Advent 1 Invocavit

Matthew21:1-9 - Advent 1 - November 27, 2016
The Christian’s Crown of Righteousness

In the days of Jeremiah the prophet, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah forsook God, lost their glory, and were destroyed and scattered by heathen armies.  God had punished them.  But in the midst of this punishment was a wonderful promise. 

Through the same prophet, Jeremiah, God said behold.  In the midst of all this calamity that your sins have brought upon you, look at this.  Look at what I will do.  The days are coming, says the Lord, that I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness – that is, I will send a son of David to bring you honor as you have never seen before.  For what will this Branch be?  He will be a king – like his father David was.  He shall reign and prosper.  That is, his reign will be successful.  It won’t crumble like an earthly kingdom – like the one that I gave you, which you stained with idolatry, and which I therefore now take away from you.  No, his kingdom will be spiritual, and it shall last forever.  He will execute judgment and righteousness.  That is, he will not neglect the poor and lowly or deny justice to the victims of crime.  No enemy will prevail against him with either bribe or threat.  His reign will be fair and good.  And in his day Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely.  This means that the salvation he promises will not be able to fail, but will guarantee security to all his subjects.  And his name, this King, this Branch of David, is the Lord, our Righteousness.  “Behold the days are coming,” says the Lord.  “The days are coming when I will demonstrate that I myself am your righteousness.” 

What an awesome prophecy!  It’s just as St. Paul wrote in Romans 3,

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, which God revealed to Moses and the Prophets [including Jeremiah], namely, the righteousness before God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.

This King that the Lord God promised to send to his people would come in righteousness.  But this righteousness would not be to condemn his people, but to be given to his people – and not only to his own, but to all who would believe.  How much clearer could God be that they would not be justified by their own obedience, but by the obedience of him whose name is the Lord our Righteousness? 

Well he did make it clearer.  Ten chapters later in Jeremiah 33, the Lord again spoke through the same prophet in nearly identical words.  Again he says, behold – look at what I am doing.  He says, “the days are coming that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah:” and then he says again like before that he will cause a branch of righteousness to grow from David, that he will execute judgment and righteousness, and that Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell safely.  But instead of saying what the Branch’s name will be called, as he did earlier, this time he says what Jerusalem’s name will be called.  Jerusalem is his holy people, his Church.  And the name he gives her is identical to the name he gives himself: The Lord our Righteousness. 

Now consider what this means.  This King whom the Lord promised to send would bear the name of the Lord.  This means he would himself be the Lord.  He would furthermore bear the name “our Righteousness.”  This means that his righteousness would be ours, since we are his.  And to demonstrate this promise, to assure us that it is true and that he really is our righteousness, what does he do?  He gives us the very same name. 

We call ourselves Christians after Christ, since he is ours and we are his.  Just as a wife may boast of her husband’s name, so God has always placed his name on his people.  He is betrothed to his people.  This is why wives today, and always, have taken the name of their husbands.  Not only does it reflect the natural protection and honor that a woman receives from her man; but among us Christians it also serves to confess a beautiful truth of our Christian faith.  When two become one, they are called by the same name.  So intimately bound is Christ’s life and ours that we share in all that is his.  His obedience is ours.  His holiness is ours.  His righteousness is ours.  His inheritance and immeasurable wealth are ours.  His pleasing the Father is ours.  His life and eternal joy are ours.  His victory over sin and death is ours.  He is our Head.  We are his beloved Body whom he serves. 

And here we see why he had to come.  We as a body are not so lovely.  We have sin and death – sin and death that no king could escape and that no king could spare his people from.  We are blemished by our disobedience and prideful resistance to his will.  And here we see why this King would have to come as a Bridegroom to his Bride, whom he calls Jerusalem, his holy Church of believers.  He cannot wait for us to become worthy of his affection.  He cannot wait for us to become beautiful and pleasing.  No.  In order to rule in mercy and truly bestow as our possession what rightfully belongs to him, he must first receive in himself what rightfully belongs to us.  He must take the ugliness of his betrothed upon himself – her spots and wrinkles and all that defiled her.  He made our sin his own. 

In order to do this, the eternal King of heaven, the Son of God, assumed our flesh and blood.  Yet he did so without any sin of his own.  He came as the perfect Man, the second Adam.  And as the perfect man he lived a life free from sin.  He loved as we were commanded.  He laid on his own shoulders the duty and command to do so.  He feared and trusted his Father as a flesh and blood man who relied on him for all the same things that we do.  He trusted his Father when he was hungry, naked, cold, mocked, and nailed to a tree.  He exhibited his sinlessness not only in his active obedience of love, but also in his passive obedience of patience as he suffered willingly for the sins of all humanity.  All this he did as both God and man.  For this reason he rode into Jerusalem in royal lowliness. 

Having thus fulfilled all that was owed – both the perfect life, and the abandonment and death that each sinner deserves – having done so perfectly, he was crowned by the Father as true King of kings and Lord of lords.  He received life and honor from God by being raised from the dead, never to die again.  He was given all authority to free us from death through the forgiveness of sins, which he had purchased by his blood.  In his death he earned it.  In his resurrection he laid claim to it.  And in his first post-resurrection appearance to his chosen disciples, he commanded them to preach it to all creation in his name. 

