“CHRIST THE LAMB OF GOD AND ALSO THE ASS OF GOD”

Saint Matthew 21: 1-9

Palmarun: 10 April Anno Domini 2022

Fr Jay Watson, SSP

In The Name + of Jesus


Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the week when God’s Word comes to you with the words of your Lord’s passion and death. Today is commonly called Palmarum after the Latin word for palm(s). Good. Good to remember that those who had faith in Jesus as Christ, as Messiah, could cut down branches to strew them before His way. Better to know that He was The Way—the way of suffering and dying for you and your sins; all the way to the “place of the skull.”

Today could also be called Asinam, the Latin for ass or asses. (St. Matthew writing in Greek uses Onos(n).)

Sadly, time changes the meaning of words. Sometimes the reasons are benign sometimes they are diabolical: e.g., “gay” or several male Christian names which are now used as synonyms for male genitalia. Juvenile or Demonic? More the latter.

But with animals, sometimes the observable (seeming observable at least from a, Aesop’s Fables perspective at the least) traits can be transposed to humans. Your Lord after all referred to Herod as “that fox” [Lk. 13.32]. Wise as serpents and gentle as doves; both with Biblical warrant.

Some good-natured humor as been shared over some pastors who appreciate the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (the “King James”) for the Sunday lections, wherein they can say “ass” rather than donkey. Two legitimate words that mean the same thing. But whereas donkey seems “sweeter” and “cuter,” ass has the connotation of stubbornness and a bit of…rebellion? More in due course.

The word ass occurs in the Bible hundreds of times. The ass was an important animal.

There are numerous other Biblical events where the ass is mentioned, at least in a salutary and useful “means” (instrumentality) kind of way.

But where is The Lord in this homily the impatient listener complains?

The ass points to Jesus (did you not hear the Old Testament from Zechariah) like the worm(s) point to Jesus.  All Scripture testifies of Me says Christ [Lk. 24.27; Jn. 5.39].

Do you not confess that you are a worm? As a sinner you are worm. Think not? Some of you were here during Lent when we sang TLH # 154 ‘Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed.’ You sang the words in stanza 1: “…would He devote that sacred Head for such a worm as I?”.   Yes, He would. He became sin for you on The Tree, so certainly He became a worm for you also on The Cross. Both the words “worm” and “wormwood” also occur numerous times in the Bible. Manna in the desert—God’s Gospel deliverance would become rotten with worms when the Hebrews sinned by not obeying God’s Word. Worms point to death (maggots) and death is the result of sin. Unrepented sin leads to hell. Jesus repeats three times that in the flames of hell, the “worm dieth not” [Mk. 9.44].  Evil King Herod has his body consumed by worms when he suddenly dies in Acts 12 after blaspheming the Living God.

Worms point also to wormwood, which is linked to gall—“gall” something bitter to endure; gall is bitter, sour, wine “gone bad.” Our Lord who becomes a worm for you drinks down your bitter trespasses; he drinks your “gone bad” while He suffers: “…they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall; and when He had tasted thereof…” [Mt. 27.34]. This your God/Man drank for you—from a sponge, attached to a hyssop branch; the same hyssop which, daubed in the blood of an innocent lamb, painted the doorposts and lintels of the Hebrews on the night of Exodus.

So yes, you Jesus became an ass for you since you are asses in your sins. Nebuchadnezzar in his apostate madness rolled around amongst the asses. When you sin you too come close to the stubborn herd. Esaias and Jeremias write of back-sliding Israel comparing them to the obdurate ass that needs to have a bridle in its mouth (the Law) for the ass “snuffeth up the wind” i.e., looks to the carnal pleasures of the world for its itching ears…it’s long pointed ears. Even author Carlo Collodi has Pinocchio turning into an ass on Pleasure Island when he disobeys…his father (Geppetto).

But more Jesus is needed. While King David fleeing Jerusalem is not explicitly placed upon an ass, the creature is mentioned—it is a beast of burden and is used for carrying supplies and necessities as well as people. As David flees the city, he, like His Son, and Lord (God) weeps as he passes the Mount of Olives. Jesus wept for you and your sins, O Jerusalem, as He descended from the same Olivet INTO Jerusalem on Palm Sundy—The Sundy of Asses. So too we assume, implicitly, that the Blessed Virgin rode on an ass from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Was there an ass in the stable? Isaiah writes “the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his Master’s crib.” [Is. 1.3] (nod)

What the Prophet foretold; Jesus fulfilled. Jesus became the ass, the beast of burden, bearing all your sins upon His innocent flesh, even as the ass and the colt, the foal of the ass, bore His perfect, sinless, and immaculate Body into the Holy City; the True Temple coming to redeem the fallen temple and the fallen temples of sinful man!

The humility and meekness and stubbornness and disobedience of the ordinary ass Jesus assumed for you. God The Second Person in His state of humiliation took all your sins upon himself to ride all the way to Calvary.

   “Ride on, ride one, in majesty!

     In lowly pomp ride on to die.

     Bow Thy meek Head to mortal pain,

     Then take O Christ, Thy power and reign.”

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

 

 

Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194