Waiting…
Matthew 21:1-9
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit
St, Matthew 21:4-5 All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, Lowly, and sitting on a donkey, A colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Don’t you just love to wait? You put the delicious turkey in the oven, and after a while the smells waft throughout the house. You’re hungry, you want to eat it NOW, but you have to wait until it’s done. You bake a pie, and the same thing happens – the house smells great, but even when the pie is done you have to wait for it to cool down…but you want it NOW! And, of course, drooling is so unbecoming.
We wait for lots of things in this life: Amazon orders, company on their way to the house, a loved one traveling home for the holidays, injuries to heal, results from a medical test… And while we wait for those things we get impatient, we let our minds wander to places that are uncomfortable, and we just don’t wait gracefully.
Today we enter the season of Advent, the season of waiting, as the Church waits in hope for the Advent, for the arrival of Jesus. It is a time to wait and watch not for Christmas to come, but for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to make His grand, glorious, second, and final return. Being a Child of God means, among other things, waiting.
The Church of the Old Testament waited for about 4,000 years for Christ’s first Advent; they waited ever since God promised Eve in the Garden of Eden that her Seed would come and bruise the head of that ancient serpent. And you will recall that Eve was convinced that when her first son was born that he was that Promised one: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, “I have gotten a man, Yahweh.” (Gen 4:1). But she was about 400 years off.
Or, if we count from the time of Abraham, with whom God made that first Testament, then the Old Testament Church waited about 2,000 years for the Heir of the Covenant to come. The Church of the New Testament has been waiting for about 2,000 years on the other side, waiting for Jesus’ second Advent. That’s a lot of time spent waiting.
And this waiting is not a sit-around-doing-nothing kind of waiting. It is not a sit-there-on-your-smartphone-looking-for-a-distraction kind of waiting. It is a go-on-with-your-earthly-life kind of waiting, but doing so always arranging and living that earthly life with the goal of being prepared to meet Jesus, always with an eye toward the Advent of the King.
Now, in spite of all the time that the Old Testament Church spent waiting for the Messiah to arrive, most of that Church, even most of the believers in the congregation of Israel, were not prepared for what Jesus actually came the first time to do. Jerusalem was prepared for the Christ to come on the clouds, with great glory. Jerusalem was prepared for an Advent of Jesus that would usher in an age of peace, an age of safety, an age in which the Christ would take control of this world, get rid of all the lies and liars, all the immorality, all the violence, all the sickness, and all the death. And boy, do we yearn for that kind of Advent too!
But here’s the problem with that, and it affects us, too. We get too wrapped up in all the evil going on around us in the world and whether it will consume us. We fixate on the violence and looting in our cities. We watch and listen to hours of programming dedicated to national and world affairs. We get so wrapped up in the aftermath of the most recent election; we get wound up and distracted by whether or not this nation changes presidents and what will happen in either scenario.
And then we pray for our Lord to come and rescue us from it all. We are so eager for Jesus to come and make our life better that we begin to forget about something else – the evil that dwells inside of us. We forget about the real root of all the wickedness that infects our world: sin. And not just the sin of all those murderers and abusers and greedy people out there, but the sin that infects each and every one of us.
Cervical spondylosis is one more kind of this disorder which is in general can be termed as age-related appalachianmagazine.com cialis shop corrosion. So you should try this pattern before getting confused by the attractive false offers and stick to this genuine cialis cialis uk appalachianmagazine.com and approved medicament to get your sexual potential back. When you cheapest viagra generic get a Sildenafil citrate pills, you should try and understand the kind of dosage you are looking at. ED also relates to the proper functioning of the nervous system, buy cialis professional improves mental capacity, and prevents atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction. It is sin, of course, that separates us from God, the sin for which we, too, deserve God’s wrath and punishment. Our main problem – the problem with which we were all born and the problem that has to be solved or we will perish eternally when Christ comes – our problem is our record of sins against the one, true and holy God. Many people, assuming themselves to be good people, foolishly long for Christ to come on the clouds with salvation for all the good people of the world and with judgment and retribution toward all the bad people. What they will learn with horror when Jesus comes is that there never were any “good people” to begin with. As St. Paul says so clearly in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s “all,” as in not just unbelievers, but all people everywhere at all time…including you and me.
