Sermon
for Advent 1, November 30, 2025
Grace, mercy,
and peace be yours, forever, from God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Matthew
21:14-17 14The
blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and
the experts in the law saw the wonders he performed and heard the children
calling out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were
indignant. 16They said to
him, “Do you hear what they are saying?”
“Yes,” Jesus told them, “Have you never read, ‘From the lips of little
children and nursing babies you have prepared praise?’” 17He left them, went out of the
city to Bethany, and spent the night there.
Dear
brothers and sisters united with Christ in Baptism,
In 1527, Martin Luther made a
visitation to all the churches in Saxony, and he found a terrible lack of
knowledge about even the basics of Christian doctrine. In the preface to the Small Catechism, Luther
wrote:
The deplorable conditions which I
recently encountered when I was a visitor constrained me to prepare this brief
and simple catechism or statement of Christian teaching. Good God, what wretchedness I beheld! The common people, … have no knowledge
whatever of Christian teaching, and unfortunately many pastors are quite
incompetent and unfitted for teaching.
Therefore,
so that we don’t fall into that same category of Christians who neither know nor
practice the faith given to us by God’s grace, and so that I am not guilty of
leaving you all uninformed of God’s mercy and kindness, I desire to review the
Small Catechism over the coming year.
Likely every faithful pastor prays that those he instructs will continue
to treasure their catechisms for the gift of God’s grace that enlightens their
lives with hope, so that with all God’s children they continue singing, Hosanna to the Son of David!
Our
sermon text seems a suitable Word of grace to kick off our review of the Small
Catechism. Here we meet those who came
to Jesus out of desperation, but also out of trust that only He could help
them. Their faith in Jesus was rewarded
with the healing He granted them.
Now,
we might use those hurting souls as pictures of our lives without Christ. Without faith in Jesus, you and I and
everyone else are stumbling through this troubled world unable to see God’s
goodness in all He provides. Without
faith in Jesus, you and I would be unable to do anything that would please
God. Spiritually, we would be lame, paralyzed,
and dead. In fact, Paul wrote to people
like us, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly
walked when you followed the ways of this present world. You were following the ruler of the domain of
the air, the spirit now at work in the people who disobey.” (Ephesians
2:1-2) Just like those poor people Jesus
healed at the temple, we could do nothing to change our spiritual
affliction. Yet, that certainly didn’t
stop God from healing us.
Dear
friends, by the power of Baptism and the Gospel, you and I were granted new
life, new hope, and new power to walk with our Lord and to serve Him
truly. Are we perfect in this life? By no means.
However, through the faith in Jesus granted to us by His holy Word, our
future glory is now assured. Here on
earth, we may still stumble, and certainly the world might hate us, but in
God’s kingdom of grace, we have every true and certain hope of the forgiveness
of all sin and life eternal.
The
little children who saw the miracles Jesus was doing recognized Jesus for who
He is. On the other hand, the leadership
of the Jews were appalled that they should honor Jesus in this way, and they
were especially incensed that He would accept that praise intended for the
Messiah. Matthew recorded the scene, But
when the chief priests and the experts in the law saw the wonders he performed
and heard the children calling out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of
David!” they were indignant. They said
to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?”
Notice, it was the children who celebrated that God had fulfilled His
promise to send a Savior and the King who would reign on David’s throne
forever.
The
scribes and chief priests reacted as those who were afraid Jesus might steal their
positions of minor power. Even though those
men were experts in the Old Testament writings, they couldn’t see Jesus as the
Son of God. What God had foretold
through the prophets was wasted on them, because they were overly concerned
with earthly things. Some wanted a political
helper. Some didn’t want that for fear
of losing their own political authority.
We might compare that to many people today. Some fear that if there really is a God, then
where will that leave them. Some are so
concerned about positive outcomes in this life that they gladly sacrifice
eternal things for themselves and others.
