Advent Midweek 1 Matthew 21:1-9 (2021)

More Than Meets The Eye

Matthew 21:1-9

            In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

            St. Matthew 21:9 “Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: “Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Hosanna in the highest!”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Something is happening in our Gospel lesson tonight, something more than it seems.  First, this is not merely a lesson about Jesus riding on a donkey.  Second, as I am sure you recognized, this is the Gospel reading for Palm Sunday, but today is far from Palm Sunday.  This is also the traditional lesson for the first Sunday in Advent, which we heard just this past Sunday; so this reading obviously carries some freight that a quick reading of the text might not suggest at first.  And third, the events described in this reading are both more, and in some ways, less than what it would appear to us from our place in history.      

Many people tend to look at the Bible in a minimalistic fashion.  If the Bible says something, they tend to want to make it as simple as possible.  With that view, this would be a nothing more than a story about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  Of course, He did that.  Riding in was noteworthy because most people, including Jesus, usually walked.  Riding was usually the way of the rich, the powerful, and the soldiers, usually the ones in command. 

Here Jesus is riding.  He is riding in a parade which echoes, however faintly, the coronation ride of the ancient kings of Israel.  It is striking that Jesus rides, and that He rides a donkey and a colt.  It is striking that the people recognize what is happening before them.  One might be able to mistake it for a parade or a simple donkey ride.  But that would require ignoring the history of Israel, and there is simply more here than meets the eye.

Of course, the coronation of a king would usually involve a great horse.  Kings were important people.  It is noteworthy for the humility of this King who rides in that He chooses a donkey and rides on the colt.  Some people want to imagine that the prophecy only really speaks about one animal, the donkey.  As I prepared this sermon, I read a couple of commentators who noted the prophecy of Zechariah was Hebrew parallelism – that the two mentions in Zechariah of the donkey, and then of the colt, the foal of a beast of burden, were meant to refer to a single animal.  That is a misunderstanding, however.  Zechariah 9:9 simply and literally says in the Hebrew, “a donkey, and a colt, the son of a female donkey.”  Matthew clears up any confusion by telling us that both animals were there, and Jesus probably rode the colt.

Jesus came in humility, exactly as Zechariah prophesied.  And the people witnessing this proclaimed Jesus to be their King.  They did that by crying out the ancient formula of praise for the coronation of the king.  They were also expressing their conviction that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah, the One promised to sit on the throne of David.  There had been no son of David on the throne for hundreds of years.  Now they were announcing that Jesus was the Promised One, the King who would set Israel free and establish the everlasting kingdom.

Did the people fully understand what they were doing?  Some did, perhaps, but it is likely that many did not fully understand, just as many today do not fully understand.  There’s more than meets the eye, here.  While the people did not necessarily understand the full import of what they were doing, Jesus did.  God set these events in motion around Jesus. 

And the High Priests and the leaders of the Temple understood it too, as well as what it meant, which is what galvanized them into the betrayal and trial and crucifixion of Jesus.  They feared that the Romans would understand and come down on the whole city, and they feared that it might be true, and Jesus would sweep them aside.   After all, their relationship with Jesus was not what one might call “cordial”.

The coronation ride of Jesus was more than even the High Priest imagined.  He may have thought it was a power-grab by Jesus, and an unfortunate mistake.  But it was really the coronation of the Messiah; it was Jesus’ public “coming out” as the Promised One.  He was about to ascend His throne, but that throne wasn’t in some palace in Jerusalem, it was on a lowly hill of execution just outside of town.  His throne was to be a cross.  There is no mistake there.  He came to take that throne and reign from it.  Jesus did not die as the unfortunate result of corrupt politics or as the twisted miscarriage of justice for the personal gain of the Temple leaders, although both were true and both happened.  Jesus came to die on the cross, deliberately and with great purpose and with you in mind.

His purpose was to redeem us all from sin and rescue us from death, both the physical death of the body and the eternal death of body and soul in hell.  His resurrection on Easter demonstrates and proclaims that Jesus accomplished His purpose.  Your sins and mine are bought and paid for, punished already in the body of Jesus Christ in the pains of the passion and ultimately on the cross.

