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It is the Lord's triumphal entry; He did! He does! He will! But His victory is not the way the world or your sinful flesh would define it. It is a paradox. For even in the jubilant shouts, the smiles, the waving palm branches, there is bitter poignancy and sublime sadness. You know where He's riding to: the "majesty" of the torture-tree.

It is Advent. With penitent hearts look to Christ where He can be found: His Word and His Sacraments. With penitent hearts, pray for His imminent return and the end of time. It is Advent, a good time to look to the Cross--- Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That's the triumph. To triumph is to win, to accomplish a goal; THE GOAL. This "carpenter's son" Who you Confess to be the Christ of God, had already achieved the first triumph; He obeyed all of God's Commandments, perfectly, for 33 years. His entire visibly earthly life. His entire life enfleshed. Jesus had obeyed on your behalf ever since His conception in the womb of the Virgin, ever since His "nativity" it's celebration which we now begin to wait for. In today's Gospel, the second goal was at hand; to die in your place. Christ's goal was to suffer, to be abandoned, ridiculed, wrongly convicted, tortured, and killed as a criminal. Christ's goal was to atone, to purge, to be a burnt sacrifice, to satisfy Divine wrath against sin, to propitiate perfect holy justice. Christ's goal was to clean you of all the filth of your daily sins. He succeeded in His goal by being made sin for you, by taking your name, your "rap-sheet" and record and history; your actions, thoughts, words and nailing them to the cross through His flesh and blood. Jesus is the "author" and "finisher" of your faith. [Heb. 12.2] Authored in eternity but also authored in time at His conception, birth and perfect life; finished in eternity but actually finished in time atop Golgotha: "it is finished."

So filled with Grace, is this Christ of God. Grace is love for those who don't deserve love but get it anyway because the Lover loves them that much. The "triumphal goal" is for Jesus to make peace between you and God. He is the "Prince of Peace," which the angels sang on the night of His nativity. He entered into Jeru-Shalom, Jerusalem, the city of Salem, i.e.: the city of Peace. Even as He once entered into the Holy of Holies in the great Tabernacle situated in Salem during the time of Joshua and his descendents, so now on this Sunday of Holy Week, the same Lord came to tabernacle in the midst of His people. The ones who correctly cried out Hosanna, Hosanna, i.e. Save Now, Save Now received the granting of their petitions. The Lord saves, yes by His incarnation, the first Advent culminating in the Bethlehem stable, but also by His entry into Jerusalem to be slaughtered as blood sacrifice.

There's a beautiful rhythm, a plan, a pattern of "steps" in His choreographed "dance of love." The Lord sends two of His followers to secure, to "loose" two animals. Two is so good. Two: a speaker and His hearer; a pastor and his parish; a lover and His beloved; a Groom and His Bride; the Christ and His Church. Not only is two the number of Jesus' Natures: Divine & Human but also the number of His perfect counsel and will for His brethren: Law & Gospel. "Where two or three are gathered together in My Name there am I in the midst of them."

The two disciples are "sent" (apostle-ized) to get two animals: a donkey and her colt. They "loose" them even as the Lord's ministers continue to "loose" the brethren of all their sins + in His Name. Two "beasts of burden" to symbolize the two covenants, old and new, and to visually show the Christ of God being delivered from the Old Covenant of Sinai into the New Testament of His Body and Blood, the same Body that passes through the city gates upon the back of the young, the New, colt. Between the two. He is carried from the Hill of Olives, wherein the fruit of one kind of tree comes from---producing the oil of anointing, down to the city and then out to a different hill with a different type of tree. On the tree of the cross the real and only fruit of God's love would be crushed and squeezed with the unbearably heavy burden of your sin to produce the saving ointment of Jesus' Blood and righteousness.

Thus the "Good News:" Christ is your scapegoat; Christ is your paschal lamb; Christ is your beast of burden. Oh, He's not a donkey (we're the asses; stubborn, fickle, unpredictable) He is the faithful carrier of all your burdens, anxieties, shameful activities, and brokenness.

That's what He was doing on Palm Sunday, that which He already started to do at His conception and birth, come to His people to be their worker-priest, their law-keeper, their sin-bearer and death substitute. This is a salutary thing to remember in the Holy Season of Advent. You wait to celebrate the Christ-Mass; you wait to celebrate the final judgment; you wait for the final victory parade. But for now, you join the Jerusalem throng. You are here in His family, the genuine city of peace, for here He gives you His Peace in Word and Supper. Like the pilgrims lining the path from Olivet to the Holy City, you too take off your garments so that He might pass over them, so that He might take them upon Himself, which is what He did at Calvary, and you again receive an exchange of clothes. You again are robbed in His Righteousness. Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! Save NOW O Lord!

In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost