Palm Sunday

Matthew 21:1-9 - Palm Sunday/Confirmation - April 13, 2014
Daughters of Zion

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ and especially you Aubreigh and Caragan; grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

When you were baptized, God became your Father.  Of course, he was always your Father in this sense: inasmuch as he is God the Father almighty who made heaven and earth.  That means that he made you with your eternal well being in mind.  He knit you together in your mothers’ wombs and has cared for you ever since, because he loves you.  Through earthly means he has made sure that you have been fed, clothed, sheltered, disciplined, and otherwise loved by those who make it their joy to do so.  These loved-ones of yours are God’s earthly means.  Your parents, grandparents, and families take care of you because they love you.  And God takes care of you through them because he loves you even more. 

Everything and everyone you have and hold dear comes to you from God your Father as an undeserved gift.  But none of these things is as precious as knowing God your Father who is kind to you despite your many sins.  And this is why you cherish your Baptism: because it joins you to the eternal Son of the Father, Jesus Christ, who became true Man to give you peace with God through the forgiveness of your sins.  Through the earthly means of water, combined with God’s almighty word, God made you his own dear child – not simply so that he would feed and clothe you (he will do that anyway!), but so that you might know him who does.  In your Baptism, God washed away and forgave the sin that you inherited from your earthly fathers.  He gave you a heavenly birth, so that you are his dear daughters who inherit eternal life in Jesus’ name. 

To know God as your Father is to know Christ as your Savior.  He became your brother in order to fulfill the law that condemns you, and in order to suffer the penalty for your sin.  To make use of your Baptism is to cling to the forgiveness of sins that is preached to you in his name, knowing that Jesus’ righteousness covers you and makes you holy before God.  This righteousness does not depend on what you have done or left undone. It depends on Jesus.  It always will.  This is why Jesus tells us: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).   He’s telling us to cherish our Baptism even more than we cherish all the things we have in this world.  He will provide.  We know this, because we know him.  He is our Father. 

We see how God provides.  But sometimes we see how it seems he doesn’t.  The cares of the world add up and it looks like we need to focus on making ends meet more than hearing God’s word.  We think we know what we need from God.  And we think we know how we’re going to get it.  And so we begin to lean on the earthly means that God has provided – such as family, friends, and work – rather than on God himself.  But what we really need is to know the God who freely gives everything to us in his good time.  We need to hear his voice.  To seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness is not to go on a life journey looking for something hard to find.  To seek the kingdom of God is to know where Jesus comes to us in humble mercy.  It is to return to where God made you a child of his kingdom in Holy Baptism.  And that is why we gather here every Sunday in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

What kind of Savior do you need?  This will determine how you worship God.  What is your greatest need that weighs you down the most?  This will determine from whom you seek help and what kind of kingdom you look for. 

Remember the children of Israel who followed Jesus into the wilderness to hear his word.  Oh, how pious they were to go following the signs into the desert.  They left house and home, their jobs and marketplace in order to see and hear what Jesus had to show them.  Their priorities seem to be in order.  But then their bellies grumbled – just like their forefathers after they were freed from slavery in Egypt.   Earthly needs rose up; priorities got confused.  They were hungry and tired, and that’s all that mattered anymore. 

But just as God gave manna and quail from heaven when Moses was with them, so Jesus filled their need when he was with them.  He didn’t act exasperated like it didn’t matter, like they were being petty.  Instead, Jesus had compassion on them and provided them with bread and fish with the same divine power by which God had always kept them alive.  And Jesus did all this, because, as their God, he loved them.  He loved them with the same love his Father has for all his sons and daughters. 

And then what happened?  They wanted to make him their king.  Remember?  They wanted to force Jesus to be their king so that they would always have these things – as though God wouldn’t keep providing these things anyway.  But Jesus didn’t come down from heaven to be a bread king.  He came to to be the very Bread of Life.  As St. Paul says, “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:15).  So what did Jesus do?  He escaped.  Remember?  He didn’t want to be that kind of king.  He left them so that he could come back to them in their greater need – as the king that they truly required. 

And here in our Gospel lesson this morning we see exactly when this time came.   Jesus came to the children of Israel who were gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the high feast of the Passover.  He came humbly, lowly, riding on a donkey, a beast of burden.  He came to serve by taking their burden away.  And we know how – we know what he came to do.  He came to bear their sin and to die as the true Passover Lamb so that by his blood death might pass over all who believe.  He came to show mercy by taking the wrath of God upon himself in the place of all sinners.  He came as the King of the Jews in order that he might redeem those who are more concerned about earthly wealth and earthly problems – including all the Gentiles who didn’t know God as their Father.  He came as the spotless Lamb of God in order that we might see and find in his humble service the eternal riches of heaven that our Father wants us to have.  

Still today Jesus serves his church by coming in an even humbler fashion, the means of grace.  He doesn’t come in glory for the world to ooh and ah over, but through the gospel that is preached from the pulpit and administered in the sacraments.  These means of grace are lowly, and despised by the world.  But may we never despise them as well.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we are inclined to do, because we are sinners from birth, and remain sinners until the day we die. 

God works through means.  He gives us our daily bread through our parents, and yet we dishonor them.  He gives good reputations through our friends, and yet we betray them when we talk about them behind their backs.  He gives us a livelihood through our employers, and yet we cheat them by being lazy and selfish.  He gives us untold blessings through pious husband and wife, and yet we grow dissatisfied for a great number of self-centered reasons.  And so we learn to despise the very means by which God blesses our lives.  This is sin.  Lord, have mercy! 

