Sermon for Palm Sunday-April 17, 2011

“Confessing the Cross of Christ” (Philippians 2:5-11)

1.             Sanctify us in the truth, O Lord, Your Word is truth.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  This weekend is a big weekend isn’t it?  We’re not only celebrating the beginning of Holy Week on Palm Sunday, but we’re also rejoicing that four young people from our church are confessing and confirming their Christian faith through the Rite of Confirmation.  That’s why it’s good that we look at the Epistle lesson from Philippians chapter 2.  Here we see that the Apostle Paul calls us to confess with our lips that Jesus Christ is Lord and that he humbled himself even to the point of death on the cross so that through Him our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life.  The message is entitled, “Confessing the Cross of Christ,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.             With the Rite of Confirmation our confirmands will be confessing before God and the world, “This is what I believe, teach and confess.”  This is the faith that Jesus died and rose again to save me.  This is the faith that came with the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.  This is the faith that is mine by the Word of God.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 that, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”  This is the faith that allows me to receive the very body and blood Jesus gave on the cross, in with, and under the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper.  For faith believes and trusts Jesus’ own words that say, “This is my body; this is my blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  This faith also tells me that, “where there is forgiveness, there is also life and salvation.”
3.             Many people today look upon confirmation as a sort of graduation from the church.  But, this isn’t true.  This weekend simply begins another part of the journey of faith that our Lord has set before our confirmands and before us as well.  And for this journey we’ll all need strength.  When you go on a hike, you might walk ten miles the first day, but without rest and food, the second day will bring only 8 or 9 miles.  So it is with faith.  It needs to be fed and nourished with God’s Word and with the Sacraments.  If it isn’t it will weaken to the point of death.  That’s why God has given to us His Church to freely offer God’s nourishing means of grace through Word and Sacrament for all our lives.
4.             It is good that the confirmands have had three years of instruction in the Christian faith.  In an age when there’s so much confusion about religion and spirituality it is good that the young people of our church have received a foundation of teaching from Luther’s Small Catechism in which to build upon the faith that God has given to them for the rest of their lives.  It is sad that so many people today don’t know how to express their faith in what they believe.  Take for example a scene from the film, “Hannah and Her Sisters,” where a character played by Woody Allen tries to tell his Jewish parents that he has difficulty believing in the God of their faith. His mother won't hear such nonsense and locks herself in the bathroom. Allen's character shouts after her, "Well, if there's a God, then why is there so much evil in the world? Just on a simplistic level, why were there Nazis?" From behind the bathroom door the mother cries out to her husband, "Tell him, Max." The father replies, "How in the world do I know why there were Nazis? I don't even know how the can opener works!"
5.             The problem of evil is one of the biggest questions facing many people today.  Evil confronts us in many ways, and demands some kind of an answer. Regardless of whether you believe that God exists, that you are god, that everything is god, or that there is no god, some kind of answer is needed. To us as Christians, the question is posed in light of the view of the God that is presented in the Bible, but all beliefs and everyone has to come up with some kind of explanation. The problem of evil demands some kind of philosophical response, but also one that satisfies us in our very existence.  In Confirmation class you have had the opportunity to learn God’s answer to the problem of evil.
6.             The Apostle Paul confronts the problem of evil in our Epistle lesson today.  In Philippians 2:5-11 he writes, “⁵Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
7.             The Bible clears up any confusion about who we are, who God is, what’s wrong with the world, and what can be done about it.  The Holy Spirit uses His Word to give to us the mind of Christ to renew and transform our minds to the things of God. The Bible tells us that because God gave to Adam and Even the choice on whether to love him or reject him, we see that in their rejection of God’s commands sin and evil came as well.  For many of us, the problem of pain and evil is the platform from which the questions of life are asked and answered. C.S. Lewis put it this way, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
8.             The question of God's presence in the midst of evil is answered in the shadow at the heart of a different question: Where was God at the crux of human history? As the disciples' gazed at the cross, their expectations were dashed, their hopes shattered, and they couldn’t see God in the midst of the turning point of history. But at the cross, what men at first could not see was the very triumph of good over evil.
9.             This is what we celebrate on this Palm Sunday.  Our Lord Jesus making His way to the cross to win for us victory over all that is evil:  sin, death and the power of the devil.  We see Jesus enter Jerusalem as a humble, meek, lowly king, not mounted on a royal horse, but on a donkey.  On the other hand, the glorification of this king is suggested by the garments and branches that His followers scattered in His path and the shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
10.             More than any other New Testament passage, Philippians 2:1-11 demonstrates how the great prophecy of Isaiah 53 was fulfilled in the suffering and glorification of Christ.  The Apostle Paul asks us as well to follow Jesus into His humiliation.  In order to follow Jesus we must get rid of all of our selfishness that’s so often among us.  Family life is often ruined because one member places his own self-interest above the family’s welfare.  Employers and workers frequently are locked into labor disputes because each side contends the other is unreasonable.  It seems that most political and economic arenas of life are saturated with the desire for getting ahead in this life.
11.             From the common citizen to the highest office in our land, the triumph over the self is the crying need of our time.  The Apostle Paul tells us that this can only be answered in this way, “Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”  As Christians, to have a Christ-like mind, we put aside the world’s splendor and glory.  To have a mind like Christ and confess Him as Lord, it is essential that we’re constantly being taught by Him in His Word and receive from Him His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of our sins.  To effect a change from selfishness to selflessness requires a change caused by our Lord Jesus.  Our thinking must be released from sin; our mind is brought to be sorry and repentant of our sins, and our soul is moved to bless the Lord in thanksgiving for all the benefits He has given to us.
12.             Christ laid aside His divine glory and humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death for our sins.  This is our greatest blessing.  What joy it is to bask in the forgiveness of sins that He gives to us.  And just as Christ humbled Himself unto death, so God the Father also glorified Him, giving Him the highest name of all—Jesus.  It is His name and His cross that we continue to confess before one another and the whole world all our lives because of what He willingly did for you and me to bring to us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.  Amen.