This
is why we need the catechism firmly in our grasp. It summarizes what Jesus has done for
us. Yes, it shows us the law, first of
all so that we recognize our need for Jesus as our Savior, then also it shows
us how Christ would expect us to live as His body, the Church. Yet, the law alone could and would not save
anyone. Now, for some contrary reason,
our sinful nature likes to hear the law even though we fear it and even though
it may lead us to sin even more. For
that reason, Luther understood that the Gospel must predominate, and in the
catechism he wrote, that we still follow today, the Gospel does take prime
stage.
As
we study and learn the catechism, we first meet the law to pierce our selfish,
sin-sick hearts in order to prepare us to hear the Good News of what Jesus has
done for us. Still, Luther didn’t leave
us there with the sword of the law condemning us to eternal damnation. Instead, Luther followed the Ten Commandments
with the Apostle’s Creed which summarizes for us what the apostles’ believed
after being with Jesus and witnessing all God’s Son did while living in human
flesh.
Each
time we read or confess it, the Creed testifies to how salvation has come to the
world and how the Father loved us from the beginning and sent His Son to be our
Redeemer, Savior, and King. It tells us
how Jesus came to earth as an infant born of Mary, how He lived for us,
suffered and died on our behalf, and rose again that first Easter Sunday to
give us sure and certain proof that everything the Father and Son have promised
is true.
Finally,
the Third Article of the Creed tells us salvation is ours and how it comes to
us through the Word and Sacraments. It
confesses the Holy Spirit working faith in us through the Word to make us holy
in God’s eyes. It confesses what we have
become as the Body of Christ and the future that is ours in the kingdom of God
through the work the Holy Spirit has done in us. Through the work of the Spirit we receive the
forgiveness of all sin so that St. Paul could write, “So then, there is now
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of
life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)
Continuing
to show God’s amazing grace, Luther followed the Creed and its explanation by
examining the Lord’s Prayer. There we
learn of God’s earnest invitation to come to Him in every need, to pray,
praise, and give thanks. Just the fact
that God has invited us to come to Him in every trouble should make us dance
for joy, for there is no being more powerful than our Creator, and the Bible
tells us that God has put all authority under Jesus. Therefore, Jesus, the very God Man who out of
love for us willingly laid down His life so that we may be declared righteous
before God, and who then rose again victorious is continually pleading to His
Father in heaven on our behalf. There is
nothing in this world that can separate us from God’s love. (Romans 8:38-39) Furthermore, there is no one on earth so
wicked or so lost that God in His infinite kindness does not want to save. (1
Timothy 2:4)
With
the Gospel predominating the catechism, Luther takes us through instruction in
the Sacraments. The Lord’s Supper and
Baptism are not some law or ordinance that we must participate in to earn God’s
love or to demonstrate ours. Rather,
these Sacraments were instituted by Christ as means of grace to bring us into
His kingdom of grace and mercy and to continually refresh our faith and
confidence in His love and kindness.
Baptism
is a cleansing bath through which the Holy Spirit works to put God’s indelible
mark on His chosen children. In the Lord’s
Supper, Jesus meets with us personally as He places His body in the bread on
our tongues and His blood in the wine on our lips. As the sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world, Jesus actively feeds us with His flesh so that we are
reminded of His sacrifice on our behalf and refreshes our faith in Him with this
medicine of life in the gift of His Father’s mercy.
In
response to His enemies who opposed the children’s proclamation of Jesus’ true
identity, Jesus said, “Yes,” … “Have you never read, ‘From the lips of
little children and nursing babies you have prepared praise?’” This is why we teach the catechism to our
youth. We teach this summary of the
Christian faith to our children so that the Holy Spirit has another opportunity
to build up saving faith in them. In
addition, we teach the catechism as preparation to receive the Lord’s Supper,
for to partake of that holy meal without recognizing the body and blood of
Jesus Christ could bring judgment on the sinner.
Through
all of this, the catechism teaches us to rejoice with those children, and the
people who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem the week before His sacrifice, in
shouting out to the world, both to believers and enemies alike, “Hosanna to
the Son of David! Blessed is he who
comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna
in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9) Hosanna
to the Son of David! Amen.
Glory be to the
Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is
now, and ever shall be, forevermore.
Amen.
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