The Lord Has Need of It - Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent

First Sunday in Advent, December 1^st, A+D 2024
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
The Lord Has Need of It – Luke 19:28 – 40

Audio of the Sermon is available HERE.

   I often wonder about the owner of the donkey.  All four Gospels describe this borrowing. Jesus sends two of His disciples to get a donkey, two donkeys, actually, according to St. Matthew, a colt, the foal of a donkey, and its mother.  Their task was to bear the rightful King, as He entered the holy city, to offer Himself in place of His people.    "Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹ If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.' "

   So many questions come to mind:  Why?  Why did the Lord do this?  Who?  Who was the donkey’s owner?  Luke says ‘the owners’ plural, protested the commandeering.  Were the owners a husband and wife?  Was Jesus borrowing a well-to-do lady’s ride?  Maybe it was a father with his sons, merchants, or maybe burro-breeders?  Motion picture productions of the story of Jesus have some fun with such questions, filling in these types of details.  And that can be fine.  As long as nobody mistakes their creative license for the Truth, and assuming they don’t butcher the main point of the author’s message, filling in some details to engage folks in the story of Jesus can be helpful.  It could perhaps even be a thing that the Holy Spirit uses for His good purposes. 

   Which is an important point for us to take away from the line that Jesus gives the two disciples.  If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying [the donkey]?' you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.  The Creator of the Universe, the eternal Son of God, is about to launch the climactic acts of His great plan of salvation.  He is the protagonist.  Your rescue from the eternal suffering and condemnation you have earned with your sin is about to be accomplished, and it is entirely the work of God, a mysterious and awful exchange transacted between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  All this, done for you, by God.  Done for you, and for all your fellow sinners of the human race.  Salvation belongs to our God, and to the Lamb.  It is a Divine project; we do not add anything to it.  We can’t. 

   And yet, again and again, the Lord involves us in His great work.  Men and women and children are passive bystanders, observing and receiving the benefit of the divine drama of redemption.  But still, at the same time, mankind is not entirely out of the action, and not just in a negative sense.  To be sure, the great majority of the bit parts that people play in Jesus’ Passion are negative: betraying, abandoning, denying.  Falsely accusing.  Humiliating, torturing, crucifying. 

   But others, mostly unnamed extras, are honored to offer some useful things.  Going and getting the donkeys.  Loaning the donkeys.  Laying cloaks on the animals and on the road to honor the Son of David, the true King of Israel, coming to be raised up on His throne.  Shouting hosanna to God and to His King, riding into Jerusalem to redeem God’s people from their captivity.  The multitude’s song is a sacrifice of confession and praise that angers the Pharisees and leads to their decision: Jesus of Nazareth must die, as soon as possible. 

   None of these contributions by the friends and followers of Jesus had any redemptive power.  The owners of the donkeys were not saved by their willingness to let Jesus borrow their beasts.  But God used their offering, and all the other faith-inspired responses of service, praise and thanksgiving to the God-Man, Jesus, the Christ.  God used their things and their actions, their offerings and their voices, to tell the story, to move the plot along, to help us understand what Jesus did. 

   In the same way He worked through their actions and offerings on that first Palm Sunday, God continues to work in the lives of His people of every time and place, right down to this day.  The Lord honors faithful stewardship, cheerful offerings.  The Lord, to Whom belong the universe and everything in it, still rejoices to receive and praise and bless the very limited service, the imperfect gifts and praise and confession of His people.  And so we sing:

     “We give Thee but Thine own, whate’er the gift may be, All that we have is Thine alone, A trust, O Lord, from Thee.

      May we Thy bounties thus, As stewards true receive, And gladly, as Thou blessest us, To Thee our first-fruits give!

   It’s a little bonkers, depending on how you think about the opportunity for stewardship. It’s easy to fall into thinking our service and offerings are like bargaining chips with God, or that they are a requirement for our salvation.  But, this could never be.  Salvation is a free gift, given for Jesus’ sake, to all who believe, to all who trust in His forgiving sacrifice.  God, who loves to give, naturally loves a cheerful giver.  But He does not receive as a good work any giving that proceeds from a grudging or fearful or bargaining heart. 

   The call to give our time, talents and treasure to the Lord is even a bit mysterious.  From the perspective of true ownership, or if we should think about what God lacks, what He needs from us, which is nothing, well, then we kind of hit a wall.  God is so great, and we are so dependent on Him.  The whole idea of there being in our gifts some blessing or merit or reason for joy, on God’s part or ours, makes little sense.  As the Psalms teach us, the cattle of a thousand hills belong to God, and if He were to feel hunger, He would have no need to ask us to make Him dinner. 

   And yet, He does ask us.  The Lord God Almighty rejoices to receive what we have to give, however meager it may be.  Jesus accepted the humble service of friends and followers, who fed and financed and cared for Him.  He certainly could have cared for Himself, with ease.  But He chose to welcome the imperfect gifts of the people He loved.       

   It’s a bit like the mom who is a great cook, the queen of the kitchen, who nevertheless invites her little children to help make Thanksgiving dinner.  The stuffing or the pastry or whatever menu item she invites her kids to help with will not be, objectively speaking, as good as she could make on her own.  But in terms of relationship, the lumpy mashed potatoes that the 8-year-old makes for the family are the very best.  Gifts that, in earthly terms, are very imperfect, are in heavenly reality the best part of the family gathering. 

