O Lord, How Shall We Meet You?

Advent 1, 2008, Otto, Mo. Mark 11:1-11

Somewhere in my sermon files I have an illustration I used some years ago. Two women shoppers stood on the sidewalk viewing a nativity scene that a church placed in the front window of a department store. One woman, shaking her head, said to other, “Isn’t it just like the church, horning in on Christmas too?” Today, we too find ourselves caught in the headlong rush toward Christmas, so anxious that it come that we can hardly find time to let the church “horn in” on the celebration. “Horn in” the church does with the season of Advent. We need Advent as something of a speed bump to slow us down so that we do not neglect the question, raised in our opening hymn. “O Lord, how shall I meet you, how welcome you aright?” The hymn writer, Paul Gerhardt, continues, “Your people long to greet you” you are “my hope, my heart’s delight.” Nevertheless, Gerhardt recognizes how we get sidetracked and our attention to Christ’s coming is diverted. He leads us in prayer, “Oh, kindle, Lord most holy, your lamp within my breast to do in spirit lowly all that may please you best.” This morning we consider how to meet Jesus who interrupts our celebrations by his incarnation in which he initiates our salvation.

To welcome Jesus aright, recognize the interruption that He brings.

Jesus and his disciples had just left Jericho where the blind beggar Bartimaeus had called out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” When Jesus asked what he wanted him to do, Bartimaeuss said, “Give me my sight.” Jesus said, “Go your way, your faith has made you well.” Then Jesus and a great crowd trekked up the winding road to Jerusalem for the Passover in David’s city.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already arrived from north Africa, the islands in the Mediterranean, Greece and Rome, what is now Turkey, and the settlements in the Tigris Euphrates fertile crescent. They were making preparations for the annual holiday celebration of God‘s deliverance of his people from slavery in Egypt in the time of Moses. At night the hillsides were lit up by the fires of the people camping out. A lamb had to be purchased, for the day of the slaughter of the Passover lambs was fast approaching. Preparations were in full swing as the people anticipated with delight being with family for the Passover feast.

But when King Jesus comes into Jerusalem, it interrupts the sort of celebration people are expecting. Part of the expectation was that the son of David, the Messiah would come from the Mount of Olives just to the east of the city. Just as Jesus was doing. This Messiah would stride in as victorious savior. However, Jesus horns in on their celebrations and expectations when he arrives. He who would not turn away from the blind beggar, Bartimaeus, now comes into Jerusalem as a beggar king on a borrowed donkey. The question is, “How will the people of Jerusalem greet this Messianic son of David?” Will they see Him for who he is?

Luther remarks that Jesus the Beggar-King possesses power of a different sort from the other rulers and kings. “His might is equivalent to his name.” In capital letters Luther writes, “JUSTUS ET SALVATOR,” that is the one who is “Righteous and Savior.” The one “who would bring righteousness and salvation with him, and assail sin and death. He would be known as sin’s foe and death’s destroyer…for all who believe in him and receive him as their King... These believers will have their sins forgiven, and death will not harm them, for they will have eternal life and not die. And even though physically they would die and be buried, yet it should really not be called death but a sleep.” Then in stark words and imagery Luther preaches just how Jesus is Righteous and Savior. “This King is and shall be called sin’s devourer and death’s strangler, who uproots sin and knocks death’s teeth out, he disembowels the devil and rescues those who believe on him from sin and death, conducting them to be among the angels where eternal life and blessedness are.”

All this was accomplished for us on the cross and not for us only.

Again Luther, “Christ the King, who is righteous and a Savior, even though he is poor and lowly and comes riding on a donkey, prevails not only over one sin, but over all my sins, and not only over mine but all the world’s sins. He comes not only to heal my illness but to take away death, and not only my death but also the world’s death.”

God became incarnated, that is flesh and blood that he might intervene in our lives with grace, instead of judgment, with life in place of death. That is what he did when He initiated God’s plan for our salvation. It had to be done through Jesus flesh and blood, because that is where sin is in us. It’s in our flesh and blood that we become, not just victims of sin, but agents who readily cooperate in sins actions in the world, in our communities, in our families and in our church. The result is that, as Gerhardt wrote in verse three of our opening hymn, “I lay in fetters groaning.” However he continues, “You (Jesus) came to set me free. I stood my shame bemoaning; you came to honor me. A glorious crown you give me, treasure safe on high that will not fail or leave me as earthly riches fly.”

In-as-much-as He has done all this for me, how do I greet the Lord? To welcome Jesus we acclaim his as the Blessed One who brings us the kingdom of God. We acclaim him, as we did in the Introit, as “righteous and having salvation. Then we say to our Beggar-King, “To you I lift up my soul…in you I trust.”

We meet Jesus aright in our prayers as we did in the Collect for the day, asking Him, to “Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come, that by your protection we may be rescued from the threatening perils of our sins and saved by Your mighty deliverance.”

We meet Jesus as one who comes with grace and peace. Who has enriched us so that we are not lacking in any spiritual gift. We meet him as the faithful in whose fellowship we now live and will in eternity.

We meet him in worship as through the pastor He forgives our sins. We meet him in His word as we hear it read from the lectern and preached from the pulpit. We meet him in Holy Communion where he incarnates himself in, with and under the bread and wine as his body and blood.

That is how we answer Gerhardt‘s question. “O Lord, How shall I meet you, how welcome you aright?” This Wednesday, at the midweek Advent service we will look at how the Lord tore open the heaven‘s and came down to meet us and to make us right with God.