[Machine transcription]
Say to the daughter of Zion, behold, your king is coming to you, humble, mounted on a donkey. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, the gospel reading today, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, stands at the beginning of the church year like a banner. It’s a way of setting apart not only the season of Advent, which we’ll get to in a little bit, but in fact, the entire worship of the church, everything that we do. When we gather into the Lord’s house, it can be understood through the lens of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Because day after day, week after week, our Lord Jesus comes to us. And He comes to us not to destroy us, but He comes to us to bless us. And He comes to us to serve us. He comes humble, riding today not on a donkey, but riding on His word, writing this morning for Gabriella and Eleanor on the wave of holy baptism, riding for all of us who will come to the altar on the bread and the wine.
The Lord comes to us humbly to serve us. That’s why this text, the triumphal entry of Jesus, which is kind of funny to have in the season of Advent, we would expect it, and we’ll hear it again on Palm Sunday right before Holy Week and Easter when it happened in the chronology, and that seems fitting. But we have it today to tell us what is happening when the church gathers together. That we gather here so that the Lord Jesus would come and meet us. As he promised, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them. And look, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. The Lord Jesus is with you. He’s with us. He promised, I will not leave you or forsake you.
So we meet Jesus, Jesus meets us, Jesus comes to us week after week. So it’s in fact not just the reading for today, but it’s the hymn that we sing every Sunday. The second half of the Sanctus, when we sing first with Isaiah, holy, holy, holy. And then we join our lips with the children and the crowds that were going before Jesus and after him, saying, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is Jesus who comes to us that he might be our king and our savior.
Now this is also really the theme for the season of Advent. If you remember the vision that John gets in Patmos of Jesus and the Revelation talks about Jesus, the one who was and who is and who is to come. So that Jesus is the one who was. He is the one who came in humility, who was born of the Virgin, who came and joined himself to our humanity in the incarnation. He is the one who came before, 2,000 years ago. And especially in three weeks and four weeks, the last two Sundays in Advent, that’ll be really the theme, Jesus, the one who came before. Amen. And Jesus is coming again in glory. We heard about it already in the gospel lessons the last few weeks, and we’ll hear about it again next week from Luke, that Jesus is the one who on the last day will return with the angels, and he will raise the dead, and we’ll gather all people together, and we’ll divide the sheep and the goats on the great last day of the judgment.
So Jesus came, and Jesus will come again. But in between, we have this promise that Jesus is the one who constantly is coming to us. So that’s really the theme for today. As Advent holds before us this threefold coming of Jesus, it’s the thing that we have to get into our own hearts and our own imaginations. It’s not like we’re between these times when Jesus was walking around with his disciples and when he is standing again on the earth in glory and it’s somehow a time of Jesus’ absence from us. No, He’s present with us in a different way, but He’s present with us. His presence with us is more immediate than even it was with his disciples.
But now we have to address this question. Is the Lord being present with us good or bad? Is it good news or bad news? Now we almost immediately think, and this is good because we’re Christians, and we know that Jesus loves us and we love him, that his presence with us is good, and that’s right. But that is not obvious, at least not at first. Right? Do you remember how it was with Moses when he was astonished at the Lord’s mercy? This was back in the Exodus time and the incident with the golden calf. And Moses begged the Lord, he said, Lord, would you show yourself to me? And the Lord says to Moses, no, at least I can’t show you the front of my face because, as Moses explained it, no one can see the face of God and live.
Now that’s a pretty amazing statement. And the reason that no one can see the face of God and live is not because God’s face is bad or dangerous or ugly or something like that. The problem is not with God. The problem is with us. God is holy and we are not. God is perfect and we are sinners. God is pure and we are impure and unclean. God is just and we are guilty. And it’s because of this imbalance, I suppose, or this situation that the presence of God is, in fact, somewhat dangerous to us. The problem, again, is not the face of God. The problem is Moses’ face. And that if Moses were to look upon the purity and holiness and radiance of God, then he would be undone.
God, in fact, says to Moses, no one can see my face and live, so I’ll cause my backside to pass by you. You can’t look on my front. You can look at the back of me. And he causes himself to pass by and gives him this mercy. And in that way, the Lord is able to be present with Moses and not destroy him. In fact, that’s probably what is happening at Moses’ triumphal entry of Jesus; it’s probably what’s happening with the incarnation, is that the Lord comes to us in such a way that His presence doesn’t destroy us, but blesses us.
