Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today is inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle and
evangelist St John, chapter 12, which I read at the beginning of the service.
And I’ll read a couple of verses:
So they took
branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed
is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” And Jesus
found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, “Fear not, daughter
of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.”
Prayer: Lord
Jesus Christ, send to all of us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well,
and to all of us that we may hear well. May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our
Redeemer. Amen.
In the Old
Testament, there was a special festival called the Passover. And when the
Jewish people—the people chosen by God—had to celebrate the Passover, they had
to kill a lamb, and put its blood on the doorposts of their houses, so that
when the angel of death passed over, it would see the blood and pass by their
houses. Each family had to get a lamb on the tenth day of the month, and kill
it on the fourteenth day of the month. They had to make sure they had a lamb 5
days in advance.
Now, in the
New Testament, Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world. And the blood of Jesus doesn’t get painted on the doors of ours
houses, but through holy baptism, his blood is painted over the doors of our
hearts. And when the angel of death passes over us, he sees the blood of Jesus
that he himself has put on each one of us, and he passes over us. Jesus’ death
on Good Friday happened at exactly the same time as Passover. And just as the
Israelites had to get their lamb 5 days in advance, so also, Jesus goes to
Jerusalem 5 days in advance.
Our reading
today, starts by saying: The next day the large crowd that had come to the
feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. It says: The next day. The
next day after what? A few verses earlier, it says that Jesus was doing
something six days before the Passover. The gospel reading today happens
on the next day, which means: five days before the Passover.
That’s why we celebrate Palm Sunday today, because it’s five days before the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is sacrificed for the sin of
the whole world.
So you can
see, just as the Jewish people got their lamb organised five days in advance,
so also Jesus wants to show us and tell us: I’m going to be your Lamb of God
now. I’m coming to suffer and die for you, and I’m going to prepare myself and
get ready. I’m going to be there on time just for you, just like a Passover
lamb. I want you to notice that I’m here 5 days early, just like any other
Passover lamb.
Can you see
from this too just how every single word in the bible is so important? We could
easily forget about the words, the next day. You see, it’s a pastor’s
job to teach [you] to observe everything that [Jesus has] commanded you.
Of course, I’m never going to do this on one Sunday. It should be our constant
desire to come to church and to hear not what your pastor has to say but
what Jesus has to say to us this week. It’s not my agenda which builds
the church, but Jesus’ agenda. It’s not my person, my personality, my words,
that you need to come and gather around, but Jesus, his person, his
personality, his word, which is spirit and life. And even with three
little words, The next day, Jesus has a wonderful message to teach us.
Proverbs says: Every word of God proves true – every single word. Jesus
teaches us here that his timing is always perfect. Jesus comes and be
your Saviour, your Redeemer, and he does it all in the fullness of time.
+++
So we read
that there was a large crowd that had come to the feast, the feast of
the Passover, who heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took
branches of palm trees and went out to meet him.
Each of the
four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—records this event. But John is the
only one who mentions palm branches—the other three mention branches, but only
John calls them palms. If it weren’t for John, we’d probably call today
“Coats and Leaves Sunday”! But John teaches us that these aren’t just any old
leaves, they are palms. And palms have to do with a victory, it has to
do with winning a war. And that’s exactly what Jesus is going to Jerusalem to
do: he’s going to fight a war and he’s going to win it. Maybe the people in our
reading thought that Jesus was going to fight a war against the Romans, and
bring the Jewish nation into a great new era. Jesus’ home country was under
control from a foreign power, and the Jewish people didn’t like that very much!
But Jesus was coming to fight a different kind of war: this was a war where he
would win the victory over death, over Satan, over sin, over our sinful flesh, over
despair, over sadness, over everything bad in the world that has ever happened
and ever will happen. That’s the kind of victory Jesus is going to win. And the
weapons? What’s he going to fight with? He’s going to fight with his holy
precious blood and his innocent suffering and death, so that you can live under
him in his kingdom.
So this
crowd took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out,
“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of
Israel!” If you come to church fairly often, these words should be
reasonably familiar to you, since every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we
sing a song called the “Holy, holy, holy”. In this song, we say: Hosanna!
Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
So what do
these words mean? What are the people talking about? These words actually come
to us from Psalm 118, where it says: Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we
pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna
is actually two words: The second word is “na”, which means, “we pray, we beg
you, please listen”. And the first word is “Hosa”, or in Hebrew, “Hoshia.”
“Hoshia” means “Save us”. And in Psalm 118, it says, Save us, we pray, O
Lord. Hoshia na, O Lord. Hosanna, O Lord.
