Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.
 
Five Hundred years ago today, a lowly Augustinian monk who had been born in tiny Eisleben Germany, educated in Eisenach and Erfurt, then called to be a professor at the newly formed Wittenberg University, made history.  This unprivileged theologian stood before royalty and the honored, and before the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire himself and they demanded his response.  Would he take back the writings that he had published over the last three and a half years?  Would he recant of all of his criticisms of the Pope and the Church?  Would he quit causing all of this trouble and just leave it all alone?  The day before, the question had been asked and this monastic had demurred.  He had asked for more time and consideration.  But not the moment arrived and he couldn’t delay a response any more.  If he would recant, things could go very smoothly for him.  I they didn’t he would be an outlaw, at risk of death anytime and in any place.  What would his answer be?
 
I’m guessing most of you know the end of this story.  That monk, one Martin Luther, stood before prince and Emperor and made that great confession in which he is reported to have said:  “Since then your serene majesty and your lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.  I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen.”
 
As Luther continued his work in the Reformation, he proved his conviction of those words.  He proved time and time again how his conscience was bound by the Scriptures, captive to the Word of God.  And as he did so, there were some times he expressed and confessed that conviction in a way that was gentle and full of sympathy.  Other times he lashed out like a vicious animal at his opponent.  But no matter the circumstance, he showed his desire to be faithful.
 
As we reflect on that steadfastness, it’s a good reminder.  It’s not often that we have the threat of death in view of our confession.  I can imagine that no one in this sanctuary has ever experienced an immediate attack on their existence if they confessed their faith.  And yet Luther stood firm in the midst of that.  And he stood firm in his writings, too.  As he did so, he reflected that he saw himself as an under-shepherd of Christ, one called to pastor the flock.  And in that vein, as I was looking at the lesson for this week, I found that Luther said this: “The true shepherd must keep watch. He must be zealous in the Word. He must give consideration to consciences, to comfort the sad, strengthen the afflicted, lest they despair, call back those who wander away…  The worthless shepherds, [Christ] says, will do none of these things, because they no longer have the Word. That has been taken away from them. Both staffs have been broken. But when the Word is absent, all preaching is in vain. In fact, such preaching is most harmful and (like a terrible poison) destructive to souls.”
 
As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we need those good shepherds, don’t we?  We need those who will guide us and speak that Word to us.  We need those who will comfort the sad, strengthen the afflicted, but call back those who wander away.  And of course, most of all, we need our Good Shepherd.  We need the One whose Word Luther spoke about.  We need that Word as we do walk through the valley of the shadow of death.  We need the rod of that Law to strike us in our sin, to tell us of how we have fallen short, and how we truly deserve God’s temporal and eternal punishment.  But we also need the staff of His Gospel to draw us back to Him, to show us that running away in our fear of what we deserve only puts us at peril, but safety is in His flock, under His loving care.  To put that concretely, safety is in the covering of His righteousness in baptism, it’s in the provision and meal of His Holy Supper.  It’s in the hearing of His voice.  As He says, “They will listen to my voice.”  And why?  Because we see that He is that Shepherd who has laid down His life for us.  The Devil, the World, our own sinful natures seek to draw us away into death, into suffering, into peril.  But He jumps in front of our enemies, puts Himself between them and us.  I’m sure you could picture a frothing wolf seeking to devour sheep, and the shepherd putting Himself in the path of that wolf, or the pack of wolves, to prevent the harm to the sheep.  And I’m sure you can imagine the harm that could come to the Shepherd in that.
 
And that’s what we see on the cross, that’s what we see on Good Friday.  But on Easter we see our resurrection in His care for us.  We see the truth of what He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”  Now as I say that, I think there are two things that are noteworthy with regard to our own understanding and application of this.
 
First, I think we can understand that this sacrifice isn’t logical.  You know, a couple of weeks ago I discussed the prevailing mindset around us and how it’s losing rationality.  As important as it is for us to seek to live rationally in many ways, there’s a reality where God’s logic isn’t our own.  And it’s demonstrated in His generosity.  I think I’ve pointed this out before, but you see how irrationally generous God is.  I was reminded of this as I was teaching our Adult Information Class this week.  We were talking about the Seventh Commandment not to steal, and as we did so I was discussing Luther’s explanation.  Do you all remember that?  What is the Seventh Commandment?  You shall not steal.  What does this mean?  We should fear and love God so that we do not take our neighbors money or possessions, or get them in any dishonest way, but help him to improve and protect his possessions and income.
 
