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This Gospel text occurs twice in the course of the Church year. The triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem is the Gospel for the first Sunday in Advent, when we begin to prepare to contemplate our Lord's incarnation and birth. Today we come to Palm Sunday and the commemoration of our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As with the first use of this Gospel lesson, the seasons are changing. Winter's chill is either coming or going. A penitential season — either Advent or Lent and Holy Week — seems natural in the grasp of winter while we anticipate the new life to come.
The Scriptures tell us, twice in the Church year, that some things are not so visible and able to be felt as the warmth or coldness of the air, the budding of the trees or the blooming of the flowers. There is a man riding on a donkey — on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden — through a city gate into an ancient city. It's quite a parade, but who is this King of Glory for whom the people are raising their glad strains, covering the dusty road with their own clothes, and waving the palm branches?
“Hosanna!” shouts the crowd. In Hebrew, the word means, “Save us, we pray.” It is a paradox. It is both prayer and praise. God has sent His Messianic King, the one promised through the prophets like Zechariah. Here at last is the rightful heir of King David. This one is blessed, who comes in the name of the LORD. Glory be to God in the highest! This King will save us from whatever we pray for Him to save us from. Right?
This King on the donkey is a paradox. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, yet also a man who would be derided, rejected, and denied by His own people — both before this parade and after it as well, by many of the same people. The God who created the whole universe, yet also a lowly, poor man who had no place to rest His head. The commander of all the legions of God's angels, yet also one who walked the dusty roads, and had two of His disciples retrieve a donkey for His final entry into the Holy City. He is the great and long–awaited Lion of the tribe of Judah, King David's royal son, yet He is also the Lamb of God riding to His slaughter, silent before His shearers. He is the “both/and” God–man, Jesus Christ, who reigns over all the creation, but who willingly suffers in human flesh. Both holy and blameless and sin–bearer. Both all–powerful and all too able to bleed and suffer pain and torture and the stripes of our sinfulness and deserved punishment.
This the world does not understand about Jesus. Everyone is programmed in their sinfulness to hear the words “God” and “King” and “Lord” and so think that this person called “God”, “King”, and “Lord” is coming in power and might, with ultimate authority and the ability to carry out His every whim, to punish all wrongdoing at the slightest wrong move. The world sees God and Jesus as law–giver. The world sees God's Son as a demanding King who has simply instituted just another system for us minions to follow and so hope to appease God and make Him happy.
So, the world anticipates a God who would send His Son in great glory, with much pomp and circumstance, who would just instantly get it over with in a great final duel with the devil, and just crush him right away without going to any trouble. The world is waiting for the great prince in shining armor and mounted on a white stallion or riding in the gleaming chariot and bringing the battle–bow as the prophet Zechariah tells us the world pictures Him.
Instead, God does it His way. It would have been much easier to call down all the legions of angels and cast out Satan in a great battle of Armageddon. But it would not have been a lasting victory. It would not have answered the devil's accusations, and more importantly, it would not have satisfied the demands of God's holy and righteous Law — the Law that accuses us. We broke that Law. We continue to break it daily in sins great and small. We break it in failing to love God above all other things, including ourselves. We break it in failing to love our neighbor above ourselves. We break it in a million pieces every day and hour. We sin much and are in need of much forgiveness. God knows that. God knows that we lack faith in Him above all others. God knows that we are at enmity with Him. God knows that we have no peace with Him or with each other on our own account.
That is precisely why there is not an earthly super–prince riding on a white stallion to save the day and lead the crushing of Satan or even of the Romans who were occupying Palestine. Instead, there is a humble, dirty, Lamb riding on a lowly donkey — on a colt, the foal of a grown donkey. This lamb is not being taken to the head of His army, not to His gleaming gold–encrusted throne room. He bears not the golden crown and scepter, nor the battle-bow, but He bears the sins of the world. This lamb is being taken to a sacrificial altar, to a cross at the top of the place of the skull, where death reigns. There He will extend His rule by bleeding dry and gasping for air under the crushing weight of your sin and mine. This is the Lamb who is to be slain, who goes to slaughter uncomplaining.
