Palm Sunday/Sunday of Passion
Zech
9:9-12
4/9/17
Palm Sunday is a day that many of us
enjoy. It is fun to begin church outside
and process in holding palm fronds while we sing “All Glory, Laud, and
Honor.” And of course at Good Shepherd,
we don’t cheat you. We don’t give you
one of those little crosses made from dried out palms. Instead we give you a
nice big green palm frond. I can remember looking forward to this Sunday as a
boy and over the years I have had a number of people tell me that it is one of
their favorite days in the church year.
However, I don’t think the people to
whom Zechariah directed his prophecy would have been impressed with the first
Palm Sunday. I think they would have
been disappointed. The prophet Zechariah
worked around 520 B.C. In 587 B.C. the
Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and taken the people
of Judah into exile. God’s people lived
in exile in Babylonia until the victorious Persians arrived and in 538 B.C. and
their King Cyrus issued a decree that the Judahites could return home and
rebuild the temple.
In the second year of their return,
the people laid the foundation for a new temple. The older people who remembered Solomon’s
temple that had been destroyed wept because this new temple could not compare
with the one they had lost. The
foundation was laid, but the rebuilding project lingered on for some twenty
years. Outside interference from enemies
did slow work. But part of the problem
was that the people were just not as dedicated to the project as they needed to
be.
Zechariah and his contemporary,
Haggai, were sent by God to help get the people going. I had a professor in college who called them
the “temple finishing prophets.” It’s
not hard to understand why the people were discouraged. They had returned from exile to a devastated
city that had no walls. Judah was no
longer a nation, but instead a small province in the massive Persian empire.
Zechariah encouraged the people with
the news that Yahweh was going to act.
Just before our text he had said that God was going to judge the
nations. And then in our text he says, “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. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war
horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak
peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to
the ends of the earth.”
It is clear
that Yahweh is talking about the Messiah – the descendant of King David. The promised one is going to come and the
results are going to be glorious. God will grant peace – the end of war – that
will encompass all nations. And Yahweh’s
Messiah will rule over all. This was a vision of the future that gave the
people hope. And the people went on to
finish the temple in 516 B.C.
A little
over five centuries later, the events that we heard about this morning outside
the church took place. Jesus entered
Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Both
Matthew and John tell us that this happened in fulfillment of Zechariah’s
words. But I don’t think the people of
Zechariah’s day would have been satisfied.
Yes, Jesus the Christ – the Messiah – rode into Jerusalem on a
donkey. But war had not ended and peace
had not come. God’s people were not free.
On the contrary, the Roman war machine had brought more troops into
Jerusalem because it was the time of the Passover. They – the Gentiles – were
in charge and in the next two hundred years that would extend their empire ever
farther through incessant military campaigns.
And what is
more you just heard in the Passion according to St. Matthew how this
“triumphant” visit to Jerusalem turned out.
Jesus enters Jerusalem on Sunday.
By Friday afternoon he is hanging on a cross after being mocked and
tortured.
I don’t
think the sixth century B.C. people of Jerusalem would have been satisfied with
how God had kept his word. And the truth
is that often we aren’t either. God says
again and again in his Word that he loves and cares for you. And yet you or family member or friend is
diagnosed with cancer. And yet you or a
loved one struggles with anxiety and depression. And yet a child dies from a disease or in a
terrible accident. And yet, and yet, and yet ….
We see
these things and it causes us to doubt God.
It causes us to question God. It
causes us to accuse God of being false.
If God really were all loving and all powerful then none of these things
would happen.
On Palm
Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as the Messiah.
That’s what the donkey is all about. Our Lord intentionally chose this
animal because it was associated with the Davidic king. Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem announces that
he is the Christ.
But in the
midst of Zechariah’s text that announces peace and the rule of the Messiah, it
describes him as “humble and mounted on a donkey.” Zechariah’s words themselves contain he
paradoxical statement that the Messiah comes as one who is humble. And while the donkey
was associated with the kings descended from David, it is also not a war horse – it’s not a chariot like
a victorious Roman general might ride in a triumphant parade.
Jesus comes
as the king whose purpose it is to be enthroned
on the cross. After all, he hangs on the cross with the sign posted over
his head that says, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Jesus comes as the Messiah who job it is to
die for you. That has been his mission since he was baptized in the Jordan River. He who had no sin, submitted to a baptism of
repentance so that he could step into your shoes – so that he could take your
place.
Jesus had
said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but
to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He took your sins and received God’s judgment
against them as he died on the cross. As St. Paul says in our epistle lesson
this morning, “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.”
And if that were it, then the sixth
century B.C. people of Jerusalem would be right to complain about Zechariah’s
word. If that were it, you would have
reason to doubt God. But it’s not. We walk this week with our Lord through Holy
Week. But Holy Week brings us to the
Feast of the Resurrection. It brings us
again to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The resurrection of Jesus changes
everything. The resurrection shows us
that Good Friday was God at work. It was God carrying out his most powerful act
of salvation for you. It looked like
weakness and failure, but it was more than that. In his humility Jesus was winning the victory
over sin for you.
And because you have seen God work in this way, you know that not only
are you forgiven, but also that you can trust in God in the midst of all the
things you don’t understand. You can always look in faith at Jesus and know
that God’s love for you is certain and sure no matter what is happening. You have seen God work your salvation in an
unexpected way, and so you can trust he is still at work no matter how things
appear.
Yet Easter is not the end of the
story. Jesus’ exaltation will continue
forty days later as we celebrate his ascension into heaven – you’re planning on
being here, right? Our Lord has been
enthroned at the right hand of the Father. And he has promised that he will return in glory.
Jesus entered Jerusalem as the
humble Messiah mounted on donkey. But the risen and ascended Lord has promised
that he will come again. He will do so in power and glory and
might. He will come in a way so that
every knee will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God
the Father, no matter what they said about Jesus before his return.
When he does so, he will bring all
of the things that Zechariah describes. He
will cut off
the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem. He will cut off the battle bow and the
Tomahawk missle. He will speak peace to the nations and as the risen Lord his
rule will be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth in a
world he renews as the new creation.
So today we
continue to walk by faith as we begin Holy Week. We believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection
for and so we have the assurance of forgiveness. We trust in God’s love no matter what is
happening. We draw near to receive the
body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and for strengthening in
faith. We sing the words now, that we
will speak when our hope is fulfilled: Blessed is he who comes in the name of
the Lord.
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