Just six days. That’s all it took for the
crowd’s cries of “Hosanna in the highest” to turn into murderous
shouts of “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” A mere six days, from the
time our Lord rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey,
acclaimed by the multitudes, to the time when a fickle mob was
demanding His blood.
The winds of popularity can shift and change
at the drop of a hat. And as those who have been redeemed by the
shed blood of the sinless Son of God, we thank God that, in
Jesus’ case, those winds did change. For He had to be offered up
on the Cross for our transgressions. He had to be tortured and
mocked and executed for our sins. It was His Father’s will that
Jesus suffer like this, for this was the only way we sinners
could be bought back from sin, death and hell, and enjoy a new
status as God’s beloved children for Jesus’ sake.
Many times I’ve heard Christians say they wish
they’d been in Jerusalem during the events of that first Holy
Week. If they’d been there (so they say), they would have
greeted our Lord’s entry into the city with sincere adoration.
If they’d been standing in Pilate’s court on that first fateful
Good Friday (so they say), they would never have joined in with
the mob of those who cried out for Jesus’ blood.
But we can’t be sure how we personally would
have responded had we been living in Jerusalem during those
eventful times. Perhaps we would have been occupied with
business, with buying and selling and making a living, and would
have missed entirely Jesus’ entry into the city. Perhaps we
would have been standing at the fringes of the crowd, and
would’ve gotten caught up in the carnival excitement with which
Jesus was greeted, adding our voices to the cries of “Hosanna!
Hosanna!” but then gone home and forgotten all about it. Perhaps
we would have spit contemptuously when Jesus rode past on his
donkey, because we didn’t like what He had to say about
repenting of our sin, and self-denial, and clinging to Him as
the only One who rescues us from God’s wrath.
And how can we be sure that we wouldn’t have
stood in the thick of the crowd on that first Good Friday,
shouting “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” with all the others? After
all, Judas Iscariot followed Jesus for nearly three years, but
wound up selling Him out for thirty pieces of silver. Simon
Peter swore that he was ready to die with Jesus, but ended up
denying that he even knew Him -- not just once, but three times.
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, Jesus
says. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And your
weakest link, and my weakest link, is that crippling sinful
nature that Adam passed down to each of us as his fatal legacy.
Because of that sinful nature we sometimes
find ourselves doing what the epistle of James says: With our
tongue we alternately bless our Lord and Father, and with the
same tongue we curse – speak ill of – other people made in the
image of God. From the same mouth come cursing and blessing.
Surely there were some in Jerusalem who blessed Jesus on
Palm Sunday but on Good Friday were cursing Him and screaming
for His blood.
Our Lord put it like this: How can you,
being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaks. And when God’s holy Law shines
its searing spotlight upon our hypocrisies, we have to admit
that Jesus described us to a “T”. That’s the way we are. And so
we praise our Lord in the Divine Service, extolling His
goodness, grace and mercy, singing our love for Him, and then on
the way home we say evil, hurtful things about someone for whom
our Savior died. We bless the Lord and curse those who’ve been
redeemed to wear His holy image.
If that’s the way we are (and the Bible says
that’s precisely the way we are), the wise thing to do is to put
no confidence at all in our flesh. We’re like a flimsy wooden
footbridge that would be crushed into matchsticks if a Sherman
tank rolled across it. To trust in yourself, to trust in the
strength of your own resolve, or the purity of your own heart,
is a certain recipe for disaster. Let the one who thinks
he stands take heed lest he fall, the Scripture says.
No, our confidence must rest elsewhere. It must rest at last on
the One whom Jerusalem greeted with shouts of “Hosanna in the
highest!” on Sunday but with demands for His crucifixion six
days later on Friday.
St. Luke tells us that shortly after our
Lord’s Transfiguration, Jesus steadfastly set His face toward
Jerusalem, because the time had come for Him to be taken up.
God’s appointed time for the sacrifice of His Son was drawing
near.
The time when the sinless Son of God would be
exposed to the hatred and mockery of sinful men was drawing
near. The time when His holy flesh would be torn and pierced by
thorns and whip and nails was drawing near. The time when He
would bear the weight of the sins of the whole world, and suffer
under His Father’s wrath against human evil, was drawing near.