   Thanksgiving dinner is not going to happen if mom or dad aren’t truly driving the action.  But true joy, for parent and child, for all the family, is found in the imperfect but cheerfully given efforts of even the least of the gathered guests.  Involving everyone in the ways that are possible, even just setting the table with napkins and utensils, helps bind the family together. 

   God does something similar for all of us, with His call for our service, for our offerings, for our stewardship.  God honors us, by inviting us to serve Him.  We do not know whether Jesus set up the borrowing of the donkeys in an unreported conversation with their owners, or whether this borrowing was their first exposure to the Man from Nazareth. 

   Either way, what an honor!  We will have to wait for the new heavens and the new earth to find out exactly how it went down.  But what greater honor could forgiven sinners receive than to have Jesus ride their donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?   Or how many times did the little children who sang “Hosanna to the King”  re-tell that day to their children and grandchildren, as they passed on the faith around the family altar?

   If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' you shall say this: 'The Lord has need of it.' The Savior knows we struggle with giving.  We struggle with having.  There is a selfish, scared-to-lose-my-stuff streak in all of us.  You can tell me all day long that if I hang on to my things at all cost, I am not really the owner of my stuff.  If I can’t bear to let them go, then I am being owned by my things.  I might be able to quote this truth back to you on demand.  But that doesn’t mean that when the opportunity to share arises, selfishness and a fearful grasping don’t rise up in my heart. 

   A heart that gives cheerfully to God, a sharing spirit that looks for opportunities to help other people, this true Christian stewardship is a miracle.  And miracles only come from God.  And so, even as Jesus accepted the gift of the donkeys, the cloaks on the road, the song of the children, still, our Lord kept the main thing as the main thing.  You may have never before heard the Triumphal Entry Gospel used to preach about stewardship.  And that’s o.k., because it’s mostly not about stewardship.  What you and I do in response to and in service of the Gospel is never the Main Thing. 

   As interesting and important as stewardship is in the Christian Church, the main point of Jesus riding into Jerusalem is not the contributions of the followers of Jesus.  The main point is Jesus, and what He was doing, not just for His followers, but even for His enemies.  

   The Prophet Zechariah, some 550 years before, had predicted that the Messiah, God’s Anointed Savior, would ride the colt of a donkey into Jerusalem, signaling the beginning of His saving reign.  Lurking behind Zechariah’s words was another royal entry into Israel’s capital, 4-½  centuries earlier, when a dying King David faced an insurrection by one of his other sons, Adonijah, who had declared himself the new king of Israel. 

    When the plot was revealed to him, David, who intended to put his son Solomon on the throne, called for a procession.  He put Solomon on his own mule, and had him ride into Jerusalem.  The crowds hailed him as the true King of Israel, and Zadok the High Priest anointed Solomon the new king.  Royal family strife and intrigue would follow, but after a time of trial, Solomon, God’s man of peace, would consolidate control and rule in place of his father, King David.  (1^st Kings 1 – 2)

   On Palm Sunday, the true Prince of Peace made the final coronation ride into Jerusalem, fulfilling the unrealized promise of Solomon.  Solomon’s name means ‘man of peace,’ but, while his reign was impressive, it ended in strife.  Soon after Solomon’s death, civil war tore Israel apart.  Solomon’s peace could not endure.  Thank the Lord, Jesus is the true Man of Peace, not merely resolving petty conflicts between men, but rather making eternal peace between God and all mankind, by the blood of His Cross. 

   Indeed, as the followers of Jesus made Jerusalem ring with their praises, you might think they got the song wrong.  The angels announced the birth of Mary’s Son to the shepherds by declaring: Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men.  But on Palm Sunday, the place of peace is lifted up: "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"  There is peace in heaven, along with glory, because Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem.  The rebellion of humanity is ended, not by the destruction of the rebels, but by the sacrifice of the One Good Man, the true King of Israel.  Jesus swallowed the sinful insurrection of His own subjects, in His own body.  Jesus washed away the sin of the world and extinguished the flames of hell, with His holy and precious blood, and His innocent suffering death. 

   All the mighty works that His disciples had seen were brought to perfection in Christ’s final and greatest work.  Selfish, stingy hearts are made to love, filled with generosity, by the ever-surprising completion of Jesus’ story, the story of God loving the world to death, for eternal life. 

   Because of the sin that clings to our nature, anything we do that does not flow from true faith in Christ is still stained with sin.  Trust in the victory of Jesus is what gives value to our feeble efforts to love and serve God.  Faith in Jesus makes our stewardship a pleasing gift to the Father.  The honor of supporting the work of Christ with our time, talents and treasure, the privilege of serving Christ by serving people in need whom He brings into our lives, these are the fruit of faith, and the joy of God’s family, from the least to the greatest. 

    And so, we pray to the Holy Spirit to grant us a clear focus on the Father’s perfect gift to us, the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, for our forgiveness and salvation.  And from that greatest gift will flow the stewardship that makes the Lord happy,

in Jesus’ Name,  Amen.