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November 30, 2008 -- First Sunday in Advent -- Service Guide -- Bulletin

"The Threatening Perils of Our Sins"

From the Old Testament of the Day: In His days, Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which He will be called, "The Lord is our Righteousness!" [Jer. 23.76

From the Epistle of the Day: "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed." [Rom. 13.11b]

From the Holy Gospel: And the crowds that went before Him and that followed Him were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest." [Matthew 21.9]

On this first Sunday of a new historic Church Year, you hear again, as we do at the start of every new Church Year, the out-of-place Holy Gospel – or so it would seem. The narrative of your Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem, on what we have come to call "Palm Sunday," seems more appropriate for the Sunday that begins Holy Week. And that would be the case, if – IF – the Gospels were primarily story books about the life of Jesus. But, they are not! The Gospels are primarily records of God’s revelation of Himself and of His works in the person of the man, Christ Jesus, who is at the same time God in human flesh.

Understood in their proper way, the four Gospel accounts tell the real truth about the most important world events since the Fall of mankind, events that has its fulfillment in what is yet to come. The importance of the Gospels for you is to expose to you the daily threat of your daily sins, and then to build you up in Christ. What is unchanged from the Garden Fall, to the prophet’s warnings, to the once-for-all work of Christ, to this very moment in history and in your life, is this, confessed by all of us through the Collect for this Sunday: "that we may be rescued from ‘The Threatening Perils of Our Sins.’"

I.

The Old Testament for this 1st Sunday of Advent and of the new Church Year, as already read to you, is taken from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah lives and serves God’s people by his proclamations at the time of the "Fall of Jerusalem" and the destruction of the holy temple. Most of the other prophets of God whose words are recorded in the Old Testament lived prior to this terrible time in human history, and especially to this terrible judgment that God brings upon his own rebellious people.

Jeremiah’s earlier colleagues warned of day of judgment on God’s people, by God’s agents, but the people became calloused and resentful of such a message, because, after all, year followed year and prophet followed prophet, and nothing changed.

Put yourself in that time and place when those words are spoken. You hear the yawns of people! "Not again! Why doesn’t he give us something new, something motivating, something to help in the here-and-now?"

It is exactly the same in your own here-and-now as at the time of Jeremiah. What our sinful nature wants is something new and exciting from God, and what God delivers is something old and seemingly boring, namely, "that we may be rescued from ‘The Threatening Perils of Our Sins.’"

II.

To confess our sins in this way is to agree with God about our critical condition as sinners. It is to wait with true expectation for the ever-new message of the forgiveness of sins or the ever-old condition of being fallen and sinful creatures.

If it only was matter of getting your act together in a non-sinful way, why, then you’d be past the old and onto something new as Christians. But no sinner on earth can do that – can get one’s act together in a non-sinful way. That is why you find yourself in the same condition as do believers in every age, right up to this present moment, and indeed, until Christ returns!

Every day, in every way, you and I are facing the threatening perils of our sins. This is not child’s play. It is the true condition of being, as we confessed again this morning, "a poor, miserable sinner." When, and as often as, that ugly awareness happens, then only one message counts – the message of today’s Epistle: "Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed." The fullness of your redemption, life, and relationship with God is on its way, but not yet here!

Nevertheless, the kingdom is established already! It is established, as the prophet Zechariah declares and St. Matthew repeats in today’s Holy Gospel, when "Behold, you king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden."

The point for daily living is to embrace, moment-by-moment, the same position that Christ takes, in coming to this, His fallen world: "humble and mounted on a donkey." It is the position of humility and of repentance. You assume that position each time you come to the Divine Service, that same-old, same-old Service for same-old, same-old humble sinners. No others than same-old humble sinners need spend the time here – nor do they want so to do these days!

III.

Dr. Luther leads us to this same-old position in a sermon that he preached, when he focused on the special points of humility in the Divine Service. In particular, he points to the practice of bowing the head in the confession of the Nicene Creed at the point that confesses Jesus coming into our world as He came into Jerusalem: "Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." Here’s Luther’s application, to bring his hearers to fitting humility:

"The tale is told about a coarse and brutal lout, standing in the back of the Nave of a church. While the words ‘And was made man’ were being sung in church, he remained standing, but neither genuflecting, nor crossing himself, nor even removing his hat. He showed no reverence, but just stood there like a clod. All the others dropped to their knee when this portion of the Nicene Creed was being prayed and chanted devoutly. So, the devil stepped up to him and hit him so hard it made his head spin. He cursed him gruesomely and said: "May hell consume you, you boorish ass! If God had become an angel, for fallen angels like me, and the congregation sang: ‘God was made an angel,’ I would bend not only my knee but my whole body to the ground! Yes, I would crawl ten yards down into the ground. And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel, but that He, the Lord Almighty, did become a man like you, to save you, and you just stand there like a stick of wood!"

The story is fiction, but it still is true; it is in accordance with the faith (Rom. 12:6). With this illustrative story the holy fathers wished to admonish the each generation to revere the indescribably great miracle of the incarnation; they wanted us to open our eyes wide and ponder these words well, because Christ became man for a world of fallen sinners. His becoming man – His entrance into the Holy City for an unholy world of sinners – is the heart of the Gospel, the heart of the Christian faith, the heart of the point of gathering here, and the heart of the promise to you – that you, a sinner, facing daily the threatening perils of your sins, -- have a God who nevertheless loves you, and for your sins comes to your world and your life, and by His sacrifice redeems you and embraces you as His very own, for today, for tomorrow, and for eternity!

This is the point of a new Church Year, brought to you with a Savior, humble and mounted on a donkey! In Christ alone, you and I are protected and saved from the threatening perils of our sins. Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord – for you!