Palm Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 21:1-9
In Christ Jesus, who went to Jerusalem knowing that suffering, cross, and death were waiting for Him, but who went forward willingly in obedience to His Father and out of love for you, dear fellow redeemed:
If you had the ability to look into the future, and you could see that something tragic was going to happen to someone you love, you would almost certainly try to keep it from happening. This is a common theme in time travel movies. But the characters in these movies discover that even small changes in one time and place have unintended consequences and immense effects on what comes afterward. They find that when humans try to “play God,” the results are catastrophic.
Now imagine that you were part of the crowd on that Palm Sunday. Leading up to this day, everyone was talking about whether Jesus would come to Jerusalem for the Passover. You hoped to see Him. You had heard about the miracles He had done in Judea and Galilee over the past three years. You also heard how He recently raised Lazarus from the dead after he had been in the tomb four days. “Could this be the Messiah?” you wondered. “Who else could do what He does?”
If He was the Messiah, the Chosen of God, the Son of David, who better to take the throne of Jerusalem and lead God’s people Israel? Then word started to spread that Jesus was on His way. You left the city to see for yourself and followed the crowd to the Mount of Olives. You heard the singing and shouting before you saw Him, and then He came into view. There He was, your King, “humble, and mounted on a donkey.” The future of Israel looked bright!
But let’s say that in that moment of excitement and joy, God gave you a vision of the next six days. You saw the conflict and clashes that would take place between Jesus and the Jewish religious leaders. You saw them plotting by candlelight how they could have Jesus arrested and eliminated. You saw Judas making a deal to betray Him for thirty pieces of silver. You saw His arrest in the garden, His mistreatment and abuse from His captors, His flogging, the crown of thorns, and finally the crucifixion. You saw Him taken down from the cross after His death and placed in a tomb before a stone was rolled over the entrance.
If you saw all that in a vision on Palm Sunday, what would you do? Perhaps you would try to get the attention of Jesus’ disciples to let them know what terrible things were coming. Or you might try to reach Jesus Himself to warn Him. Maybe you would try somehow to stop the enemies of Jesus from harming Him. You could get word out to the Israelites gathered in Jerusalem to stay on the lookout and not let the authorities take Jesus. Whatever you could do, whatever it took, you would keep Jesus from being arrested and killed.
This is exactly what Peter and the other disciples tried to do. Remember how Jesus predicted His suffering and death in Jerusalem and His resurrection on the third day? Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Mat. 16:22). Then on the night of Jesus’ betrayal, Peter declared, “If I must die with you, I will not deny you” (Mar. 14:31), and all the other disciples said the same. When a band of soldiers later met Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Him, Peter drew his sword and got ready to fight to the death (Joh. 18:10).
But Jesus put a stop to all these attempts. He did not need someone to fight for Him. He was not looking for anyone to stop Him from doing what He came to do. The account of Christ’s passion recorded in the four Gospels does not read like a tragedy, as though Jesus got caught up in something that He didn’t see coming. He was no unfortunate fly getting stuck in a big spider web. Everything He did had purpose.
Look at today’s reading. As He made His way to Jerusalem, He gave two of His disciples specific instructions about a donkey and a colt in a nearby village. He told them where to find them and what to say if someone questioned them as they led the animals away. Everything happened just like He said, and it fulfilled a prophecy recorded by the prophet Zechariah more than 500 years earlier (Zec. 9:9).
We find these references throughout the Gospels, that Jesus did what He did “that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” Bible scholars point to hundreds of prophecies like this. The life of Jesus does not just occasionally connect to what the Old Testament says. His life perfectly matches all the prophecies of the coming Messiah. Jesus Himself called attention to this. He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mat. 5:17). And again, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (Joh. 5:39).
Jesus had a plan. Everything was laid out for Him by the Father. It was no miscalculation that led Jesus to Jerusalem. It was no mistake that He was handed over to the Jews and then to the Roman officials. No one made Him go to the cross. Some time before this, Jesus said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (Joh. 10:18). He perfectly did what His Father sent Him to do as today’s Epistle lesson says, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phi. 2:8).
But what was the point of it all? Why go through that torment and agony? Why go to Jerusalem in order to get arrested and crucified? The answer is that it was for you. Do you find that hard to believe? Do you find it hard to believe that you would be part of God’s plan that led Jesus to the cross? You might feel like you are not important enough for that. You might think that God has bigger things to think about than you. He disagrees.