As I was talking about that, I was reminded of a story about someone who went to a developing country.  While he was there, he went to the marketplace.  Now, if you are familiar with how that often works, markets in many countries operate on the assumption that you negotiate.  You ask for a price, the seller tells you one, but then you haggle.  So this person, knowing the generosity that God had given him both spiritually and in terms of material blessings, asked the seller the cost.  When the seller told him, he gave that much to him.  The seller said, “wait, no!  You don’t need to do that!”  But the person said he did.  Why?  Because of God’s generosity to Him.
 
And you see that in this description.  You see it in the shepherd laying down His life for His sheep.  That doesn’t make sense, right?  The human laying down his life for the animal?  And you see it in other illustrations the Lord speaks too.  Like the parable of the sower, the sower is ridiculous to be so wasteful as to cast seed on the ground where it’s not going to grow.  Or there’s the parable of the Good Samaritan.  The Samaritan risks his life to help the wounded man.  He then gives generously toward the man’s care.  And they were strangers!  So, Christ’s generosity to you!
 
So that’s the first application, is understanding just how generous to you this Good Shepherd has been. The second, I think fits really well into our current climate.  I’ve spoken a bit over the past few weeks about the sort of prevailing philosophies around us.  We’ve also talked specifically about something called Critical Theory in Bible Class.  Now these philosophies, especially Critical Theory have at their understanding that everything breaks down to power.  There are those in power who oppress those who aren’t in power.  In our time this gets broken down especially in view of categories like race, gender, sexual identity, etc.  What groups have historically had means are seen as those who also have had power and so have oppressed those who don’t.  And of course, there is truth in that we as people are cruel in our sin.  We seek to grab and grab for ourselves.  But the understanding is that this power needs to shift hands.  Think about how good it is for us to hear of this Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the Sheep.  Think about what this tells us about power and about authority.
 
To go back to something I’ve brought up fairly regularly, I was teaching my class for Concordia last week.  In the class we were talking about vocation and how our roles in so many aspects of life are determined by Fourth Commandment relationships.  Now if you’re remembering which is the Fourth Commandment, that’s to honor your Father and Mother.  But if you remember your confirmation teaching, you remember that’s not just about your parents.  No, it tells us about authority relationships altogether.  In fact, understood properly, it tells us about how authority is properly used.
 
So, to make that point, I read Ephesians 5:20-6:9 with the class.  If you know that, that’s the passage where Paul tells wives to be submissive to their husbands.  Of course, that’s anathema in our day.  But I always try to make the point that we don’t get it.  I was making that point, when one of the students asked—and understandably— “Don’t we have to acknowledge that there is some sexism here?”  And I said, “That’s exactly it!  We think there is because we think that the call to submit is a call to be oppressed.  And we think that because we think it’s all about giving men power.  But look at what the men are called to do: ‘Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.’  If we understand that, we see that authority isn’t about a power grab, it’s about love and sacrifice and service.”
 
That’s what our Good Shepherd shows us.  Power isn’t about serving oneself.  Authority isn’t about serving oneself.  No, it’s about laying down one’s life for those under his care.  That’s the second application.  In our day, we need to understand power for it’s proper use, the use our God Himself shows us in Christ.
 
So, as we see our Good Shepherd, carry that into the world.  Carry that message of sacrifice, of generosity.  Carry that message of the Good Shepherd who gave Himself for you.  And know that voice of the Shepherd who tells and promises you of this love that He has for you.
 
As we reflect on those events Five Hundred years ago, what we see is that under-shepherd Luther understood that.  That’s why he had to stand on that Word.  That’s why he couldn’t go against his conscience.  May our God bless us with that same steadfastness.  But may He do so in that same knowledge.  That knowledge that this Christ is that Good Shepherd who lay down His life for us, for you.  Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.  This morning we meditate on the Gospel Lesson previously read.
 