But worse than any of this is when we begin to despise the lowly means by which Christ serves us with the forgiveness of our sins.  By water and the word God declares that we have a heavenly birth and that heaven is our true homeland and that God is our true Father.  He gives us access to him when our sinful hearts betray us and the weakness of our flesh sinks us deep in guilt.   

But by refusing to listen to the voice of Christ in the pulpit and in the absolution and to receive his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, we are despising the access to God’s grace that our Baptism grants us.  And it happens all the time.  Baptized and confirmed Christians grow to despise these lowly means of grace because they want to see God’s power somewhere else in their life.  Or they want the power to solve other problems that they think are more important than having a good conscience before God.  Or they just grow bored with what the Bible teaches.  And the lowly means of grace that they were once taught to love begin to appear weak and trivial. 

But that’s when we must be taught what problem we most need God to solve.  We need to be reminded of our sin so that we might look for God’s power in the message of the cross, where Christ bore our shame and guilt away.  We need this so that we might say with the Apostle: “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). 

What a wonderful thing.  We continually need to be served by Christ.  In this lifetime, we never graduate from this need.  Never do we stop struggling against sin and doubt. You think that those who are older and more faithful churchgoers – those who know the Word of God well – that they don’t struggle against sin and doubt.  But that’s not true.  We do.  Because the devil is real.  And what we teach is no joke.  Those who are most convinced and so confirm the gifts they received in Baptism – those who publicly stand up before a congregation of Christians and before God himself and confess that they believe the gospel which they have been taught – those who swear that they will suffer all even death rather than fall away from this faith — these the devil will target.  And the devil, if he has his way, will see to it that you do suffer all, even death, because he wants you to fall away from the good confession you have made.  He wants you to seek all these things and ignore the kingdom of God and his righteousness.  He wants you to find God’s power in your moral victories and in your earthly achievements.  

And that is why, dear Christians, dear confirmands, your Lord Jesus bids you today to make use of his lowly advent to you.  He comes as your king so that the devil will not have his way.  He who came to his people in Jerusalem to die and win your salvation comes to you his children to give it to you.  Through the word you hear this morning and in the sacrament of his body and blood that he invites you to receive often, your King comes and gives you life.  This is where God’s power will always be found. 

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jeru-salem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” 

Jesus fulfilled these words.  And he continues to do so.  The daughter of Zion is those who have been born from above.  They are citizens of God’s heavenly Kingdom of glory.  That’s what Zion is.  The daughter of Jerusalem is those who gather below.  They are ruled by God in his kingdom of grace on earth.  Jerusalem is the holy Christian Church.  She receives, here in the midst of sin and death, the righteousness and life that Jesus still comes to give.  In order to be a daughter of Jerusalem, you must be born a daughter of Zion.  You are.  Through your Baptism, your robes are made white in the blood of the Lamb.  In order to rejoice as a daughter of Zion, you must learn to shout aloud as a daughter of Jerusalem.  And you do — by confessing what you confessed last week, and what you will promise this morning in a few moments.  But you do this also, and more importantly, by coming to church to proclaim the mercy of your Father in heaven, to take part in his service to you in the Psalms and hymns that teach you about Jesus your Savior, by crying to God for mercy, and receiving it in Jesus’ name.  Here true worship is found – where your King comes to give you his kingdom – where you join us and all God’s children in our shouts of Hosanna to him who comes in the name of the Lord. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Let us now pray for the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus and for all people according to their needs:

Gracious heavenly Father, we give you thanks for providing us with our daily bread and for all the earthly means of our happiness and success.  Please continue to bless us with good things, and protect us from what is harmful, including war, rebellion, corruption, poverty, disease, flood, drought, fire and whatever else might oppress us. 

We especially pray for those in our congregation who suffer in any way.  Please be with Marriane Thien who is fighting cancer.  Attend all doctors and nurses with skill and grant that she make a full recovery to health.  Please give patience and comfort to Don and all her loved-ones.   

We also pray on behalf of all those, who, because they do not believe in You, do not and cannot pray, that you would be kind to all people for Jesus’ sake, including our rulers, our friends, and our enemies.  Most especially, we pray that Your kingdom would come, so that through Your word, Your Spirit would convert their hearts and work faith in Jesus Christ our Savior. 

Please send forth faithful servants of your word who teach your word purely.  In this way bless your whole Church on earth that we may all together confess the truth of Your word and reject all error.  Please keep us Your children in a holy life, that we may resist all temptation and serve one another with willing hearts to the glory of your name and to the praise of our gracious calling. 

Keep us in our baptismal grace, so that by your strength alone we may be enabled to keep our vows to you and be faithful unto death when You will graciously deliver us from every evil.  Recall all Your erring children to this Your gracious invitation, that they may find mercy and eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Lord Jesus, You have instituted the Supper we are about to receive for the benefit of those who are weak in faith and prone to sin. We pray that we, rightly regarding our sin, and rightly discerning what You give us here, may eat and drink of Your body and blood in true faith for true comfort in the forgiveness of all our sins.

Dear Heavenly Father, unite our hearts with Your Church in heaven, that we, with robes made white in the blood of the Lamb, may in true faith sing Your praises to Christ who sits on Your throne, and bless Him with joyful voices who comes to us in the name of the Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.