The sin of hypocrisy – Jesus would carry it all away in His own
holy flesh. The sin of indifference to the things of God – Jesus
would carry it away in His own holy flesh. The sin of
self-righteousness – Jesus would carry it all away in His own
holy flesh. And He would do it so that in our Baptism we could
be clothed in an alien righteousness -- the perfect
righteousness of Jesus Christ who became sin for us so that we
could become the very righteousness of God.
Jesus knew what lay ahead of Him long before
He entered Jerusalem. The thorns, the whip, the Cross and nails
and spear and wrath had been appointed for Him from all
eternity. That’s why God became Man in Jesus Christ – so He
could be the sacrifice for your sin, the sacrifice that removes
your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the
west. To suffer and die as the atoning sacrifice for your sins
is why the Son of God came in the flesh, conceived by the Holy
Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Our Lord did not flinch at
what lay ahead of Him. He set His face steadfastly toward
Jerusalem. And He went there to die for you and me and for the
sins of the whole world.
There’s an English folk song called “Poor Old
Man” that has these lines in it: They say the Son of Man must
die/and we pray so/and we hope so. Maybe that strikes you as
odd, but it really shouldn’t. Because the only way we sinners
can be forgiven and saved is through faith in Jesus the Son of
Man, who died on the Cross to make our forgiveness and salvation
a reality. He took all your guilt so you can share in His
innocence. He took all your shame so you could receive the high
honor of being named a child of God.
The miracle of justification is this: Your
sins are on Jesus, not on you, so you are forgiven. Your
salvation has been accomplished by the Son of God who after
suffering on the Cross closed the transaction with these words:
It is finished! Why do you think we call the
Friday of Jesus’ death “Good Friday”? What was bad for Him as He
suffered under God’s wrath over sin is a fountain of eternal
blessing for you and me. The forgiveness Jesus won on the Cross
makes that bleak, awful day infinitely good for us sinners.
They say the Son of Man must die? We certainly hope
so. We thank God that it was so.
“Hosanna,” the crowds cried out the day that
our Lord entered Jerusalem. Do you know what the word “hosanna”
means? It’s an acclamation of praise to God that literally
means, “Save us now.” The crowd that greeted Jesus with shouts
of “hosanna” spoke more wisely than they knew. They may have
been looking for some kind of political/military genius to
deliver them from the yoke of Roman oppression. What they got,
however, was the sacrificial Lamb of God who would deliver them
from the tyrannous yoke that sin, death and the devil forced
them to wear. “Save us now!” they cried out. And that’s
precisely what Jesus rode into the city to do – save them, and
us, and all people by going to the Cross to be the once and
final sacrifice for our sin.
Today, as we who’ve been instructed in the
mysteries of the holy Christian Faith prepare to receive the
Sacrament of our Savior’s Body and Blood, we cry out in the
words of the Jerusalem crowd: Hosanna in the highest! Blessed
is He who comes in the Name of the Lord! For in the bread
and wine Jesus does come to us with His true Body and Blood to
forgive our sins, to strengthen us in our weakness, to build us
up in the confession of His saving Name, and to increase our
faith in Him as the one Mediator between God and man. And we
need that Mediator, don’t we? So we cry out to Him as we prepare
to eat His Body and drink His Blood:
Hosanna! Save us, Lord Jesus!
And for those here today who haven’t been
instructed, confirmed in the Lutheran Church, and don’t hold
membership in a congregation of the Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod, I strongly encourage you to speak with me sometime about
how you can be admitted to the Sacrament at Mt. Olive. The
reason is simple. You like me are a sinner. You like me have
need of the overwhelmingly precious gift that Jesus gives in the
Sacrament of the Altar and in the other Means of Grace. Each of
us needs a regular diet of the mercy and grace of God that come
to us in the Gospel. And to eat and drink our Lord’s Body and
Blood in humble penitence and faith is the purest Gospel diet of
all.
So save us, crucified Lord! Save us dearest
Jesus! Though our loyalties are frequently divided, though we at
times praise you with our lips while our hearts are far from
you, though we all-too-easily forget You because we’re
preoccupied with lesser things, we poor sinners beseech You to
save us. In Your Word and Sacrament make known Your salvation to
us that we may abide in your grace forever. Save us, gracious
Lord.
In Nomine Patris. . .