God the Father had you in mind when He promised to send a Savior. He had you in mind when He sent the angel Gabriel to the virgin Mary to announce that she would bear the Christ-Child. Jesus had you in mind when He perfectly kept the Law of God in your place, when He made His way to Jerusalem to suffer, and when He endured the wrath of God on the cross. What makes me so sure that it was all for you? Because He says so, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
You are part of the world. That means God loves you. That means He sent His Son to live for you, die for you, and rise again for you. He has shown that love for you in your lifetime by bringing you to the cleansing waters of Baptism and calling you by the Gospel to be His own. He speaks His gracious Word of absolution from my sinful mouth into your sinful ears. He gives the holy body and blood of Jesus for you to eat and drink. There is no doubt about it, what God sent His Son to do in Jerusalem was for you, for your salvation and mine.
That has a profound effect on how we think about our life. If you were part of God’s plan that sent His perfect Son to suffer and die, then He must have a plan for you today. You must not be an afterthought to Him. You must not have to make your own way in this world. He must have many blessings in store for you until He finally brings you into His kingdom.
This is a comforting thought and very liberating. If God has the plan for me, then I don’t have to try to control everything. If He has the plan for me, then I can accept hardships and health challenges and heartaches as trials that He will use to strengthen my faith in Him.
On our own, we might have an idea about how we want our life to go, but the path forward is unclear. We look back at some of the choices we made, thinking we had a good plan, and we see how far off we were. We didn’t have the faithfulness and the focus that we should have had, and it caused troubles that affect us still today. We learned the hard way that our heart is not a trustworthy compass. We can’t trust our own sense of direction to lead us into the future because our sense is misguided by sin.
The author of Hebrews tells us how to stay on course: “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:1-2). At the right hand of the throne of God, Jesus dispenses His gifts of grace through the holy means He has given to His Church.
He does not leave you to fend for yourself in this life, to stumble blindly through the clouds and darkness, to search for answers or meaning that never appear. “Behold, your King is coming to you.” He comes through the preaching of His Word. He comes through the cleansing waters of Baptism. He comes in His Holy Supper, which is why we sing that Palm Sunday song in our Communion liturgy: “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” He comes to bring you His forgiveness, His holiness, His strength for your daily struggles and needs.
We keep our eyes on Him, following Him through His triumphal entry at Jerusalem, the institution of His Holy Supper on Maundy Thursday, His suffering and death on Good Friday, His glorious resurrection on the third day, and His victorious ascension into heaven. Everything He accomplished is for you. Everything happened according to God’s will for your salvation, your life, your future—Everything According to His Plan.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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(picture from “The Procession in the Streets of Jerusalem” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The First Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 21:1-9
In Christ Jesus, who “comes [to you] with gladness, / Moved by His love alone, / To calm your fear and sadness, / To Him they well are known” (ELH 94, v. 7), dear fellow redeemed:
My wife and I have been working our way through a book about Abraham Lincoln’s thirteen day train ride to Washington D. C., where he would take the oath of office. While Lincoln made his way there, the united states were coming apart at the seams. Some states in the south had already seceded and had elected a new president for themselves. The federal government was floundering. Credible intel suggested multiple assassination plots to keep Lincoln from ever getting to Washington. It was an anxious trip.
At every stop along the way on a carefully designed route through the northern states, Lincoln was met by large crowds of people wanting to catch a glimpse of this iconic man. Whenever he stepped off the train, they surged forward trying to get as close as they could and maybe even shake his hand. They hung on every word he spoke. As humble as his upbringing was and as down-to-earth as he conducted himself, they treated him like a celebrity—maybe even like a king.
If you had been there in that tumultuous time, and you met Lincoln at one of his train stops, what would you have done? What might you have said to him? To this point, Lincoln hadn’t done much more than talk. Was he really up for the task of leading a country that was on its way to civil war? Was he truly the man for this moment? There were many hopes, but also many questions.
The coming of Jesus to Jerusalem was met with just as much excitement and just as many questions. The people knew Jesus was special. They had seen Him perform many miracles, including the raising of Lazarus from the dead not far from Jerusalem. They also knew that the Jewish religious leaders despised Jesus and wanted Him silenced. No doubt the Roman authorities were aware of these things, and they were anxious to maintain the peace and avoid an uprising, especially now that the city was jammed full of people attending the annual Passover celebration.
If you had been in Jerusalem at the beginning of that festival week, and Jesus came riding down toward you from the Mount of Olives, what would you have done? What might you have said? We know what the Israelites did. They removed their outer garments and cut branches from nearby trees, and they laid them on the ground in front of Him. They wanted to create a soft carpet for Jesus’ arrival. They wanted Him to know He was most welcome.
But while the donkey’s hooves may have fallen quietly on the path, the crowd was anything but quiet. The people who went before Him and those who followed Him were shouting and singing the words of an old song, perhaps as much as 1,000 years old. “Hosanna!” they cried, which means, “Save us, we pray!” “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
They were shouting the words of Psalm 118, a messianic song of victory. They believed the coming of Jesus was the fulfillment of these words. They welcomed Him as a king, “the Son of David.” Just what sort of king He would be was not clear to them, but they almost certainly had nationalist notions in mind. Jesus could lead them into a new era of earthly glory and prosperity, free from the rule of outsiders, like the rule of the great king David!