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  The doors were locked.  Why?  For fear of the Jews.  The doors were locked for fear.  Put yourself in their shoes.  Of what were they afraid?  They were afraid that the people who had crucified Jesus would come and attack them and harm them and kill them too.  They were afraid because it appeared that their hope in Jesus was misplaced.  They were afraid because it looked like the teachings against Jesus were going to win out.  They were afraid because it looked like death had the final word over Jesus.  This Jesus who had called Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life, death at the hands of this crowd had appeared to have won.  And so they were afraid.  They were afraid of death.  They were afraid of the death of their church.  They were afraid of the death of their culture.  They were afraid of death to their bodies.  They were afraid of death.
 
And as we see them alone in that room, we can understand that they’re not alone, are they?  We, too, fear death.  Don’t we?  Some of us fear death in that we fear what’s beyond this life, and what it will be like when we stand before the Lord.  I’ve certainly had those moments where my mortality struck me, and I feared.  I feared because I reflected on all that I’m called to by my Lord, and how I haven’t done it.  There is a real fear there for many of us.
 
Some of us maybe aren’t afraid of actually dying, but are afraid of the pain that could come beforehand.  If you’ve ever been with someone going through the process of dying, it’s very hard.  If you see the pain they’re enduring, you can see their discomfort and frustration.  You maybe know the sleeplessness as they can’t rest.  And there is a real fear to experience that firsthand.  Or even if it’s not pain that comes immediately before death.  All pain is a manifestation of death in some way.  As the world has fallen into sin and death has entered into the world with it, death manifests itself in various and sundry ways.  Pain is one of those ways, illness is one of those ways, suffering is one of those ways.  And some of us fear all of those.  We fear death.
 
Some of us fear that pain and bodily death not so much for themselves, but for their loved ones.  In the midst of the pandemic, many people have expressed not their own fear of getting the coronavirus, but the fear that they might get it and transmit it to a loved one.  They fear, then, that the loved one might suffer from it or die.  There is a fear there.
 
Or some of us look around at the world and we see the crumbling of the beauty of Western Culture.  We fear the death of that culture, of a way of life that has brought so much value to so many people.  It’s not perfect, but no way ever can be in this world.  But it seems fleeting, and the consequence could easily be extremely harmful and destructive.  And so, there is fear of the death of the culture.
 
And along with it, some of fear the death of the Church.  We look around at how many people used to line our pews.  We see how many churches had to be established because there was such a great need for new congregations and a great need for more pastors.  But now it’s the opposite.  Now you see congregations closing left and right.  You see pastors having to serve two or three congregations because those congregations can’t afford their own pastor.  And you see the effect this has on people altogether.  Three is a fleeing from the faith, and it seems to be increasing in its volume.  If it keeps on this way, the Church could die.  We fear death.
 
We fear death, and to be fair, there’s some appropriateness to fearing death.  Death isn’t what God wanted for the world when He created it.  Death is called an enemy by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians.  On last Sunday, we heard the reading from Isaiah which called death the “covering cast over all peoples, the veil spread over all nations.”  Death isn’t good.  So it’s understandable that we fear death, just like those disciples feared death.  But yet, what do we hear Jesus saying to them?  “Peace be with you.”  “You who fear, who fear death, peace be with you.”  How could they have peace?  How could this Jesus speak peace?  Because He had been raised from the dead.  And being raised from the dead meant what about death?  It meant that death had been overcome.  It meant that death had become a defeated enemy, death no longer had power.  It meant that death had met its death, and now it has become a servant to the One who has mastery over it.  That’s the peace that this Jesus could speak.
 
As Jesus had been crucified for sin, the cause of death had been forgiven, and He overcame that enemy of death.  So, Christians, that peace be with you.  Don’t be afraid of death.  Don’t be afraid of the death of your body.  Don’t be afraid of the death of the Church.  Don’ t be afraid of the death of the culture.  Don’t be afraid of the death.
 
