Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew 21:1-9)
This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet saying, “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
Cu mɛmɛ tuɔɔk, kɛ ɣöö bi mëë ca lar ɛ gök a thuɔ̱k, mëë ɛ jɛn i̱, "La̱rɛ jɛ nya Dha-yɔn i̱, 'Nɛnɛ kuääru min di̱i̱t a bëë kä ji̱ ni, kɔ̱c lɔcdɛ, kä ko̱tdɛ jɔk muɔ̱l, kɛnɛ ruathdɛ.'"
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Behold, your king is coming to you!
The words do not say that you are coming to your king. The focus is not on you, it’s on the king! You are doing nothing, the king is doing everything. He is coming to you!
A good 500 years ago, Martin Luther got this right when he said: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him.” We often blink and miss these words in the catechism: “or come to him.”
So as we begin a new church year on this First Sunday of Advent, we don’t begin the year by making some new resolutions, some new promises, we don’t set about saying to Jesus how much better we’re going to do things this year. We don’t come to make a decision for Jesus, to dedicate our lives to him, and come to him with great ceremony and great parade and great pomp.
Because the gospels aren’t about us flying up to God. We don’t confess in the creed, “I believe in me, the creator of my own destiny, the follower of my own dreams. I believe that I’m so wonderful that I’ve got my life back in order, I’ve fixed up all my own problems, and I believe that if I were in the garden of Eden that I’d know what to say to that pesky snake. I believe in my own sense of spirituality, and my own little club of like-minded people who think that we’re so much holier than the rest of the world.”
Rubbish! When we say the creed, we say: “I believe in God.” God! Remember him? God! Do you hear? You believe in him. In fact, you believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen.
We say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.” “I believe in the Holy Spirit” – not your spirit, the Holy Spirit – “and I believe in the Holy Christian Church” – of all times and of all places and for all people.
That’s the faith we’re called to have on our lips. The Christian faith does not set about trying to impress others with our spirituality, our friendliness, and other things that make us feel that we’re worth something in our own eyes. We are called to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. In fact, we say in the creed, that he is “our Lord.”
He is our Lord. Our king. He is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. His kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom will have no end.
And it is this king that comes to you. Behold, your king comes to you!
You are not your own king or queen. You are not your own master. You are not setting your own course in life, and you are not in charge of your own salvation. You don’t come to Jesus, and you don’t bring him to you.
There is only one who is your master, who will be your master, who can be your master. His name is Jesus Christ – he is the King of heaven, the King of glory, and he comes in through the doors.
Behold, your king is coming to you!
And look at the way in which he comes: humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt the foal of a beast of burden.
If we presume to come to God by ourselves, and this is a very dangerous thing, we come to him with nothing but pride. We come to him with the devil whispering in our ear: “You will not surely die… You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And so we eat from the tree, and we die. The people of this world spend all of their time trying to climb out of this pit, this septic tank of sin, filth, death, hell that we got ourselves into. We can’t come to God by ourselves, and we don’t deserve to. Think about the tower of Babel: the people wanted to build a tower all the way to heaven. We read that “the Lord came down to see the city and tower”. He came all the way down to see it (!), and he said: “Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand.”
Christianity is not about achievement. It’s not about reaching up to God. It’s not about flying up to God by yourself. Because simply put, you can’t.
Instead, you need your Lord Jesus Christ to come down and have a look at what you’re doing. You need your king to come to you!
And funnily enough, he doesn’t do it with great ceremony. He doesn’t set about showing off to you. He doesn’t come riding on a horse so high that can’t reach him. He doesn’t bring out the motorcade with a Rolls Royce and security guards so that you can only hope to wave at him from a distance.
No, your king comes to you! And he comes to you in a certain way: humble, and mounted on a donkey.