Where is the Church?  Where is Jerusalem?  Where is Zion?  Her name is the Lord our Righteousness.  So where is she?  She is wherever true believers are found, trusting not in their own beauty to impress the Lord, but trusting in the Lord’s mercy to clothe his bride and make her radiant by faith in the gospel.  This is the great mystery that St. Paul talks about in Ephesians 5 where he tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and where he tells wives to submit to their own husbands as to the Lord.  This image of a Christian marriage when considering Christ and his Church is a precious one. 

So where do we find this beautiful bride of Christ who by faith is washed clean and made radiant?  We identify and locate the Church, not simply where the name of Christ is claimed, but where the name of Christ is proclaimed.  Her name is the Lord our Righteousness only where he who is the Lord our Righteousness, our King, serves his Church by forgiving her sins and honoring her through his word and sacraments.  This is how we identify the Church.  This is how we know who the bride of Christ is.  She is wearing his righteousness by faith in the gospel we hear, the gospel which is proclaimed in her midst, the gospel that is for you an invitation to rejoice in the victory that Christ has won over your sin and death and the power of hell. 

The Church is not known by the work she does, but by what she receives from her Lord.  She receives a name.  And with that name she receives his love, his loyalty, his very life laid down for her.  Without bearing the name which Christ has given his Church, that is, apart from the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, the Church cannot be identified.  All others are imposters who impress the wayward and foolish to find peace and satisfaction in their embrace.  Here I am speaking of those who teach false gospels, who trade the pure word of God for popular lies that flatter the flesh of sinners.  It is as Solomon warned his son to be instructed by the wisdom and understanding of the gospel, “That they may keep you,” he says, “from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words” (Proverbs 7:5).  She says:

“Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;
Let us delight ourselves with love.
For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
He has taken a bag of money with him,
And will come home on the appointed day.” (Proverbs 7:18-20)

But as we have learned, we know neither the day nor the hour which he has appointed.  

Such is the seduction of those who claim to be the Church, but who are not faithful to the word of Christ who is the Church’s Husband and Head.  We are warned, then, to distinguish between the adulteress and the virginal bride of Christ.  We do so by distinguishing between the proper preaching of the law and the gospel on one hand, and whatever popular message might take its place on the other.  Those who flatter you, beware of them.  Those who grant to your flesh some spiritual power, mark and avoid them.  Those who would burden you with rules or principles of right living as though your obedience were what made you the cherished possession of the Lord, flee from them as from an adulteress whose husband is not home.  For truly, unless the gospel is preached and the forgiveness of sins is offered freely for Jesus’ sake, then the Lord Jesus is not in that place.  God might nonetheless preserve and rescue many who get caught up in false religion.  But sectarian churches that lay aside the gospel for more exciting and seemingly more relevant messages have, as the song puts it, “been the ruin of many a young man.”  Many young and foolish Christians – or for that matter, old but lazy and immature Christians – have been jinxed and jaded by the false promises of spiritual seduction, while being deprived of the plain and true teaching of Christ.  How tragic! 

So beware.  As we wait for our Bridegroom’s return, so we also behold, as the prophet tells us to.  We behold him who comes as the King of kings.  He who came lowly, and riding on a donkey comes still lowlier, in the despised and unimpressive message of the gospel and in the common forms of water and bread and wine.  But make no mistake.  This is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  He is our righteousness.  When he gives you his name, clothes you in the purity of a good conscience, and assures you that he does not condemn or reject you, but forgives you and contends for you – then you have what Jesus rode into Jerusalem to earn for you.  You have salvation and peace with God.  You have a future.  You have his kingdom, and Christ is your King. 

The crowds of Palm Sunday threw down their coats and palm branches in his path, even as they waved those same branches in victory at his arrival.  This is a beautiful reminder of why God became man, of what makes him our King, and of how we benefit from his incarnation, and from his suffering and death.   Though our own marriages fail to reflect that perfect union of God and man and of Christ and his beloved Church, yet in his humble advent to us we see where our marriages are blessed, because we see where marriage is blessed and where the fruits of marriage are invited to join the anthem of praise.  He comes to replace our soiled garments with white robes washed in his own blood – just like those saints in heaven who stand with palm branches praising the Lamb.  Jesus comes to honor us, not to shame us – to serve us, not demand our service.  And yet, as our King and our Bridegroom, he is pleased to accept the honor we give him. 

We do not crown him.  That is a thoroughly unbiblical image – like a man taking his wife’s name. No, God crowns him.  He gives him a name which is above every name.  That is good.  Our Lord Jesus is crowned not merely as the Son of God, but as the New Man, the second Adam so that in him we are also restored as the crown of God’s creation and we receive his name as well.  And so we honor Christ by confessing this.  In Jesus’ humble service to us, we learn what true headship is.  We learn what it means to bow before our King.  It is to be honored beyond expressing with the favor of God and his eternal care and protection.  Amen.