Ad te levavi (Advent 1) sermon
Gospel: Matthew 21:1-9
Our Lord has a strange way of acting. He shows his power in mercy; He demonstrates His glory in humility. His crown is made of thorns; His throne is a place of execution; His priests kill Him.
Our Lord has always acted in ways that are the opposite of what anyone would expect. He makes the slave Joseph ruler in Egypt; He takes the shepherd boy David from the fields to be king; He visits an obscure young virgin and makes her the mother of God.
Today, as we begin a new church year, we see again how God acts in strange, paradoxical ways. His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts, His timing is different and always better than our own. We would not stage a grand entrance into the capital city in the manner that Jesus enters Jerusalem. We would bring out the ceremonial military marching bands and honor guards; the parade would not be led by children. The attendants of our new leader would not be bedraggled fishermen and itinerant preachers. For a vehicle, we would demand an armored, black Cadillac Escalade, or whatever the equivalent kind of chariot Cadillac was making back then for the Roman Emperors.
But here comes our Lord on a donkey. Why? We always see in Jesus the fulfillment of His own preaching. Here, He lives out exactly what He said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” But Jesus does not come meekly because He is weak, but because He depends on God completely for His deliverance. He needs no soldiers, for He does not come to do battle with flesh and blood, but with the ancient adversary of man, the devil. He needs no weapons, for He is armed only with the Word of God, the Word which the prophet Zechariah said speaks “peace to the nations” (Zech. 9.10). It was that same prophet Zechariah who foretold that Israel’s true King would come in a humble, lowly, unexpected fashion: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey.” Why does He come in this way? To show us that He does not come to destroy us, but to save us. Christ is also calling us to be like Himself. That doesn’t mean being a sissy or a weakling, but showing honor to others ahead of yourself, or as St. Paul puts it in today’s Epistle, all commandments are summed up in this one saying, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
It is precisely our failure to do that, our failure to love God or our neighbor as ourselves, that made His coming necessary. In today’s collect, or prayer for the day, we called on Christ to come to us now with His grace. We need Him to come, because of what that same prayer calls “the threatening perils of our sins.” Our sins put us in danger – danger of falling away. The Word of God is filled with admonitions about the dangers of continuing in sin. “Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10.12). Paul says to the Romans, “Do not become proud, but fear” (11.20). And St. Peter says, “You therefore, beloved … take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability” (2 Peter 3.17). The sins that we keep on committing put us in danger; they are “threatening perils.”
And that is the beautiful comfort of this Gospel message the Church in her wisdom has appointed for us to hear first thing in this new Church Year. Matthew tells us that what Jesus did, He did in order to fulfill the words of the prophet Zechariah. But Matthew doesn’t give us the whole passage; I like to think it’s because we are supposed to go look it up. And when we get there, we find this beautiful, comforting message for the depressed, the weary, the lonely, the suffering, and most of all those who are afraid because of the threatening peril of their sins. Zechariah explains why the King comes: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation.” He comes with His justice, His righteousness; He comes with salvation – He comes to free us from the threatening perils of our sins! That is why we are told to rejoice and shout – there is no better news.
So how do we respond? In the same way the crowd in Jerusalem did when Jesus rode in: “Hosanna in the highest!” Hosanna is a Hebrew word meaning, “Save now!” or “Be our Savior!” That’s why we sing that phrase every Lord’s Day in the Communion liturgy; every Divine Service we are calling on Christ to come and save us, just before we receive Him as He comes to us truly, even bodily (although mysteriously) in the Holy Communion.
Truly our Lord comes in strange, unexpected ways. But the strangest thing is that He would do it for us, unworthy sinners who fail Him time and time again. Because we are such failures, because we have nothing in ourselves to rely upon, and because we can even start to doubt that God’s love, forgiveness, and kindness can actually be for us, the Word of God emphasizes that all this is for you.
Jesus is your King, who comes to you. Everything rests on those little words “yours” and “you” – so when the night of affliction and temptation, of sorrow and despair comes upon you, rejoice and shout aloud that Jesus is your King, your Savior, that His death is for you, His resurrection is for you, and His final Advent, His final coming will be for you, to bring a new and glorified body out of your grave, and give to you and all believers in Christ eternal life.
So rejoice, people of Immanuel! Your King comes to you, giving you His righteousness, promising you His salvation. And He is coming again, not at a time when we expect, but at the right time. Watch and wait for Him, for He will do it just as He promised.
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