If you didn’t know better, you might think that someone made a mistake when our Gospel lesson for today was chosen. After all, this is the first Sunday of Advent, and we’re supposed to be getting ready for Christmas – right? So why are we skipping right past baby Jesus and the angels in the sky and the shepherds in the fields and the Wise Men coming from the east – and jumping ahead 33 years to Luke’s account of Christ’s Palm Sunday entrance into the city of Jerusalem? We think we should be hearing about Bethlehem and the baby Jesus in a manger surrounded by sheep and donkeys – but instead, we’re hearing about Jerusalem with Jesus riding on a donkey. Did we miss something here?
Well, the answer is yes – and no. For longer than any of us have been around – if fact, for hundreds of years – the first Sunday of Advent has always been intended to focus on the final chapter in God’s plan of salvation for His people. On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem, fully aware that the crowds that cheered His arrival would just a few days later cheer His death. On Palm Sunday, Jesus came to Jerusalem, where he knew that He would suffer and die. On Palm Sunday, God the Son came to Jerusalem to fulfill the will of God the Father that the death penalty of sin should be paid in full by the death and resurrection of the one who was and forever is sinless.
Advent comes from the Latin word adventus – which simply means “coming.” At this time of year, Christians like you and me just naturally assume that this “coming” refers specifically to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Well, again – yes and no. A few years ago one of my Seminary professors made a statement that made me and my fellow students really stop and think. He said that by itself, the birth of Jesus accomplished absolutely nothing for our salvation. He’s right. The birth of a baby – even when that baby is the Son of God – does nothing to redeem us from our sins. That’s why today we move our focus from the first coming of Jesus to Bethlehem for His birth – to His second coming, to Jerusalem, for His death.
Do you remember what the angel of the Lord told the shepherds in the field on Christmas night? “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” But the birth of the Savior didn’t immediately result in our salvation. We were saved only when Mary’s baby grew to be a man and suffered and died for our sins. We were redeemed only when that innocent and holy baby left the safety of His crib to ultimately endure the shame of the cross. Cross and crib go together – you can’t have one without the other.
Likewise, there is no salvation apart from God in the flesh. Once Adam and Eve defied God and sinned in the Garden of Eden, the curse of sin became epidemic in the flesh and the soul of every man and woman who would ever be born. No one sinful person could ever make things right with God, could ever do anything to satisfy God’s righteous anger. The only way to make things right between God and man was for God to become a man, to take on real human flesh and blood like ours. The only way to remove our death penalty for sin was for God to take on a human body – born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem us who have been condemned by the Law – and offer His holy body as a sacrifice for our sins. If Jesus had not been true God and true man, He could not have truly been our Savior. And then we all would have a giant – an unsolvable – problem.
No, this birth of this true-God-and-true-man infant was not the defining moment in the salvation of the world. That’s why this particular Sunday focuses not on the things of Christmas, not on the things of the beginnings of His life, but on the events near the end of Jesus’ life. Before we spend the rest of this month focusing on the first scenes of God’s salvation story, we peek ahead to Palm Sunday and the final scenes of the story. Because the Lord who comes to save will do so – but only by entering Jerusalem and dying. It was all part of God’s plan. It was always part of God’s plan.
You’ve heard me say before that the Jewish people of Jesus’ time had a false understanding of what and who the Messiah would be. Two thousand years ago, the Jewish people were expecting their Messiah to be a great warrior who would ride into Jerusalem at the head of a mighty army, destroying their hated Roman rulers and reestablishing the Kingdom of Israel to its glory days like those of King David and King Solomon. It may have sounded great – but it was all wrong. Over 500 years before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Zechariah told the Jewish people what really would happen: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! 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.” Humble? Mounted on a donkey? Doesn’t sound very majestic, does it? There’s no mention of an army or some great military victory. Yes, it was a dramatic entrance into the city of Jerusalem. But it wasn’t what the people expected. It wasn’t what the people wanted.
On the road to Jerusalem, Jesus had told His disciples what was going to happen when they got there. In Luke 18 verses 31 to 33 we read: “And taking the twelve, he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.’” But in the next verse Luke writes: “But they understood none of these things.” It wasn’t what the disciples expected. It wasn’t what the disciples wanted.
If we take a minute to be honest with ourselves, we really don’t want to talk about Palm Sunday and Good Friday or even Easter morning on a day like today. Hearing a Gospel lesson about Palm Sunday isn’t what we expect so soon before Christmas. We’re all trying to get in the Christmas spirit, after all – so a Gospel lesson about Palm Sunday is not at all what we really want.
But we do want a Savior. We do want to be saved from our sins. And the only way that our Savior can save us is by dying. If Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, there won’t be any crucifixion and there won’t be any resurrection. There won’t be any salvation. There won’t be any hope.
Today, the first Sunday in Advent, marks the beginning of the Christian Church year. This day points not merely to Bethlehem – but ultimately to Jerusalem. This day points not merely to a manger – but ultimately to a cross. This day points not merely to a stable filled with a newborn baby and His mother and her husband and sheep and donkeys and shepherds – but ultimately and triumphantly to an empty tomb. The whole season of Advent focuses on the Lord’s coming, but this day testifies to the truth that Jesus came to save sinners by offering His life as a sacrifice for our sins.
Today – on this Advent morning – our King comes to us. He comes not as a helpless baby born in a stable and not as a man riding on a borrowed donkey. Our King comes to us with His Word, the holy and perfect Word of God that proclaims how and why God the Father sent God the Son to suffer and die for our sins. Our King comes to us with His own true body and blood that we receive in, with and under the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. He comes to claim you as his very own – His redeemed and precious child. He comes to take away your shame and restore to you the joy of His salvation. He comes to us – and we greet His coming in faith, trusting His loving words of pardon and peace.
Our Gospel lesson tells us that as Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, great crowds of people “began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’” May those be our words, too – not just in this first Sunday in Advent, but on every day of our lives. “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Forever and ever. Amen.
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