Maccabaeus, whom they reportedly welcomed with praise and palm branches and harps and cymbals and stringed instruments and hymns and songs (1 Maccabees 13:51). Yes, Jesus was like them, only greater, and lesser. The humble ride into Jerusalem was only part of it. As we heard in the Epistle Reading (Philippians 2:5-11), He was in the form of God, but did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, and so He emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (There, too, in the Incarnation, we might too easily pass by the Lord of heaven and earth’s humbly lying in a manger, and, instead of speaking or thinking food into existence, depending on Mary and Joseph to feed Him, change Him, and to otherwise care for Him.) And, Jesus humbled Himself further: to the point of death, even death on a cross! “Laden with the sins of earth”, He went to the cross “without complaint”, and there gladly died for you and for me (Lutheran Service Book 438).
After parts of three days in a “borrowed tomb”, Jesus rose from the dead and now rules all for the sake of His Church (Ephesians 1:22), and He still uses humble means to give us the greatest of blessings. Through water and the Word in Holy Baptism, He forgives our sins, rescues us from death and the devil and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. Even the littlest children are able to believe, and, as they grow, to wave their palms, and to chant their praise! Through the successors of the disciples, in individual Holy Absolution, He does not untie colts, but He looses sins, on earth and also before God in heaven. And, as He miraculously provided a colt and later a place to eat the Passover with His disciples (Mark 14:12-16), so, in the Sacrament of the Altar, He miraculously gives us bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood that we may eat and drink and so receive forgiveness, life, and salvation. “Hosanna” is a word familiar to us, too, for the historic liturgy of the Christian Church has us sing it as He comes to be present with us here in order to bless us with the forgiveness of sins.
As St. Mark tells it, to meet Jesus’s need of a colt, He gave His disciples four commands, each of which they eventually kept, and so He was able ultimately to meet our need for the forgiveness of sins. More than waving palm branches and singing His praise, we at least try to praise Him not only with our voice but also with our heart and with our life (LSB 443). When we do not do as well as the disciples in keeping all of God’s Commandments, we keep returning to Him for forgiveness. When we fail to perfectly follow the example of His humility and patience, we can still be made partakers of His resurrection, by grace through faith in Him. Jesus met His need of a colt and our need of a humble Savior.
This Holy Week on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday we consider the last two of this year’s “Snapshots of Repentance” and have additional opportunities to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, what an omitted stanza of the Hymn of the Day (LSB 438) refers to as our joy in sorrow, shield in conflict, and company in solitude (Pollack, #142, 110-111). As often as we are able, we join our praise of Him on earth with angels, archangels and all the company of heaven’s praise of Him in the highest, until we join them there for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +