The pastor apologizes - somewhere he bumped the button and turned his microphone off.
Text of sermon below:
Text of sermon below:
IN the name of
Jesus Amen. Our text today are the
Gospel readings just read. Thus far our
text.
Dear friends in
Christ. The entire last week of his
life, Jesus is surrounded by huge crowds of people. We saw it in our processional Gospel
lesson. Jesus enters Jerusalem with
crowds of people cheering him on.
Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes
in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the
highest! The crowd waved palm
branches. They strew his way with their
cloaks. They followed him into the
temple. The crowd was enormous.
And the crowd
listened to him for the entirety of Holy Week as he taught in the temple. The rulers of Jerusalem were afraid of the
crowds in fact. Scripture is clear that
they did not seek to arrest him because they were afraid of the large crowds
that followed Jesus. In fact, they had
to arrest him in secret, in the middle of the night, with the help of one of
his own disciples.
The crowds
continue in our Passion Sunday Gospel reading.
Only now the Pharisees have wrangled up their own crowd – still a huge
number of people. And this new crowd
shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify
him!” This crowd makes the Roman
Governor aghast at their demands! You
want me to crucify your king? And the
crowd shouts Crucify him again? Pilate
washes his hands, declaring he is innocent of this man’s death, and the
enormous crowd shouts, “Let his blood be upon us and our children.”
Then the crowd
follows the beaten and bloodied Jesus outside the town walls, and watches as
they crucify him. Yes, Jesus is
crucified to forgive the sins of the crowd that follows him. And then, as he is hanging naked, bleeding,
and dying – as he is suffering hell for sinners, the crowd of people there
belittle and mock him, asking him to come down from the cross – essentially
asking him not to save them from their sin.
Crowds surrounded
Christ, from Palm Sunday to Good Friday.
More people than live in our town witnessed these events first
hand. Huge numbers saw with their own
eyes the triumphal entry, the trial, and the death of Jesus.
But what about in
our day and age? Will there be crowds
that gather to remember what our Lord has done for us? Will there be giant crowds that remember
Christ’s promises in the Lord’s Supper this Maundy Thursday? Will there be crowds on Friday that hear
Christ’s own words from the cross during the hours he hung from that
cross? Will there be people gathered in
the church remembering that Christ was taken down from the cross and laid in a
tomb Good Friday evening? Will they
gather in the church on Saturday to remember their baptism, to hear God’s Word
and to look forward to the resurrection of Christ that means our resurrection
also?
Nobody has time
for all that, right?
Of course not. We’ve got other priorities! We’ve got to take the kids to athletic
practice and school. We’ve got to fit in
40 hours of work this week – so how could I fit 8 or 9 hours in for church? We’ve got smart phone that need to be
watched. We’ve got to see if that
giraffe had a baby or not. We’ve got a
long to do list that we’ve got to work on sometime. Plus it’s so beautiful, and the days are
getting longer, shouldn’t we spend some time outside? The TV won’t watch itself! The Refrigerator needs to be cleaned, doesn’t
it? The Christmas lights need to be
taken down – I need to do that in fact!
And so the holy week crowd lessens each year, because priorities change,
as our sinful natures point out to us time and again.
What does it
matter anyways, right? These services
are all the same, we’ll hear the same stuff we hear every week, right? Plus, don’t you know how hard it is to keep
children quiet during church? All kids
will do is disrupt, it’s not like they’d get anything out of being a part of
the crowd that focuses on Christ’s passion.
Yes, there may
have been a crowd that first Holy Week.
But not this Holy Week. I mean
it’s hard to get a crowd together for anything, isn’t it? We are apathetic about everything! We can only scrounge up crowds when beer is
for sale in the street, or when we are protesting an election or something that
we’ve deemed to be a social injustice.
We can only get crowds for bison games – or Sioux games. Or prom.
Or graduation. Or ice fishing
tournaments. Or regular fishing. Or High School sports. Or academic banquets. Or the 4th of July. Or cares for cancer. Or meals at the community center. Or wedding receptions. Or funeral lunches. Or parades.
Or polkaing. Or…
See how hard it is
to get a crowd together? Why should
church be any different? Especially
since all that church offers is complete forgiveness of all sin so that
Hankinsinners like you can have eternal life in God’s peace and joy.
Yes – that’s all that
holy week means for you. It means Christ
died for your sin of indifference, just like he died for all your sins. Good Friday means the Son of God in human
flesh pours out his blood while suffering your place in Hell upon the cross –
and that he does all this for you – specifically for you! For your
forgiveness! Christ gave up 12 hours of his life to be arrested and undergo
a fake trial for your sin. He gave up 6
hours of his life to hang on the cross – and spent that time praying for you –
“Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” He gave up his life, and shouted – “It is
finished.” Meaning the payment for your sin was finished by his own death. He laid for three days in the tomb and then
rose so that there will be an end to the time you lay in your tomb. So that one day you would rise to live before
God in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness!
This forgiveness,
earned by him, comes to you here where he promises to be! It comes in the word, because he promises
that in his word he will send the Holy spirit to you. It comes in your baptism – which we
constantly proclaim in this place.
Forgiveness comes to you as you eat the true body and blood of Jesus
which he gives to you from this altar. Christ
promises to be present here for you, for your forgiveness. He never ceases to give his mercy to you in
this place through his Word and sacraments!
So repent. Join the crowd that wishes to receive
forgiveness from Christ. But hear this
one word of warning – don’t think that by your action of attending church you
are going to earn that forgiveness.
Don’t think that the number of hours you suffer through church will make
God happy. Instead realize that we come
to church not to fulfill a good work to God, but instead to receive the gifts
Christ freely gives. He gives you forgiveness
of sins, life and salvation, freely through the means of grace – His word and
his two sacraments! Which are given
often and generously in the divine service this Holy Week, and really every
week.
In the name of
Jesus. Amen.