What we need, then, is what Jerusalem needed: not for Christ to come immediately on the clouds, but for Christ to come riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. What Jerusalem didn’t understand, however, and what Christians today too often forget, is that there had to be two Advents of the Messiah; there had to be two separate arrivals of Emmanuel.
There had to be one Advent in which the Christ would suffer, and another in which He would put an end to suffering for His elect. There had to be one Advent in which He would ride into Jerusalem humble, lowly, riding on a donkey, another Advent in which He would come to His waiting Jerusalem riding on a cloud and with great glory. There had to be one Advent in which He would earn salvation for mankind by being beaten, tortured, and crucified, and another Advent in which He would forever save His believers out of this dark world and bring them safely into His glorious kingdom. There had to be one Advent whose symbol is the cross, and another whose symbol is the crown.
The cross and the crown; let those visuals be a reminder throughout this season of the two Advents of Christ, because the Church celebrates them both during this season. Each Advent is critical for our salvation, and each one is meaningless without the other, and here’s why…
If Christ only came in glory to rid the world of wickedness, and if He didn’t come to die for our sins, then His coming in glory would mean death and destruction for all of humanity, because no man deserves to enter with Christ into His glorious kingdom. No one loves and honors God as he should. No one loves his neighbor as he should. All have earned God’s wrath and condemnation. It is as Paus writes in Romans 3:10-11: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.”
Christ had to come as a man—a humble man, like us, subject to God’s holy Law; like us, subject to hunger and thirst, subject to ridicule and rejection, subject to suffering, subject to death. Christ had to come to Jerusalem, humble and riding on a donkey, to suffer and die in our place, and to earn a place for us His glorious kingdom.
Or if Christ only came to suffer and die but is not coming again in glory, then death wins and this world goes on in its perversion and depravity forever.
Or, if Christ had even combined His Advent to suffer and His Advent in glory into one grand event 2,000 years ago, then hardly anyone – and certainly none of us – would enter His glorious kingdom. The only way Christ’s merits get applied to anyone is through faith in Christ, and the only way anyone is converted to faith is through the preaching of the Gospel.
The whole purpose of this New Testament era is for the word of the Gospel to go out into the kingdoms of the world so that the seed of the Gospel may be planted and grow into a bountiful harvest of souls at the second Advent of Christ. You and I are only members of Christ’s Church because His second Advent was separated from the first one long enough and for the perfect amount of time for us to hear the word and be baptized into the New Jerusalem.
It took 2,000 years from the time of Abraham for the Church, for Zion, to see her King coming to her in His first Advent, riding down the Mount of Olives and up to the gates of Jerusalem on a donkey, having salvation. It may not have been the kind of salvation Zion expected, but it was exactly what she needed – a King so full of love and grace that He would take on human flesh, live among sinners as a Servant-King, and then let His people abuse Him and hang Him on a cross in order to atone for their sins.
Now, 2,000 years later, we wait for His second Advent in hope, but only because His first Advent gave us the hope of a loving Father in heaven to whom we have now been reconciled by the blood of His Son. The Advent with the cross paved the way for the Advent with the crown. “Behold, your King is coming to you,” Zechariah prophesied, but this time it won’t be lowly and riding on a donkey. This time it will be with great glory and with long-awaited salvation for His people. His Advent is nearer now than when we first believed.
And even though we can’t see Him quite yet, we know it won’t be long now…and we wait. And while we wait, we do what Jesus has given us to do; we continue to receive Him in all the ways He wants us to have Him, in Word and Sacrament, so that when He does come for us, He will find us ready. Until then, we join our song to the Church of every age: “Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’ Hosanna in the highest!”
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
