The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the 19th chapter:
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ” So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Advent is intrinsically tied to the Lenten season. That is why this first Sunday of Advent is paired with a reading we would expect in Holy Week. Advent and Lent are both penitential seasons, where we specifically look at our sin and repent so that we might better see our Savior. In Lent, we examine our sinful state so that we might more cherish the cross of Christ, upon which the King of Glory took your place and died for the forgiveness of your sins. And in Advent, we examine our sinful state so that we might more cherish the incarnation of Lord, that He came into our flesh to bear our sin and be our Savior. And so He is. But that’s not all of Advent. In Advent, too, we examine our sinful state so that we might more look forward to the second coming of Christ, where He will finally, for all time, take away our sinful flesh and give us His glorified flesh in the resurrection from the dead.
Perhaps this is not what we expect. After all, the world moved on to Christmas after Halloween. You all saw the decorations, the chintzy Christmas- and Winter-themed songs on radio stations, the advertisements. The world expects us to skip this Advent season and just move into the feely-good season where everyone is happy, where gifts are given, where all is well, and Rudolph is on the TV. But the Church does not move at the speed of the world. We take our time. We take four weeks of preparation, four weeks of introspection, four weeks or prayer, so that we might come to Christmas fully in awe of our Lord and what He has done, and even what He shall do again in His return.
The incarnation, the crucifixion, even the second coming, these the Church celebrates with great joy and expectation by using the season before their culmination so that we might be fully prepared. But are we fully prepared? What do we expect? What do we want from Jesus? Peace in this life? An end to our suffering? Our parents to get off our backs? A little more stuff?
These, perhaps, are not bad things to want, but to think that we will find them in Jesus in this life is not that different from the days of the Jews as they awaited the Messiah in the Roman-occupied Jerusalem. They wanted a warrior-king, a peace-maker, a bread-king who would give them all things, one who would provide and never stop providing, a kingly reign to outlast all reigns. But, they didn’t get that, according to their eyes.
What we see by faith is what our eyes would have betrayed us from seeing if we had been there. Our Lord triumphantly enters into Jerusalem, though not in the way that one would expect. The people expect a war horse; He enters on a donkey of peace. The people expect great power; He comes with no sword or shield in His hands. The people expect violence; He comes meek and lowly. The people expect gifts; He takes from the owner of the colt.
There isn’t anything wrong with how He comes. We know that. Yet, our Lord does not do what we would expect Him to do. If He is the Messiah, the long-awaited prophet from the Lord, shouldn’t He expel the Romans? Shouldn’t He protect the Holy City of Jerusalem? Shouldn’t He destroy God’s enemies, the Romans, the Jews who act evilly, the Pharisees? Shouldn’t He take over all things and govern in His own name?
But, He doesn’t do any of these things. This is how our Lord works. This is how He was in His triumphal entry. And this is how He was in His entry into our flesh. For a king, we expect Him to be born in a palace; He chooses a manger. We expect Him to have a royal birthline; the line of David was broken, and the true king, Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father, worked as a lowly carpenter. We expect pomp and circumstance; He gets angels in a field. We expect a royal court; He gets smelly shepherds, huddled together in what amounts to a small pen where the animals live.
Jesus, in His triumphal entry, looked nothing like the king they expected. Jesus, in His incarnation, looked nothing like the king they expected. And even Jesus, in His second coming, the time when He shall return to remake this earth and all of creation, when He shall raise all of the dead from their graves, when He shall give to all who believe in Him eternal life and those who reject Him eternal death, this king looks nothing like we expect.
It is harder to talk about His second coming, since it has not yet happened, yet, the world, just as it does by rushing to Christmas, encourages us to blow past His second coming. The world, working against Christ, for indeed the world hates Christ, tries to distract us from Jesus’ second coming. It tells us that this life is the only thing that matters. It distracts us with material things by showing us a day that we have set apart for Thanksgiving to God for all of His blessings moving into mowing people down in the Walmart parking lot for the best deal. It confuses us by preaching a different Christ than who we find in the Scriptures. The world hates Jesus and it hates that He is coming again, so it tries to take our eyes off of Him who loves us and sets us free by His death and resurrection.
