Sermon Advent 1B
Mark 11:1-10
Rev. Jeff Springer
What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for your fortunes to change? Are you waiting for your health to improve? Are you waiting for employment? Are you waiting for a time when you can own your own home? Are you waiting for Christmas to get here? Are you waiting for a $199 flat screen TV?
Whatever you are waiting for we as a sinful people have difficulty waiting, especially where the ability to self gratify is almost instantaneous. It appears at least what we see from the news that we lack the capacity for self control. Black Friday is now being renamed black and blue Friday as shoppers this week broke out in fights after spending most of the week with little sleep in front of their favorite big box store. One shopper appears to have used pepper spray to ward off other shoppers as she went for the coveted Xbox 360. To her credit, I heard she turned herself in. However, I very much doubt whether the money she saved on her purchase will cover the attorney fees and damages she will have to pay out.
It is funny in a pathetic way how are flesh is so ravenous in coveting those things that are temporal. We expend so much effort and time on the pursuit of happiness, our happiness and we neglect the things that bring joy.
I am not sure I have ever seen people camped out overnight waiting for the church to open on Sunday. Yes, there have been those camped out in front but they leave before most members arrive. They are not interested in what is being offered inside instead they are only interested in what is in my pocket.
It is amazing to me how many people are willing to put up with squalor and poor living conditions to occupy a park in from of city hall. The Occupy Wall Street movement is also about coveting. These are people who wish through activism to acquire the American Dream. They want it at the expense of others. Since they are unable to control themselves the law which originally gave them a long leash is now shortening it in a dramatic way.
Personally, I would like to start a movement called “Occupy Church” where we pray for our leaders, our country, our enemies and hear from God’s wisdom and receive from him His eternal gifts. We call it Divine Service.
What is it that you are waiting for? Are you waiting in anticipation of receiving Christ in Divine Service? For those that are you will not be disappointed. For our Lord is the bringer of healing, forgiveness and joy. He is the healer of both are physical and emotional wounds. He is the forgiver of our covetousness, our malice toward one another. He replaces our happiness with joy.
God could have returned as a conquering king, destroying all that sin. This would have been catastrophic because we are all sinners. We are no better than the women who pepper sprayed twenty two people for a toy. Perhaps some of us are worse. Sin is the great equalizer and the consequence before God is the same, death.
Rather, the Savior we wait for condescends to humanity and He redeems humanity by humbling himself to humanities curse that is death.
St. Augustine writes, “The master of humility is Christ who humbled himself and became obedient even to death, even the death of the cross. Thus he does not lose his divinity when he teaches us humility…. What great thing was it to the King of the Ages to become the king of humanity? For Christ was not the king of Israel so that he might exact a tax or equip an army with weaponry and visibly vanquish an enemy, He was the king of Israel in that he rules minds, in that he gives counsel for eternity, in that he leads into the kingdom of heaven for those who believe, hope, and love. It is a condescension, not an advancement for one who is the Son of God, equal to the Father, the Word through whom all things were made, to become the king of Israel. It is an indication of pity, not an increase in power. [1]”
Our God transcendent of all time breaks into time and clothes himself with our flesh. He is the perfect human yet He is also perfectly God. Nothing of His divinity is lost in taking on flesh. This condescension is for the Father’s joy and it is for our joy.
It is so easy to take for granted this marvelous gift in Jesus Christ. But you must imagine the time of the Old Testament. They were still waiting on a savior. Christ had not been raised from the dead. Yes there were resurrections such as those performed by Elijah and Elisha but these two prophets as great as they were did not raise themselves from the dead. It is only righteous Jesus who obeyed death on the cross to pay the ransom for our sin that raised Himself to die no more.
This was the salvation the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs were looking for freedom from sin, sin that could not be taken away by mere substitutionary animal sacrifice. We hear this in the songs of Mary, Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. They were waiting on a Savior from their sin.
When Jesus came down from the east from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem riding on a foal of a donkey, I am quite sure the people were surprised. Hosanna is not so much a statement as it is an emotional response, like an interjection. Such as Hey! Wow! Awesome! In this case it is more of a pleading. Lord save us!
These people who were cutting down branches and putting their coats down to level out and straighten the path were waiting for a Savior and in Jesus they found one. He had the right pedigree “Son of David” and He was fulfilling all the messianic prophesies down to the Old Testament Zechariah’s prophecy of His riding into Jerusalem.
He was a surprise because he came so humbly and meekly. Jesus did not come in glory as our Emmanuel but he came as a fragile human being able to suffer and die. He came as a sacrifice for us. He is the lamb caught in the thicket who would be sacrificed in our place. That is who the people were waiting for and that is who the church waits for today.
During this time Advent we will reflect on the different ways the church waits. The mid-week evening prayer service will meditate on the Old Testament readings and with the church of old we will learn to wait with prayer, with comfort, with joy and with worship.
The Savior you wait for comes to you in this humble building. He comes to you under the humble and common forms of bread and wine. It does not look like much but Christ is their present on the altar the slain lamb we eat for our Passover. Not to deliver us from an Egyptian King, a Roman Caesar, or the .1 percent but from our own covetous sin.
This is the Savior we wait for, God with us, Emmanuel. And we join in the chorus of those placing boughs and branches in His path, greeting our King singing “Hosanna, in the Highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest.” Amen
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