It may seem strange to begin the season of Advent with Palm Sunday. After all, Advent is the waiting-for-Christmas season. But there is a reason that the Church Year starts with Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday means Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem and death. Just as Palm Sunday precedes Holy Week and our celebration of Christ's death on Good Friday and His resurrection on Easter. Palm Sunday teaches us that Christ is coming AND that the reason He is coming is to die for our sins. No matter how white or green or red our Christmas gets, we never lose sight of the true reason for the season. Not just “Jesus” but “Jesus coming and being born to die for our sins.” So by beginning the Advent season with the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, we are reminded of what sets the Christian faith completely apart from every other religion on earth. It is that God is the One who comes to us to save us.
That is Good News to a world that has no hope in itself. Every year as we like to complain, it gets earlier and earlier. Now Christmas has appeared before Halloween was even over! Once Black Friday hits, Christmas will really be ON! The music. The lights. The sales. The parties. The overeating. The stress. The depression. All of it will come charging together into another whirlwind Christmas season. The fights will break about between the atheists who demand that no nativity scenes be put on the courthouse lawns and the groups that shout “Keep Christ in Christmas!” We know the drill. A mass of holiday “cheer” and then the day after nothing but extra garbage at the curb and standing in line to return the stuff that doesn't work or fit. That's the world's expectation of Christmas. The world seeks to have some sort of holiday something or other completely without Christ. Just consider one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time, “I'm dreaming of a White Christmas,” a song that has not a single reference to the birth of our Lord! That's the world. A world that finds its peace and hope in empty things. A world that doesn't even know it needs a Savior but which desperately does.
And so the Son of God comes. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, He is born on Christmas. Baptized for sinners, He is tempted in the wilderness. Mocked by evil men, He is sentenced to death. Crucified on Calvary, He blots our our sins. Dead, He rises again on Easter. God did this. Jesus who is the Son of God, true God and true man. Jesus who is Immanuel, “God with us.” Jesus whom the prophets foretold and who fulfilled those promises of God the day He rode into Jerusalem on the way to suffering and death. God did it. God has come to us. He hasn't called us to come to Him, to fix ourselves and our lives and take away our own sins. We could never do it. And He doesn't come to die for what we think. He isn't here because we eat too much or stretch our wallets to buy some presents. He isn't here because we drank too much spiked egg nog or lay too long in front of the TV watching football. He's here because we live as if we have no God. So God comes to save us. He comes because we live as if all of this stuff is it, and we don't think all we have is from God. He comes because we need a Savior from having turned away from God. He comes because His Father sends Him to pay the price for our neither loving Him nor caring about those around us. Christ is lifted up on the tree of the cross because we love to put up trees at Christmas without a second thought for the God who made us. In short, He comes to save us because we need saving. We need forgiveness. We need the Lord to come and do it for us.
Now when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey, the crowds went crazy. They sang “Hosanna!” They threw down their cloaks and their palm branches. But what about five days later? They were shouting “Crucify!” When Jesus is an occasion for a party, even the world will celebrate. Oh, sure, they forget that Jesus was born at Christmas but it doesn't stop them from putting up trees and lights and blaring Christmas music all over the place. But just as soon as Christmas is over, so is the celebration. We are fickle. We like God when He is popular and fun and interesting. Riding into Jerusalem like a king? They love Him! Despised and mocked and wearing thorns? Not so much. But it's the same for us. We get excited and active as we celebrate Christ's birth and then...not so much. Same ol' same ol'. Week in and week out. Here is our repentance, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we live as if the reason Jesus comes is to give us an excuse for a holiday rather than to suffer and die for our sins. Our lives show that we recognize our Lord on holidays, but not so much afterwards. On Sundays, but not so much the rest of the week. And that is why He comes. He comes to us because we would drag our feet and not go to Him.
And He still comes to us. The crowds shouted “Hosanna” when He appeared riding on a donkey into Jerusalem. We still sing that song, “Hosanna!” When? Right before He comes in His Holy Supper. Again, why does He come? To take our sins away. When our Lord comes to us, He comes to us now not on a donkey but by water and the word at the font; by the preaching and teaching of His Word; by the absolution spoken to take away our sins; by His Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Again, being a Christian isn't somehow about figuring out how to get to God. He has come to us in the flesh. He now comes to us in His church. And He does so in order to give us the forgiveness of sins. To save us. To give us eternal life. Again, this is what sets the Christian faith apart from every other religion. Here, in Christ's church, the message isn't about how to save yourself and get to God. The Good News that we preach is that the Lord Himself has come to us and still comes to us.
This is what Advent points us to. It reminds us that even as we head toward celebrating Jesus' birth, it isn't a birth just so we can have a holiday. It's the Savior's birth who comes to take away our sins by His suffering and death. Advent is the reminder that it is the Lord who comes to us. He came in the flesh. He still comes in His means of grace. And when He comes again, that too will be for our salvation and eternal happiness. So let us sing our “Hosannas!” today. For Christ comes to fulfill all of God's promises. He comes to be born in the flesh and give that flesh into death for our salvation. He comes to us to wash and absolve and feed us by His Word and Sacraments. And He will come again with glory to give us everlasting life. Always when your Lord comes, He comes for you. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment