Looking Backward to Look Forward

Text: “9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:9-10)

Where do you look for relief?

One of the most common places you and I look is the past, isn’t it? When things are hard, it’s natural to look back to happier times; to easier times; to “better” times. You and I yearn for the “good old days”: the time of peace, prosperity, justice, comfort.

That’s arguably what the people were doing in our Gospel Reading. “Hosanna! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” Things had been good under King David, hadn’t they? That was back before the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed. In fact, it was before there was a northern kingdom of Israel, before the two split. They were whole, they were united. They weren’t subjects of a foreign empire. They were protected by an army of great men who could— and did— stand against any invader. They were one people under God.

It was a time when a lowly Israelite shepherd boy was able to stand against the great champion of the Philistines with a sling and stones. Not only did their borders expand, their king shepherded them in the paths of the Lord. He was their God and they were His people.

As Jesus entered Jerusalem and they cried out for the kingdom of David, I dare say that they were crying out for Him to make Jerusalem great again. The problem was that Jerusalem, under King David, hadn’t been as great as they remembered. They were served by a great army— which was constantly fighting against someone. They weren’t subjects of a foreign empire, but the Philistines never seemed to be completely subdued. They were a united nation— except when David’s son, Absalom, led an uprising. And their great shepherd king brought God’s wrath down on them on at least two different occasions by hardening his heart against God.

If the crowds gathered on that first Palm Sunday were hoping to recapture the good old days, they were sorely misguided.

Those times are never really as good as we remember. Each generation has it’s battles to fight— figuratively if not literally. I’ve shared with a number of you the way I teased Pastor Bahr last spring. I teased him last spring because he’s supposed to be the voice of experience. He’s seen it all. He’s handled it all. Not only is he a brilliant man and a great theologian, at 95-odd years old, he’s also got decades and decades of experience in the ministry. Except even he has never seen a situation like this one— a pandemic like this. When we really need it, where is the voice of experience? And yet, has there been a single decade in his 70-odd years of ministry in which he— and many of you, and the church as a whole, not to mention our world— were not tested? The past is never as good as we remember.

Especially as Christians, our hope doesn’t lie in trying to recapture the happier times of the past; in trying to bring back the easier times, “better” times, times of peace, prosperity, justice, comfort. And yet so much of Christmas has become about recapturing the past. It’s about traditions, it’s about the magic you felt in days long past. Today’s reading reminds you: Don’t stop there. If that’s your focus at Christmas, then it will, in fact, be over on December 26th.

Thankfully the crowds that day weren’t necessarily wrong, they just didn’t know how right they were. Jesus hadn’t come to bring back the “good old days” of King David. He had come to be the Great King in the line of David. They were looking to the past. He was looking through the past to the future.

He did, He came to bring about a kingdom. But not just the kingdom of their father David— the Kingdom of God the Father. He will sit on the throne of David. But, unlike David, He is the “Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore” (Isaiah 9:7).

He is not just a shepherd king, He is your Good Shepherd. He is your Good Shepherd because, that first Palm Sunday, He had come to lay down His life for His sheep.

There will be no end to the peace He brings because He had come to Jerusalem to crush the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh; to destroy even death, itself; to bring and end to your spiritual enemies. By the following Sunday, the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh would lie dead at the foot of His cross. Death, itself, would be defeated once and for all by His resurrection.

Even that is not just about what happened in the past. Because He took your sin upon Himself and went to the cross to die the death that you deserved, your sinful nature— your Old Adam— should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die and a new man emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Not only did He come, triumphantly, into Jerusalem that day to bring the Kingdom of God to them, He comes bringing the kingdom to you, as well. As you were reminded in the Gospel of Matthew, He has brought the Kingdom into this world through His death and resurrection. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. And, in that authority, He has commanded His church to baptize you into His Kingdom. He shepherds you in that Kingdom by the power of His Word. He feeds you in that Kingdom with His own body and blood which were given and shed for you.

And, if that weren’t enough, one day soon He will return and He will judge with justice and righteousness and declare you innocent by the power of His blood and gather you, fully and finally, into His Kingdom.

“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:10). So much of Christmas is about recapturing the past. It’s about traditions, it’s about the magic you felt in days long past. Today’s reading reminds you: Don’t stop there. Look to the past in order to see the future more clearly. All that was ever truly good and right and true and beautiful about it was about what Christ once did for you, what He still does for you, and what He is coming back to do one day. Your comfort doesn’t lie in trying to recapture what we once were; in trying to bring back a world that is long gone; in trying to recreate the “good old days” that never were. It lies in the One who was born of the Virgin Mary and who came to make all things new. It lies in the one who came to bring the Kingdom of God to you.