But here’s the picture, because I think this is especially important in our day, because I hear it, although I’m hearing it less. You all can give me the feedback if you are also hearing this less than you did 10 years ago. But I still hear this quite a bit where people will say, now I’m not a religious person, I’m a spiritual person. Spiritual but not religious. And I think basically what that means is people say, well, I want a God who doesn’t say anything. I want a God who’s mute. I want a God who can kind of show up, but He doesn’t have that much to add, and He kind of likes all the things I like anyways, and it works out pretty good for both of us. That’s the idea of being spiritual but not religious, and that means that I want God to be present with me, but not say anything.
But here’s the point: the presence of God for sinners is destructive. I remember when I was growing up, this is the, when mom would say, your dad’s coming home. That could be, well, most of the time, I think it was good news, but there were a few occasions when it was not. When I was sent to my room because of something that probably my brothers did and I got blamed for, I don’t remember. When I was sent to my room for doing something wrong. And I was set there to wait for your dad to get home. And that, your dad is almost home. This is a terrifying news for us.
So here’s the question. Are we waiting for Jesus to come to us? Are we waiting for him as sinners? And if we are waiting for him, if we’re trying to draw close to him as sinners, then his presence for us is terrible news. I suppose the fact that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem on the day of his triumphal entry was terrible news for the Pharisees who hated him and wanted to destroy him and kill him. But for those of us who long for the Lord’s appearing, for those of us who know our sins and know our unworthiness, for those of us who know that we are unholy and that God’s presence is a risky business for us, then here comes the good news: Christ comes to us not to destroy us, not to punish us, not to bring justice or wrath, but Christ comes to save us.
And this is indicated by the donkey that he rides on. Jesus does not ride into Jerusalem mounted on a chariot. He does not come into Jerusalem mounted on a war horse with shield and spear and sword and armor. He does not march into Jerusalem surrounded by armies, but by children singing his praises, meekly on this donkey, which is the symbol of peace. And this means that Jesus comes to us to bless us. He comes to serve us. He comes to give himself to us.
I don’t know, and I was trying to think about this this week. You know, one of the problems that we have is that most of us have never lived under a king or a queen. We’ve never lived in a monarchy, and so we don’t know what it would be like to hear the king is coming. And I can’t think of any sort of equivalent, but I was trying to imagine what it would be like just to go back a few hundred years and to be living under a king and to hear that the king is coming. How amazing would that be? The king is coming. Where? He’s coming to our town. Well, that’s great. Where is he going to go? Well, he’s actually going to come to your house. Uh-oh. What is he doing that for?
And the king is going to show up. And here, what I was trying to think of the amazing thing—it would be something like this: the king is going to come to your house and he’s going to do your dishes. Now, I don’t think that that would probably happen. But when Jesus comes, this is the point, that Jesus is coming to us in lowliness and in humility to serve us. I mean, he doesn’t do the dishes, but he does wash his disciples’ feet and die on the cross to forgive our sins. And in this way, I think that the Lord Jesus is undoing, he’s undoing the fall. He’s undoing all the things that have gone wrong in the world. He is, in the life of his church, making all things new.
Here’s how I think it works, just as a final thought. Do you remember when Adam and Eve were in the garden and they ate the fruit and they realized that they were naked and they sewed together the fig leaves to cover the shame of their nakedness? And they thought that they had accomplished something reasonable until they hear the sound of the Lord walking in the garden, in the cool of the day. And what’s their reaction? They don’t run to the Lord to find Him and fall at His feet and worship Him and give Him praise and thanks for all the gifts and rejoice with Him and all the things of creation. No, they actually run away from Him. God is coming, and that’s a scary, frightful thought. They run and hide themselves in the bushes.
But dear saints, do you realize that every Sunday, week after week, you hear the sound of the Lord walking? You know where the Lord is. You know where he’s to be found, here in his house. And you don’t run away from this place. But your alarm goes off and Sunday morning, you wake up and you wake up your family and you get dressed and you get in the car and you drive to the place where the Lord’s footsteps can be heard. You come to the place where the Lord’s word is announced. You come to the place where the Lord is present. Not like Adam and Eve who ran away, you run to the house and the presence of God.
And I think the reason is because the Lord, when He comes to us, His footsteps are quite a bit softer and feet made gentle because they have holes in them. And we know that He comes to us now to serve and to bless and to forgive and to smile upon us and to welcome us as His children and to give us the wisdom and the strength that we need to endure these days until He returns in glory and brings us into His presence.
So may we all together praise the Lord, who comes to us week after week in meekness, in humility, in gentleness, in peace, to save and deliver and keep us as His own. Praise the Lord for His gifts. Amen.