But these
people are singing Hosanna to Jesus! We sing Hosanna to Jesus. But in
Psalm 118, it says, Hosanna, O Lord. Save us, we pray, O Lord. You only
sing “Hosanna” to the Lord, to God. God is the only one who saves. But now, we sing
it to Jesus. And when we sing Hosanna to Jesus, we are saying that he is
the one who is going to save us, he is our Saviour, he is our God, our Lord,
who is going to save us through his suffering and his death. Jesus’ name, in
fact, means “He saves”. When the angel of the Lord came to Joseph to tell him
to take Mary to be his wife, he said, She will bear a son, and you shall
call his name Jesus. Why on earth would he call him Jesus? The angel says, You
shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
The whole
point of Jesus being born, the whole point of him riding into Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday, and suffering and dying on Good Friday, is so that he will save. He
will save his people from their sins. He the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world. And so, we learn from this crowd, how to welcome our
Saviour, because if we’re going to meet such a wonderful person like this, we
wouldn’t know what to say! We’d probably clam up and go all shy! We need our Lord
to open our lips to sing his praise. And so we say, Hosanna!
Save us, we pray, O Lord! Don’t come and be a saviour for everyone else in
the world, but not for me! Don’t come and be a saviour for yourself! Come and
be a Saviour for us, come and be a Jesus for me, just like your name means “he
saves”. Have a think: What good would Jesus’ death be, his resurrection, if it
weren’t for you? What use would it have been even to create you, if he didn’t
also want to save you? And so we say: Hosanna. Save us. Save me.
Then the
crowd says: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus is
the Lord, the God, who saves us. But he also comes in the name of the Lord.
He also has a Father, and he is obedient to his father. He is obedient unto
death, even death on the cross. Jesus comes in his Father’s name. He comes
in the name of the Lord.
Now, can you
imagine, if someone said, “I bring you a message in the name of the Queen!”
What does that mean? It means, everything I’m about so say is exactly what the Queen
wants to say. Everything I am about to say, the Queen herself has signed her
name to. I’m doing this in her name.
And so, when
Jesus comes in the name of the Lord, it means, he is coming in the name of his
Father. God the Father promises to add his signature to everything that Jesus
does and says. The Father adds his name to Jesus. Jesus comes in the name of
the Lord. Jesus even says: I am in the Father and the Father is in me.
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. The Father who has sent me has himself
given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.
And isn’t it
amazing, that God the Father has all the wealth of the universe at his
disposal. And yet, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. The prophet
Zechariah says: Behold, your king comes to you, humble, and riding on a
donkey. Jesus is 100% man and 100% God, 100% of the time. He doesn’t have a
“God” switch which he can just flick off sometimes. No – he is always true God.
And it’s our God that comes into Jerusalem on Good Friday and shows us his
humility, his gentleness, his friendliness. He doesn’t come with six white
horses – he comes humbly on a donkey.
Even in our
service today, Jesus comes to be with us. He says: Where two or three are
gathered in my name, I am in the midst of them. He says: I will be with
you always to the end of the age. He says: Take, eat, this is my body.
This is my blood.
He comes to
us. He’s not dragged along and plonked in our midst, as if he doesn’t want to
be here. No--he comes, willingly, powerfully, just as he came into Jerusalem.
He knows our hearts, he knows our minds, our thoughts, our sin—and anyone would
think that that would be enough to put him off! If you were the King of the
Universe, would you bother coming to be with all of us? And yet, this is
exactly what Jesus does! Even the people who were there in Jerusalem didn’t
know what was really going on. It says: His disciples did not understand these
things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these
things had been written about him and had been done to him.
So, yes,
Jesus comes--Behold, your king is coming to you. And yes, he knows
exactly what he’s doing, he knows exactly who he’s meeting with, and he’s not
making any mistakes.
He has come
to you in your baptism. He comes to you every time you hear his word, his
gospel, his good news. He comes to you with his own body and blood for you to
eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. And he comes humbly, gently.
Our reading
says: Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a
donkey’s colt! Yes, come with fear—but come not with the sort of fear as if
we fear someone who wants to punish us just as we deserve and beat us. Your
king is coming with a love so strong, so pure, so precious, that it will be far
too much for you to bear! And yet, the Holy Spirit points you to your Saviour
and says to you, Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey’s colt!
What a
wonderful Saviour it is that we have! What a joy it is to hear his words and
listen to his voice! What a wonderful thing it is that he comes to even speak
these words into our own ears himself! What a great thing it is to welcome our
Lord Jesus, to receive his victory, to receive forgiveness through his blood, and
to be showered with his eternal blessings!
Hosanna, Lord
Jesus. Save us, we pray, Lord Jesus. Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord, even the King of Israel, even the king of the angels!
Hosanna in the highest!
Amen.
Jesus, the
very thought of you with sweetness fills my breast. But sweeter far your face
to see and in your presence rest. Come to us, and be our king and our Saviour.
Rule and guide this church, our hearts, our bodies, our souls, our spirits, all
of which were created by you and still belongs to you. Save us, we pray, O
Lord. Amen. [Stand]
The peace of
God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds safe in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
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