But Jesus was not that sort of king. By the end of the week, He stood before Pilate and said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (Joh. 18:36). His kingdom was heavenly. He was looking to gain eternal souls, not earthly subjects. He would win them in a most surprising way. It would not be done by political deal-making, alliance building, or a superior show of strength. Jesus secured freedom for the captives by suffering. He brought them life by dying. He won everything for them by appearing to lose it all.
Jesus came to do what the people were crying out for, “Hosanna! Save us, we pray!” But it wasn’t salvation from corrupt religious leaders or pagan overlords. He saved them from their sin and death. It is rare and perhaps even impossible for an earthly leader to do something that benefits everyone. But what Jesus accomplished was for everyone. He suffered and died for everybody’s sins. He made no distinctions, played no favorites. Jesus was there on the cross for all sinners.
That means He was there for you. When Jesus received His crown of thorns and was pinned to that gruesome instrument of death, you didn’t exist. You wouldn’t exist for nearly 2,000 years! But God the Father saw the wrongs you would do and the good you would leave undone as clear as day. All sin was before Him, and He placed all of it on His holy Son. All your pride when things went your way, and all your impatience when things didn’t. All your bad decisions, your unfaithfulness, your brokenness. All of it was piled on Jesus, who suffered as though all of it was His doing, as though all of it was His sin.
Suppose you were employed somewhere, and you decided that you would do whatever you felt like doing. You broke the rules. You broke merchandise. You took whatever you wanted. When the losses couldn’t be ignored, the boss called everyone together. Now things were getting serious. How would you lie your way out of this one? But you didn’t have to. Even though the evidence strongly pointed to you, your innocent co-worker was accused instead. He was the one to be fired—not you. And he didn’t even open his mouth. He knew the truth, and he willingly took the punishment—took the punishment for you.
Knowing what your sin did to Jesus, knowing what He suffered in your place, what would you do if He met you here? What might you say? Part of you would want to try to justify yourself and pass the blame for your sins on to others. You were just a victim of unfortunate circumstances. Or maybe you would even have some criticisms of Him, that if He were a king more attuned to your daily needs and more aware of your troubles, you would not have struggled along like you had.
That would be no way to greet your King. But He would stand there patiently, looking right at you, a mixture of love and compassion and truth in His eyes. Then slowly He would lift His hands and turn them open to show two marks—marks from the nails. Those marks speak a message of perfect love, perfect sacrifice, perfect forgiveness, a message that can be boiled down to two words, “For you.”
Nothing more needs to be said. Nothing more needs to be done. Jesus died for you. He rose from the dead in victory for you. And He still lives for you. “I am with you always,” He says (Mat. 28:20). He does meet you here. He comes humbly, hidden in simple words, simple water, simple bread and wine. He comes through these lowly means to transfer all the wealth of His kingdom to you. He gives you His forgiveness, His righteousness, His life.
And when He comes in each Divine Service, you greet Him like the Israelites did outside Jerusalem. As the Israelites laid their garments at His feet, so you put off your old Adam in repentance and lay your sins before Him. That is how the Divine Service begins, with repentance. You tell the truth about yourself and put yourself at His mercy. And immediately you hear His words of absolution, the free forgiveness of all your sins.
As the Israelites also decorated the road with palm branches, so you sprinkle the path of your coming King with praises. You join the angels in their Christmas song, “Glory be to God in the highest. And on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” And as the Israelites repeated what they had learned about Jesus in the Holy Scriptures, so you listen to the Scripture readings and sermon and confess the truth about your King in the Creeds, acknowledging Him as the fulfillment of all of God’s promises.
Then in the service of Holy Communion, you even take up the Israelites’ hosanna song. Just before Jesus joins His body and blood to the bread and wine, you sing, “Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” Then you hear Jesus’ invitation, “Take, eat; this is My body, which is given for you…. Drink of it all of you; this cup is the New Testament in My blood, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins.”
The entire Divine Service is a review of what Jesus did to save you and what He still does to keep you in His kingdom. Your King is not ashamed to count you among His followers. He is happy to meet you and dispense His riches to you. He does not ask anything from you except that you trust what He tells you. And even this faith comes to you as a gift from Him.
He is not a king who forces His subjects to be devoted to Him and praise Him. He doesn’t have to force us. When we see all that He has done for us, we cannot help but give Him thanks and praise and desire to live our life in His service. None of it is good enough for Him, and He accepts all of it with gladness.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
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(picture from “Entry of Christ into Jerusalem” by Pietro Lorenzetti, 1320)