1 Rev. Charles W. Webb Bethlehem Lutheran Church Glen Arbor, MI Palm Sunday March 29, 2015 The text for today is the Gospel which you have just hears, especially these words (John 12:12-19) Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel! Dear Friends in Christ: Greetings from our triumphant King of kings, Jesus Christ. Amen! Today is Palm Sunday. Let me tell you something about palms. The palm branch is a sign of victory, triumph, peace and eternal life. The palm was sacred in Mesopotamian religions, and in ancient Egypt represented immortality. In Judaism, a closed frond of the date palm is part of the festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles during which the Israelites celebrate their sojourn in the fragile booths during their 40 years of exodus as described in Leviticus: "On the first day you shall take the product of hadar trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook" (Lev. 23:40), and "You shall live in booths seven days; all citizens in Israel shall live in booths, in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt" (Lev. 23:42-43). As the Israelites were delivered from Pharaoh, Christ now delivers all men from sin by his march toward Calvary. Even as He enters Jerusalem, His triumph is assured! Even the Pharissees who had opposed him all his life had to admit and said to one another, You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. Little did they suspect they would every defeat him and even when they did, his resurrection proved they never would or could. Hosanna! Historically, a palm branch was awarded to victorious athletes in ancient Greece.
Since a victory signals an end to a conflict or competition, the palm developed into a symbol of peace in the Christian church. It is fitting, since Christ brings us eternal peace from our trials and eternal salvation through his work that they were strewn before him. Under the Christian emperor Constantine, the palm branch also came to symbolize triumph over death. That s what the resurrection was for after all! Early Christians used the palm branch to symbolize the victory of the faithful over enemies of the soul. In western Christian art, martyrs were often shown holding a palm frond representing the victory of spirit over flesh, and it was widely believed that a picture of a palm on a tomb meant that a martyr was buried there. Tradition even says that Mary gave birth to Jesus under a date palm, but I doubt that. 2 Palms also represented heaven in early Christian art which often depicts Jesus in heaven among palms and even the secular world uses the palm as a symbol of a tropical island paradise. Imagine that! So, today is Palm Sunday. Our Lord rides majestically and prophetically into Jerusalem on the back of a simple donkey. Despite the victorious atmosphere, Christ s entry doesn t seem that kingly. But, then, Christ is always a person of contrasts. A king on a donkey and a king dying on a torture cross just don t seem to fit the idea of triumph and regal splendor. Yet there must have been hundreds waving palms fronds and strewing them carpet-wise in the path of the small advancing cortege of Christ and his disciples. Besides all the palm branches on the ground and those being waved in the air, there was the shout and cry of the people as Jesus rode by. It was like a parade for a conquering hero. The crowd kept
shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! (Matthew 21:9) The words they were shouting come from Psalm 118: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us...oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! Those words were heard at the temple every year at the Festival of Tabernacles (or Booths) that we mentioned above. It was THE theme song for the arrival of the Messiah. Hosanna was always part of the Messiah s slogan song. In fact, on the last day of the Festival of Booths this song Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! was sung 7 times. And that 3 last day of the festival was called The Great Hosanna. Eventually even the palm branches themselves were called hosannas. So when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem on that famous Palm Sunday, and the crowd started singing Hosanna to the Son of David! there was no doubt in the minds of the people what they were thinking: Here comes the long-awaited Messiah! Here comes our King! Originally the word hosanna was a cry for help. In Hebrew it means, [Lord,] help us or save us! It was only later, because of its use at the Festival of Booths that the word hosanna simply became a shout of triumph and praise! But let s look again at this word hosanna. Today is not only Palm Sunday. The newer name for this day is The Sunday of the Passion. It is a time when we reflect on the fact that Jesus parade on this Sunday was not headed toward the
winner s circle, or any type of awards ceremony. The pomp and circumstance were soon over. Only tears and suffering followed the King. Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, a week that ended in pain and agony for this man on the donkey. The parade of this Sunday led ultimately to the cross and began the passion of our Lord. What a contrast a week makes. From ecstasy to agony to provide eternal ecstasy for us! Since the time of King David, some 900 years previous, Jerusalem was the hometown of the kings of Israel. During Jesus time there was no real king. Caesar of Rome had conquered Palestine, and he allowed Herod to wear the title of king while his prefect, Pontius Pilate, had control over all substantial matters of state. So here comes Jesus into Jerusalem, riding through the streets as if he were king David coming home 4 after a great victorious battle. He is riding a little unregal donkey, however. And in the city all Jesus' enemies have gathered to have at him one last time. It doesn t bode well. What are we to make of this scene? We might ask if he's really a king like David, why doesn't he show a little more of his royalty? Where s the glamour and glitz of a real king? I mean, really, here s Jesus and if you think about it he is not much of a star. He rides in on a donkey, trailed by the yelling mob of ragtag children and not always believing disciples. Yes, I said, not always believing because listen to the text; His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. Can this be the king of the world?