God's way is the way of love. The way of mercy. The way of faith. The way of peace. God's ways are not our ways, and thank God they are not, because we would be lost. Our relatives who cheered His way that first Palm Sunday did a good job representing us as sinners. They had their hope in their earthly station and progress, in earthly kingdoms and economic well being. They had no hope in or thoughts of being reconciled to God as sinners needing atonement. The Lamb on the donkey came to preach peace to the nations, Zechariah says, and He prayed for the peace of Jerusalem while on that donkey as well. (Luke 19) God was, in Christ, not coming to create an earthly kingdom, not to make things easy for us in this lifetime. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, making peace with us through offering up His only begotten Son as an offering for our sin, in our place, so that we might have eternal life and have eternal life abundantly.
God came hidden in His Son, so that He could live our life and fully join us as our brother in human flesh. God hid Himself in His Son, so that He could redeem this flesh and the entire creation that He created. God hid Himself in His Son, and gave Himself over to death on a cross, so that Satan would truly be defeated and the Law's accusations would be forever silenced for all who look to God for their salvation.
When the crowd sings its verse of praise, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” one can read their original words literally this way: “The one who is coming in the name of the Lord has been blessed and continues to be blessed.” Jesus has been blessed to do His task of being our Savior and King by His Father. Jesus continues, even now, to be blessed to do His task of being our Savior and King. His role as our Savior did not stop on Good Friday, did not stop on Easter Sunday, did not stop at His blessed Ascension forty days later. As you will hear on Good Friday, our Lord cries out from the cross “It is finished — and it continues forever to be finished.” His salvation is for all time. It is not just a wonderful thing God did in the past. It is something wonderful that God continues to bring to you in your lives, in your daily struggles, as you struggle against sin, as you struggle with heartache, conflict, stress — you name it.
It is easy for Jesus to preach His peace to the nations, you might say, but what good is it to say “peace, peace” where there appears to be no peace? You say you have mortgage payments piling up? You have a spouse whose love has grown cold? You have children who are rebellious? You have co–workers that do not get along with you and a boss breathing down your neck for more results? You have a family member whom you love that is struggling to live and breathe each day? Where is the peace you ask? Where is the fruit of this Lamb riding on a donkey? You might think that you are the one riding the donkey to your own slaughter some days.
It is all too easy to see what Jesus has accomplished for us as a past event. Now, you might be tempted to think, we need to tackle the things that weigh us down now. Many Christians today fall into that trap. But by thinking this way, we are back to being that same Jerusalem crowd asking to be delivered from things that will pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away, just as the Romans did, just as all of our earthly hindrances will as well. But our sin, if not forgiven, will not pass away. It will drown us and deliver us into eternal judgment.
God's way is to continue to bless us with the continuing fruits of His Good Friday victory. Each Sunday, and each time God gives His means of grace, becomes for us a little Palm Sunday, a little Holy Week, a little Good Friday, and a little Easter all wrapped into one. God provides continuing rest and peace for your souls. The Lamb is still riding in on a donkey. God hides Himself in our human flesh and blood, and hides that under bread and wine, and bids you eat it and drink it for your forgiveness, so that you might have that peace which surpasses any and all human understanding, a peace with God that is eternal and irrevocable as His baptized children. God desires to keep you in the one true faith, not unto a paid off mortgage, not unto a happy family or fulfilling job, not even unto a long temporal earthly life, as much as God is pleased to bless us each day with so many good gifts. God desires that our trust and faith be not in those things, but in Him alone. So He desires to keep you in the one true faith to life everlasting.
Jesus Christ keeps riding in on the donkey each week, here at this altar and faithful ones just like it the world over, across two millennia and until He truly does come in His glory on the Last Day. Here He rides humbly into our lives to forgive and heal us in, with, and under simple Words preached, simple water splashed, simple bread broken and wine poured out. What do we say? What the Church has sung for two millennia:
Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest!
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