Humble, gentle. He comes not as a tyrant, not as a proud, puffed-up cockatoo of a king, he doesn’t come as a ruler to suppress you and to keep you down and make money out of you and dress himself up at your expense! He comes humble, gentle, lowly, meek. He doesn’t come to beat you into submission; he comes as your friend. He comes as your equal to win you over, he invites you to sit around his table – and he comes a lot of the time in such a friendly, such a kind way, that most of the time you don’t recognise him.
Your king comes to you, humble and riding on a donkey.
Everything is humble with Jesus. Everything is friendly with him. Everything is accessible with him. Everything is easy to reach, because he has come to you, he has reached down to touch you, not half-way for you to reach up the other half, but all the way – he has come all the way down to meet you and to come to you in a humble, gentle and friendly way.
And Jesus simply has to, he must come to us in a humble way. If he’s going to associate with us, he has to eat a big fat piece of humble pie. If he’s going to join us to him as members of his body, if he’s going to graft us on to himself like branches on a vine, he has to sink very low indeed, he has to climb down beneath his own dignity, beneath his own worth.
Everyone knows what it’s like to meet a snob: someone who thinks that they’re better than we are. It’s a great sin to put ourselves above others, and to push other people down and shame them to make ourselves look better and give ourselves the honour. And Jesus has every right to be a snob with us. He is better than us. He took human flesh with all its weaknesses, but without sin. Imagine what it would be like to live without sin – no guilt, no regrets, no suffering, no death, no pain, no war, no arguments, no evil, no distractions, no hatred of others or ourselves. Anyone who is like this has every right to treat us with contempt and not bother associating with us. But the book of Hebrews says: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
And so, Jesus humbles himself. He is our king who humbles himself. He looks around to find out where we are, what we’re up to, what we’ve been doing, in what problems we’ve found ourselves, and then he forgives, forgives, forgives. He humbles himself because he just wants to be with us.
In fact, he plans everything for us to make sure that everything works out well for us. He says to his disciples, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them’, and he will send them at once.” This took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet.
Now it could have been a lot easier for him to go and get his own donkey. But that wouldn’t be humble. If the Lord needed them, if he wanted them, couldn’t he have made his own donkey out of the dirt?
But you see, he wants to show us that he comes down to our level. He wants to do things on our terms. He wants to be approachable, to be friendly, he wants you to love him, not just to fear him. It’s not the time for showing off. It’s simply the time to make sure everything works out right. For us in our lives he does the same all the time, as Romans says: “all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
Here in our gospel all things work together for good too – for the express purpose that he should come to you as your king, in a humble way, in a friendly way.
And this is the way he always comes. The words of the prophets are fulfilled when he comes like this. “We love because he first loved us.” He first comes to us. And he rides into Jerusalem humble and mounted on a donkey, smiling, blessing all the children, laying his hands on them.
Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new church year, as we come together to hear the events of Jesus life once again.
Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new week, showering his blessing on everything you do.
Behold, your king is coming to you at the beginning of a new day, a new hour.
Behold, your king is coming to you, and sending out his Holy Spirit through his Holy Word, through his gift of baptism which you walk in every day, through his Holy Supper with his body and blood.
Behold, your king is coming to you, and he is humble, he is friendly, he mounted on a donkey, he comes to you with simple humble means, he comes with words, through preaching, through water, through bread, through wine.
So take off your old clothes which the devil would have you wear, and lay them on the donkey, let Jesus sit on them. Let him plant his backside on them. “Put off your old self”, as St Paul says. Strip off your old rags and put them on the road and let Jesus walk all over them. Thrown down your worries, your cares, your sin. Thrown down your self-invented spirituality. Thrown down your own righteousness, your hypocrisy, your pretenses – Jesus won’t just sit on them, he’ll ride all over them with a donkey. The victory is won! The king of glory comes in through the gates with his free forgiveness, his free grace, and there’s nothing you can do in return.
Behold, your king is coming to you!
And the church replies with the palms of victory in their hands:
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna!
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, come to us again this day, and bless our new church year, that this new church year may be a year filled of your grace, and showered with your blessings. Hosanna in the highest! Amen.
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