The shouts seem confusing in a way. Even his own didn t recognize his mission! The emphasis in the Bible is not so much on how Jesus comes into Jerusalem for the last time, but what he's coming to do. There on its streets he will retrace his steps on Friday, not carried by a donkey, but carrying part of the cross across his shoulders to his final torture-death the death of a common criminal. In Jerusalem in just a few days, Jesus will offer up to God his Heavenly Father the sacrifice of his own life as full compensation to the sins of the whole world. No one seems to grasp that yet. The people themselves predicted this when they said, "Hosanna!" which means, "save us now." Little did many of them know that he indeed was doing just that. Have you ever considered how strange it is that 5 the city would welcome Jesus on Sunday with the words, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," and just five days later condemn him with the words, "Crucify him"? The story proceeds like a Greek drama from triumph to tragedy. Ah, but there s a twist. Tragedy converts to triumph in the resurrection. Christ won after all! No matter how fickle the Jews were, I think that you and I are just as fickle as those Jerusalemites 2000 years ago. We have the same inherited DNA from Adam and hence, the same symptoms. We are sinners led by our inners selves. After all, we are the ones who pray the words, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," and then we go off to do things our way. The result is that so often our will gets done and not His. We are the ones who look at the cross up here week after week, praying to the one who died there for us,
and do not give ourselves to those around us in need as He did. We praise God for forgiving us a lifetime of sin, again and again and again, but it s a hard sell for us to undo for others what God has undone for us. Human nature often trumps our prayer. We mouth, but fail to perform our own prayer. We are often just as fickle as Jerusalem was, are we not? That s why we need this simple palm king. Oh, yes! It s a world that really needs him. YOU NEED HIM. EVERYONE NEEDS HIM. Looks at the news! The prophet Zechariah prophesied about Christ s entry: 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 (Zechariah 9:9 ESV). Let s reflect on it again. This is our Savior? Why would God ride on a donkey? He would do it as a man for our salvation. The cross would turn the 6 Righteous one into the Unrighteous One, dying in our place. The holy must become unholy to save us from our sins. The glory of God is in Christ s humility and servitude. He humbled himself to take our filthy sinfulness and suffer the consequences of the eternal wrath of God as his own punishment. But unbelievers and the world in which we live look for pomp and circumstance, not donkey riders. They look for limousines and well-armed motorcades and confetti and hoopla. That s the equivalent of kingly today. The world wrongly assumes that God in His infinite majesty and power would make a glorious entrance more befitting the Creator of the universe. He should come in in regal robes and His role should escalate upwards from there. A cross? That s hardly royal and has no promise on the world scene, or so sinful man reasons. Only criminals die on crosses.