And so, His second coming, the world preaches, will be one of peace and love for all of humanity. No one shall go to hell. All paths will lead to heaven. There is no real resurrection, there’s only the spiritual life in the nameless God. Your body doesn’t matter, if that’s the case, so, please, do whatever you like with it now. We all become angels, anyway. The world preaches these lies, and they are only there to take our eyes off of Christ and Him crucified, Christ and Him resurrected, Christ and Him returning to judge the living and dead.
Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem clues us in to what He does. He does the unexpected. He does, often, what we don’t want. He does what seems ugly and base and disgusting. He does these things because this is how He wants it. He wanted to come into your flesh, to live for you, to die for you, to be resurrected for you. And so He did. He did not want to take over Jerusalem with military might, for He commands the legions of angels who will fight for Him at His timing. He did not want to cast out the Romans. He wanted to die a grisly, brutal, bloody death so that the wrath of God’s anger against sin would be fully satisfied.
But this is not what the world wants to hear, nor is it what it wants you to hear. It wants you to be happy, be healthy, be wealthy. That is not the Christian’s call. The Christian’s call, our Lord says, is to suffer in this life and He even demonstrates this by showing you that the only perfect man would suffer. But He suffers for you. He does not suffer emptily. He suffers completely for you, for your sake. And He does this to sympathize with us, empathize with us in our suffering.
As we live the lives He has called us to, as we work towards being holy as He is holy, as we honor our bodies by disciplining them, as we love our neighbor in acts of service, as we remain faithful to our confession of faith, He knows we shall suffer. And so, Christ, in all of His righteousness, calls you to look to His cross. There you see the God-man suffering for you, that you may know your suffering is redeemed, will be redeemed, and that, at the end, all things shall be made well.
Our God is a suffering servant, the righteous Branch of David, that He might suffer under the yolk of sin for your sake, that your sins would be forgiven, and that, even as you suffer in this life, you would be declared righteous by His blood. A suffering servant. This is not what the world wants. The world wants our God to be Santa Claus, giving freely to whoever has desire. The world wants a rainbow god, accepting all under the banner of his peace. The world wants a god of convenience, allowing you to not suffer, for that is inconvenient, so take the life of the unborn child, silence the critics, take away any Christian’s rights, take away all the rights of anyone who disagrees with them. The world wants a god who is intolerant of intolerance and who smites those who get in the way of its agenda.
But, you, me, we all want the God who suffers for us. We want the God who causes us to look at our sins. We want the God who comes for sinners. We want the God who makes us His through the waters of Baptism. We want the God who enters our mouths and our bodies by His real presence. We want the God who makes Himself low to be with us. We want God with us. We want the God who will make the rocks cry out at His coming if we should keep silent. We want the God who comes, not with swords in His hands, but the sword of His Word coming out of His mouth. We want the God who kills us with His Law, but makes us alive in His Gospel. We want the God who forgives us all of our sins and makes us sinners righteous by His holy declaration, “It is finished.”
By faith, that’s the God we want. And, quite honestly, that’s the God we need because that’s who God is. We need no other god, despite that with which the world distracts you. We don’t need the chintziness and cheesiness of the world’s Christmas season. We don’t need the god of ‘White Christmas’ or Black Friday. We need the God of Advent and Lent, Christmas and Easter, the incarnation and crucifixion, and even the Second Coming. We want a God we didn’t expect, and we have Him, for He has us. We have a God who does things His way, in His time, in His manner. And so, as we live in this Advent season, in the year of our Lord 2015, we look at our sins and repent, we see the need for a Savior, we look the cross of Christ, where forgiveness is found freely for you and for all, and we pray for Christ to come again. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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