Now as I say that, what thoughts are running through your mind?  “Easy to say, Pastor!  How should I not?”  But as I say that, if I could take a second and apply Law and Gospel to this—you know those old trusty Lutheran words, Law and Gospel.  The Law telling us what we are to do and how we deserve condemnation and hell from God because we haven’t done it.  The Gospel telling us what God has done for you in Christ, that He has forgiven your sins, and won for you life and salvation in Him.  Why do we respond that way?  Because we hear it as Law.  You hear it as me telling you to do something.  You hear it in the same vein as the First Commandment—which is where this falls.  Think about that commandment.  What is the First Commandment?  You shall have no other gods.  And what does mean?  We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.  So, on the one hand we think, “I can’t do this!”  Like I said, “How should I not?!”  But I don’t want you to hear this that way.  Of course, ultimately I can’t control how you hear it, but I want you to hear it as an invitation of the Gospel.  Trust in Jesus, don’t be afraid of death.
 
You see, there is Gospel here.  Trust and believe in Him.  Trust and believe in the fact that He has overcome death.  Trust and believe in the fact that if your body dies, it will be raised again by Him on the Last Day to eternal glory.  That’s His promise to you in your baptism.  You were buried with Him into death—you already died!—and were raised in His resurrection.  And that resurrection will be to live with Him, where there will be no more death.  Don’t be afraid of the death of this Culture.  Christ sits at the Right Hand of God the Father.  He reigns there.  If what we call Western Culture burns to the ground, He can raise up some other shell equally or even more suitable for carrying the message of His Word to the coming generations.  He got it to us, and He’ll keep it going.  In the same way, don’t fear the death of the Church.  Christ will sustain it.  It’s never been up to you to do it anyway.  He is the One who, in fact, has promised that the gates of hell will never prevail against it.  Don’t be afraid of this death.
 
Now, as I preach that Gospel, it’s interesting how there is often a response to this.  As I proclaim the message that this relies upon God and not us, just as we proclaim that message that Christ has won our salvation, we haven’t earned it, we haven’t worked for it, we haven’t deserved it, as we say all of these things about God, what’s our natural human response?  “But are you saying I shouldn’t do anything about this?  That I should just let myself die, or I should just let the culture go to hell in a handbasket, or that I should just stop telling people about Jesus and let the Church fall by the wayside?”
 
Absolutely not!  No, you have a call from God to love your neighbor as yourself.  As you do that then, you ought to be faithful in telling your neighbor about Jesus.  Not to get points with God—after all, Jesus did all you need to be saved—but because your neighbor needs to hear of the love of God for him or her too.  And you should voice the confession of the church in our culture because this creation is constructed in the frame of His will for it, in the structure of what His commands and Law tell us.  It’s best for the world if it lives according to that Law.  And care for your neighbor.  As we look at something like the pandemic, socially distance, understand how you can try to do things to prevent unintentionally contaminating them with the virus.  And take care of your body—don’t neglect your neighbor in the midst of it, don’t neglect what is necessary for your faith—but do care for the gift that it is.  You know, don’t throw yourself in front of a figurative bus or harm yourself intentionally.  All of that is instructed by God.  And all of it can be hard to know how to do exactly in a way that is most faithful.
 
But when you take it seriously, it will eventually crush you in the fear that you haven’t done enough.  Why?  Because you never can.  It finally isn’t in your ability and control.  And so, God has desired you to know that He has done it for you.  So, I’m not telling you to do nothing.  The preaching of the Gospel is often mistaken for that.  But what it does, what I am trying to do is to comfort you in the midst of your fears.  What I’m trying to do is helping you to see that as Christ stood in the room with those weary and afraid disciples and spoke His peace to them, He wants you to know that peace too.  If He didn’t, He wouldn’t have died for your sins.  He wouldn’t have been raised defeating death for you.  He wouldn’t give His body and His blood for you to eat and drink.  If He didn’t, He wouldn’t have given you a pastor to proclaim all of this into your hearing.  If He didn’t, He wouldn’t have given John to write down what we heard this morning.
 
