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“Behold, your King comes to you!…Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
᛭ INI ᛭
Your Lord and Savior IHS Christ, King of kings, Lord of lords, the Prince of Life, the eternal Son of God in human flesh, rides into Jerusalem. He doesn’t ride in as the conquering hero. He’s not beginning His earthly reign. “His is no earthly kingdom; it comes from heav’n above.” He’s not some warrior bent on overthrowing earthly authorities. He’s not some influencer who’s come to capture culture. It’s not even a victory parade.
He doesn’t come to make Himself King. He already is King! He doesn’t come to set up rule over the nations. He’s ruled all nations since there ever was a nation! He’s ruler and creator of the universe, eternal co-regent with His Father, with whom He is eternally One. He’s not here to change the prevailing winds of culture, He doesn’t come to follow the spirit of the times. He’s got the Holy Spirit without measure, for He and His Father are eternally One with the Spirit, and Christ dispenses the Spirit to whomever His Father desires.
Christ doesn’t come to conquer. He comes as the one, true, and rightful King. He rides into Jerusalem for one reason.
CHRIST COMES TO REDEEM.
(I. Christ redeems His Church.)
Christ redeems Jerusalem. He doesn’t come to capture that city back from the Romans. He set up the Roman government to further the proclamation of His saving Gospel around the empire and beyond! No, when He redeems Jerusalem that means He’s riding in on that donkey to redeem His Church, His bride. Christ couldn’t care less about the city which is called Jerusalem. As we know from inspired St. Paul, when he talked about the two covenants, using an allegory of Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham’s sons. This is what we heard a couple weeks ago on the Fourth Sunday in Lent from Galatians 4: “For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar—for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all.”
So, Christ rides into physical Jerusalem. It’s still there. You can go visit and see all sorts of things—rubble from when Christ worked on earth. But when Christ rides into physical Jerusalem, He’s not showing up to redeem the city from Roman oppression. He’s not showing up to show that Jerusalem is some sort of place or country that needs to be defended here on earth. Christ comes to redeem spiritual Jerusalem, that is, the Church. So, for example when we’re singing the Psalms and we’re asking God to help Israel or Jerusalem, because of Christ, we’re praying about the Church. Christ comes to redeem Her, His Bride. He came to give His flesh for her, His blood for hers, His life for hers.
Christ is “the Lamb of God that taketh away the Sin of the World.” He is the payment for the sins of the whole world. (1-Jn 2) But He also came to save His people, His Israel, His Jerusalem, His bride, His Church, from her sins. Inspired St. Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 5: “Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.” This is why Christ rides into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. It’s a fast track to Calvary, Cross, and death. CHRIST COMES TO REDEEM, to redeem His Church.
(II. Christ redeems you.)
Christ doesn’t just come for the Church, but also for her children. As the LORD prophesied through Isaiah: “Say to the daughter of Zion.” As St. Paul says in Ephesians 5: “We are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.” “The Church is…the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd [John 10:11–16].” (SA-III-XII 2) As the Small Catechism teaches households to confess everyday in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe…in the holy Christian Church.”
Christ redeems each child of His bride, the Church. He ransoms every member of His body, the Church. He purchases and wins every sheep of His holy flock. “He died for [you] and shed His blood on the cross for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” (Christian-Question) This is what it means for Him to be your king. He comes to redeem you. He’s coronated on Calvary. There He was announced as “IHS of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” This proves His Kingdom is not of this world. “His rule is peace and freedom and justice, truth, and love.” His rule is redemption. His rule is the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won for you on Calvary.
And you need Him to be this sort of King, the kindly, forgiving sort. For even as His subjects, we’re often engaged in ulterior motives. Our sinful flesh is spy and saboteur for Satan. As it was for the crowds that Palm Sunday and Good Friday. “Sometimes they strew His way And His sweet praises sin; Resounding all the day Hosannas to their King. Then “Crucify!” Is all their breath, And for His death They thirst and cry.” (LSB 430) The danger for any of us is that our flesh will draw us away in such a way that we spurn the Holy Spirit, that we despise and reject Christ in such away, that we despise His Word and Sacraments in such a way, that we put ourselves outside the Kingdom of His Grace.
Hebrews warns about this: “It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame.” (Heb 6) “Delay not, delay not! The Spirit of Grace, Long grieved and resisted, may take His sad flight And leave thee in darkness to finish thy race, To sink in the gloom of eternity’s night.” (TLH 278)
The flesh’s rebellion against Christ’s redemption works itself out in many different ways. One clearly mirrors the flow of Holy Week. People praise Christ on Sunday, but by Friday, and through the rest of the week, say “Away with Him!” and live however they want. They want nothing to do with His Word in their life. Nothing to do with “IHS Christ” except to say His name when they stub their toe or something. They believe that all manner of sin can exist with true Christians, or that true Christians don’t actually need the Bible or Sermons or Absolution or Communion. They believe that Christ shepherds the sheep how they want instead of Christ shepherding them according to His Holy Word.
Such are not His sheep. Such are not His people. To such that live their lives that way apart from Christ, separated themselves from Him and using His Word, Christ will say on the Last Day when He comes again in glory to judge both the living and the dead, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.” And they will get forever the way they lived their entire life without Him.
But this is not why Christ came. This is the judgement rendered, but this is His alien work. He will drive out, cut off from His people, those who aren’t His. Those who are His are His by true and living faith in Him. But Christ came to redeem. To redeem you, to redeem all of you, your whole person, body and soul, heart and mind, strength and spirit. He comes that you would be his, and to shift metaphors a bit. He comes that you would no longer be a “wild donkey” driven by passion and lust (Jer 2), but that we would His “beast of burden.” (Ps 73)
He comes to ride us out into the world. “The Lord has need of you,” just as He did that donkey in Matthew 21. He rides out redeeming every aspect of your life for Him. That your days would be ordered by His Holy Word, that you’d bray of Him whenever you have the opportunity—to speak of CHRIST to your neighbor, to draw and bring to Him. He wants to ride us into the heavenly Jerusalem. He waters us along the way. He gives us true fodder, too. Not only of His Word, which sustains our minds and hearts. His own body and blood. The body and blood of the Lamb of God, that we’d be true members of His body, the Church, that we’d be true lambs, made so by the Lamb.
(Conclusion.)
CHRIST COMES TO REDEEM.
He redeems His Church, His Jerusalem, His bride. He dies for her, sheds His blood for her, washes her with the water and the word, nourishes and cherishes her with His body and blood.
What He does for her, He does for you who believe in Him. He redeems you. He dies for you, shed His blood for you, washes you with the water and word, nourish and cherishes you with His body and blood, so that you would truly be a member of His body by faith. “He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” (2-Cor 5)
This is what Palm Sunday—every Sunday (every day!)—is all about:
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