The unbeliever, though, sees with his eyes and not through faith. The sinner looks and lusts for the excitement and honor found in the power of an earthly king. Sinners want to win and to have money and power. Sinners seek a popular Jesus that attracts more and more people. Look at the prosperity gospel of today. There is no sin and grace. It s not stylish to talk about sin. Sinners want a god that gives goodies now. They are not interested in the then of eternity, but the now of prosperity. But alas, this thinking is an entry not into Christ s glory, but rather an entrance into the pits of hell. It is a road to the tomb with no chance of a resurrection. The material Christ of so much of today s Christianity loses the purpose of Christ s death. We either die in our sin or we are resurrected with Christ through faith in his redeeming work. 7 Yes, even we believers, who confess the suffering and death of our Lord for our sins, we, too, yearn for a Jesus of glory whom the world would recognize. We lust for a Jesus who would be popular and a moneymaker so our congregation s budget or our own budget will balance at the end of the year. We sinfully seek a kingdom builder of wealth and power and numbers so that we might have bigger churches for the sake of recognition and power. However, Jesus, the Lowly One, calls us to simple lowliness and repentance. He rides on a donkey toward the cross! What a picture! You and I rejoice in the glory of the lowly and humble. We rejoice in the poor, the sick, and the needy. We rejoice, not empowered by riches and things, but by simple faith. And through that we see the glory of this humble Christ as He rides forth in majesty to the cross to suffer and die.
We poor sinners need the glory of the palm king who who suffered and died in our place. We need the glory of the cross. That is the irony of the Gospel. It is a scandal to sinful thinkers. They stumble all over the place. They see only foolishness. That is the hidden truth that eyes cannot see, but only faith can believe and confess. We need this humble donkey-rider! This is the beginning of Holy Week. Again we consider and review in detail the irony to the world of the sufferings of Christ. So behold the grief of your Lord as he goes to the cross. To the world it appears that he will lose. It appears that triumph has been swallowed up by tragedy. Death is imminent and to the world it is oh so permanent. The Pharisees and Romans thought it was over. So much for this rabblerouser. Ah, but my friends, we see the eternal victory 8 in it, don t we? When we meditate on the sufferings of the Lord, we feel the love of God and the unbounded patience he has with us. He cups us in his protective hands. He opens his arms to embrace us. At the same time, He opens his hands to give us gifts. He shows us His wounds that reflect the depth of our sin, opening his heart of glowing love and forgiveness for each of us. He is lifted up from the earth so that he can draw us all to himself. His wounds are for our transgressions, yet they ooze with His grief over our sin and with His gleaming with love. His death screams redemption for each of us and out of his veins flows the blood of our redemption. The King will die that we may never die. His blood will turn us white as snow before our God in heaven.
Like crushed grapes, the body of Jesus, squeezed by the weight of God's wrath on the severity of our sins, pours out on all sides its precious life blood. Glory be to Jesus who in bitter pains poured for me the life blood from His sacred veins. The mission of our Palm Sunday Lord is to conquer, not a race or a nation or a people, but death and the devil and our inherited spiritual dementia. It s a win-win situation: The palm king has won and so we win the crown as undeserving co-winners. If we do not know what sin is and how greatly we are overcome with it, unable to help ourselves, we will not be able to understand why Jesus went through all this. But if we listen to the Law of God, and begin to see how short we fall from the kingdom of God, we can then praise and worship Jesus for pouring out his blood for us. Listen to the Law: Thou shalt But I 9 cannot. Then hear the humble king on the donkey saying, I have done it. You are God s redeemed. I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. Ah, my fellow sojourners. It is no coincidence that at the celebration of every Lord's Supper we recite the words of Palm Sunday, singing, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest." Save us, dear Lord! And out of the underserved mercy of God, Christ pours out that same blood he shed in Jerusalem into the cup of simple wine to bring to us the forgiveness of sins. It is a marvel beyond belief. Blessed is he! Blessed is He! AMEN. We have been given the palm branch of victory, triumph, peace and eternal life. Thus we can heartily say with today s psalm: Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! AMEN.
John 12:12-19 (ESV) 12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel! 14 And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt! 16 His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. 17 The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. 18 The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign. 19 So the Pharisees said to one another, You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. 10