And think about those words that John wrote.  Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  Jesus gave John that you would believe.  Jesus gave John that you would hear of His work of overcoming death for you.  And He overcame death for you so that by believing, by fearing, loving, and trusting in Him above all things, you would have life in His Name.  Not by your work of believing, but by His work on the cross, proclaimed into your ears, poured over your body in baptism, and fed to you in His Holy Supper creating faith in your heart in the knowledge of His victory, His trustworthiness, and His resurrection life for you.  Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.  This morning we meditate on the Palm Sunday Gospel Lesson previously read for the precession, as well as the two verses following that passage which read: And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
 
As we hear in those verses that the city of Jerusalem was “stirred up” about Jesus in the time following this Triumphal Entry on the first Palm Sunday, it’s clear that Jesus was making an impact.  The word there, in fact, says that Jerusalem was eseisthe, where we get our word seismograph, the gauge for measuring earthquakes.  The city was quaking in view of this man entering into it.  Of course a couple of things go along with this.  First of all, it’s clear that this isn’t the first time Jesus had been to Jerusalem.  We assume that Jesus’ ministry was three years because there are three Passover festivals in the Gospel of John.  This one that they were celebrating was that third and as was presumably their custom, Jesus and the disciples were going to the Temple as the Law instructed.  In fact, the Law instructed them to go to the Temple for Passover, for the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, and the Feast of Pentecost.  So, we would assume that Jesus was at the Temple for each of those, every year of His life, just as we heard of Him being there when He was twelve for the Passover in Luke’s Gospel.  So, the first thing is that this wasn’t the first time Jesus had been to Jerusalem.  The second is that this time was different.  This time Jesus made special provisions as He went, provisions for getting the donkey.  And He knew what was coming.  He knew that His miracle work had drawn enough attention.  He knew that His healings had stirred the crowd to sufficient fever pitch that as He rode in, the King coming to the people “humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden,” they would gather and celebrate.  They would honor Him.  Even though He had been in Jerusalem before, this time was going to be different.  That’s the second thing.
 
And in this we see how this makes waves in the city.  Jerusalem responds to this.  Now, I looked this up and it’s uncertain how many people lived in Jerusalem at that time.  Some guesses were around 70,000-80,000, others closer to 100,000.  The lowest guesses say it could have been as small as 20,000, and the highest 250,000.  Additionally, there would have been a huge influx of Jews there for the feast of the Passover.  And Jesus made quite the entrance.  He did so to the point that people knew Him.  And what did they say?  They said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
 
Now, we have to understand that as Jesus rode in the people hailed Him to be the Son of David, and now they’re hailing Him to be this prophet.  This is messianic language, these are names calling Him the Messiah.  It seems like they get it, doesn’t it?  I think every time I preach on this passage, I find myself returning to this point, but we have to hear it over and over again.  They do think He’s the Messiah.  They do think He’s the eschatological Prophet, the One promised in Deuteronomy 18, the One who would be greater than Moses.  They do think He’s going to bring the Kingdom of God.  But they get it wrong. How so?
 
They think His Kingdom is going to be of this world.  They think that this Jesus is going to rule where David ruled and bring the glory back to Israel as this Nation dwelling to the west of the Jordan, with their temple in Jerusalem being restored to a glory beyond comparison, even when considering the Temple Solomon ruled over.  And if you look at that Temple Herod the Great had built, the One Jesus would be clearing out in this Holy Week, you can understand why.  That structure was monstrous.  It was dominating.  Apparently, it was 150 feet tall, that’s fifteen stories.  Of course, compared to the Sears’ Tower, that’s not that much, but it sure would have been then.  You can picture some of the imaginations they had of what that glory would be.  But they didn’t get it.
 
As I’m using that language of glory there, I think it’s a great time to bring up a topic I like to mention periodically.  That’s a distinction we make as Lutherans between being what we call theologians of the cross versus theologians of glory.  These Israelites looking for this earthly king, this earthly messiah, were theologians of glory.  They thought the glory was going to be here.  They thought the glory was coming now.
 
And of course, the reason why I bring this up, why I mention the Jews not getting it then every time I preach on this passage in some way or another, is because we have to watch being theologians of glory ourselves.  We have to be careful that we don’t get sucked into the mindset that we will have the fulfillment of God’s promises now in this life.  We have the promises of that glory now.  We can be certain that the fulness of God’s Kingdom is ours.  We can be certain that as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection next Sunday that the victory He won in that new life from the grave, that victory means something for us now, it empowers us new, it brings joy and new life to us now.  But we also have to understand that the fulness of that isn’t ours yet.
 