Now a resurrection awaits us all because Jesus, our Substitute, rose from the dead.  Those who know these truths and believe them to be true and trust in God to do for us all that He has promised to do for the sake of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection, they shall rise to new and everlasting life.  “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” (Mk 16:16)

But those who have not heard, or who have heard and yet refuse the forgiveness of sins and refuse to take God at His Word, they shall rise not to life, but to eternal death in which they are never just dead and gone and unconscious, but always dying and in torment of body and soul.  “He that does not believe shall be condemned.” (Mk 16:16)

Before Jesus ascended His cross-throne, He was publicly declared and publicly recognized for who He is and what He had come to do, even when those who witnessed it and who should have recognized it, did not understand it or believe it.  And the same is true today.  Many who should know what Jesus has done and what it means are still deliberately looking for something else; they are looking for some other meaning or message.

Jesus was not merely a great teacher.  He was that for sure, but He was far more; in fact He IS far more.  Jesus did not come to give us a new and clearer understanding of the Law of God.  He did not come to make us behave better.  He did not come to open the door of heaven so that we could struggle and fight and work our way in.  He did not come to give us a wider variety of choices or decisions to make.  He came to redeem us – buy us back – from sin and death and hell.  And He accomplished everything that He came to do, perfectly, and for you.

We rehearse the facts of this case during the first week of Advent because Advent is the season in which we look forward to His coming – both His coming in Bethlehem by way of remembering and celebrating, and His coming at the end of the world, so we might prepare and await eagerly and watch for His return and pray for one another and for all men while we await His return.  In other words, we put Palm Sunday at the beginning of Advent so that we are reminded each year that Jesus came to die.  The Christmas coming which we celebrate with gifts and lights and such merriment was so that He might suffer and die in our place and for our benefit.

Jesus now rules.  He has ascended His throne, and He rules His Israel, the chosen people of God, by grace.  His coronation ‘stuck’ if you will.  It did not have a lasting political effect or value in the nation of Israel.  Israel as a nation did not accept Him or receive Him or continue to follow their king.  They contented themselves with the short-term Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, and the familiarity of their status quo.

Dear friends, we cannot afford to do that any more than they could.  They were destroyed just thirty-some years later because they had not recognized “the hour of their visitation” (Lk 19:44); they did not believe and follow their King.  We are tempted to think that our faith is about being good and pious and doing the good things, like going to Church and giving offerings.  Those are all good things to do, but they are the results of our faith, not the content, nor the proper activity of our religion.  The content of our religion is Jesus, His life and death and gift of forgiveness and life eternal and salvation.  The proper activity of our faith is to receive the good gifts of God with thanksgiving, gifts such as His Word, His forgiveness, and Christ’s true body and blood in the Holy Supper.

There is more here than meets the eye.  Jesus now rules us by forgiveness and undeserved kindness and goodness and love.  It is His forgiveness of our sins that teaches our hearts to forgive one another.  Where we do not forgive, our hearts have obviously not believed Christ’s forgiveness, and therefore we come short of the glory of God.  Where we do good to those who are good to us, but return hurt and insult for hurt and insults we have received, we are choosing to live outside of the grace of God by which Christ rules the lives of all those who are God’s people.  When we withhold or withdraw our love from one another – even the least worthy of our brothers – we declare ourselves to be unfit for the love of God, and without the desire to receive it.

Our religion is not about doing things for God or giving Him anything; it is about receiving from God.  Being a Christian means receiving from Christ.  When one ceases to receive from Christ, one ceases to be a Christian.  It is not what we do, but what Christ has done that makes the difference, and what we receive from Him through His Word and Sacraments that make us Christian.  Everything else flows out of a heart which knows and believes in the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  Advent prepares our hearts to receive Him with the cry “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!”

So, this is not a simple story about a donkey ride, nor is it just about something that happened “way back when.”  It is the coronation ride of Jesus, our Lord and our King, and it is to prepare us for His coming, and for the life in His kingdom of Grace, and for His return when He will translate us into His Kingdom of Glory forever.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.