I know I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but I was struck by it again this week as we had the vaccine clinic.  You know, we had a lot of people here that were not connected with the Church, and so I wouldn’t expect that they would understand the world as we do, but it still saddened me that some people were so excited about the vaccine.  Now, as is hopefully clear, and as I’ve been saying, I’m not telling people not to get the vaccine, but as I’ve been saying the last few weeks, to think about how much more excited people are about the vaccine than they are about receiving the Lord’s Supper, about how here in this holy meal, we have the vaccine to the sin that truly ails us, and yet where is the excitement for that?  The beauty of meeting our Savior here at this rail giving us His body and blood for our eternal good, and we’re more excited to be inoculated from the coronavirus.  Why?  Because we get more excited for the glory of things now.
 
And there are so many other ways we see this too.  You see this in things like how we treat something like mental illness.  Over the course of years, I’ve heard Christians speak of things like depression and act as though a true Christian shouldn’t have an issue with depression.  That would be a theology of glory.  Depression is something that we have as a consequence from the fall into sin.  You see it clearly reflected in the Psalms even.  The Psalmists speak of things like soaking their couches with tears, and the sorrow that fills their eyes.  That’s the reality now.  That doesn’t mean that a Christian who wrestles with it should stop wrestling, or that the light of Christ is meaningless for bringing light in that darkness even now.  It also doesn’t mean that our faith can’t be extremely helpful in aiding our struggle with those challenges.  But to assume that our faith promises we’ll never have depression is assuming the fulfillment of the glory now that we won’t have completely until Christ’s return.
 
The same goes for only talking about the happy things of the faith in Church, and not discussing our sin.  That’s something that’s easy to assume as well.  It’s easy to assume that all that we should talk about is just the love of God and the joy of the resurrection.  Granted, I should tell you of that resurrection every week in one way or another, but the beauty of that hope that we have and will fully experience when Lord returns is understood for how amazing it will be when we contrast it with the brokenness of the world.  But as we confuse all of this, this shows that we have an ingrained delusion that we will be able to have the glory now.  It shows us that we are all theologians of glory.  If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be so nervous about the state of the world.  The current political climate would create pits in our stomach.  The fears we have about a viral pandemic wouldn’t arrest us into paralyzation.  If we weren’t theologians of glory we wouldn’t have such high hopes and attachments to this world that this would create the anxieties we’re experiencing.  But we think it’s going to be good now.  And if we’re doing well, we maybe even think that Jesus is going to be the One who’s going to make it all good now.  But of course as we think that, we put Jesus on the same earthly throne the Jews did.  We too crown Him and quake about Him as the earthly prophet and messiah.
 
But, His Kingdom is not of this world.  His reign in this world isn’t on a throne, it’s on the cross.  And that’s where it actually results in the greatest glory.  As we shift from being theologians of glory to being theologians of the cross, we see that it’s actually far better.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a challenge now.  It’s that challenge that Jesus Himself speaks to you when He tells you to pick up your cross daily and deny yourself.  It’s that challenge that comes with drowning our old Adam, our old sinful nature, in daily contrition and repentance as our baptism indicates.  And it’s finally that challenge that only Jesus Himself could fulfill; that challenge He fulfilled on the cross for you.  He fulfilled it on the cross for you, dying for where you have fallen short, and rising again that the fulfillment could be yours.  And He gives you the promise of that fulfillment, the down payment, the earnest money of His Holy Spirit in baptism, and He continues to assure you of it in the meal of His body and blood in His Holy Supper.  Christians, that cross is yours.  That death is the death of your sin, and the glory is promised to you by His resurrection.  The fulfillment will be when He comes again, but the promise is certain for you now.
 
Christians, as He rode into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday, as they called Him that prophet, as Jerusalem quaked with the news of His arrival as their King, that’s the true Kingdom He was bringing.  The Kingdom that had to come through the cross.  But understand that had it not paved its path on the road with that cross, you never would have the ability to enjoy it.  Had Jesus been a theologian of glory, He never would have been able to share it with you.  But Jesus knew the only way His Kingdom could ever come to you was by that cross.  And His Messianic Kingdom wasn’t of this world.  It could only be one which would arrive with the New Heavens and the New Earth.  And as you hear of His arrival in Jerusalem, know that this is the prophet, this is the Son of David.  He truly is.  And He is that so that you could share in the ultimate and final glory He will bring on the last day.  Amen.