A, Palm/Passion Sunday - Romans 6:3-11 "From the Cradle to the Cross"

In Advent the wreath candles are lit. Four candles brightly burning as symbols of the blessing we receive from the Advent King, our Lord Jesus Christ. The blessed gift of hope, peace, joy, and love has come because the Christ child has come. At Advent we celebrate his coming into the world to be with us. To be born into the same flesh as us, and experience life as we experience it with all of its struggles, humiliations, and good times. Our King has brought in an era of hope, peace, joy, and love, and because he brings these things and gives them to us, we are truly blessed.

But we are not blessed just because he came as a baby. The Christmas cradle in which Jesus was laid, wrapped in swaddling cloths, does nothing for anyone if the story ends there. And we also must realise who this baby is, and what he gave up to be born into flesh, and where being born into flesh physically placed this baby.

We can ask ourselves two questions, “How is this baby in a manger our blessed hope, peace, joy and love?” And, “Why do we need to have someone bring us these blessed gifts?”

The second question first. The question of why! Why do we need an Advent King and why do we need these gifts? If there is one thing the Lenten season, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday does, it is make us critically aware of death and sin; and more specifically our sin and our death. At Ash Wednesday services we hear the words, “From dust you have come and to dust you shall return.” These words remind us of the words spoken at a funeral as the coffin is lowered into the ground and the body is laid to rest – earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This is often a very emotional time; the reality hits home that this is the end; we will not see the person again in this life time. Death is something very real and one day our bodies will all make a similar journey.

Jesus Christ born as a human being was born into the same flesh as us. Sin was the environment into which he was born, just as we are all born into a sinful world so too was the Christ child. There was no special treatment from humanity for the Son of God. In fact he had to be born into this world of sin, he was appointed to save us because we are not capable of doing it. His conception and incarnation was an act of God, bringing God the Son into the body of a person – Mary. No woman has the power to conceive and give birth to God let alone determine any child’s identity before conception and birth. This act of God was the plan of God the Father, incarnating God the Son, through the work of God the Holy Spirit – into your reality and my reality too.

And what a reality it was: God the Son born to a mother in transit on a donkey, born not in hospitable surroundings, but at the back of an inn at Bethlehem. All inns in those days were the haunts of harlots and highway men, all respectable Jewish people stayed in homes at the invitation of the local Jews. So the Son of God was born into the humiliating reality of sinful humanity, giving up all the privileges God’s Son might expect for himself.

We’re so glad he was born into our reality; he knows what it is to go through suffering and struggles in this world. But many others are being born all the time into this same reality and are we glad about their advent into a world of sin, in the same way we celebrate Christ’s advent. Does any body else have their birthdays celebrated in the same way or by as many people as Jesus’ birthday? No! We celebrate Christ’s birthday because of his death day!

This reality brings us to the second question, “How is this baby in a manger our blessed hope, peace, joy and love?” In fact we already have the answer. We celebrate Jesus’ birthday—our hope, peace, joy, and love—because of his death. We are blessed with these four gifts of advent because of the cross. The Christmas cradle is viewed in light of the Calvary cross; our hope, peace, joy, and love come at the expense of Christ suffering on the cross. At the cross we find the crossroads of all reality. At the cross we are given hope, peace, joy, and love in the face of our hopelessness, chaos, wretchedness and lovelessness. At the cross Christ takes hopelessness, chaos, wretchedness, and lovelessness on himself an in doing so gives us the blessings of his holy life in the reality of a fallen world. So Jesus Christ is our hope, peace, joy, and love, but the question still remains, “How”? It is done for us, but how do we get Christ into our lives to take the wretchedness, hopelessness, chaos, and lovelessness away?

Paul tells us in Romans 6: Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:3-11)

This passage of scripture reminds us again of funerals and death. In fact the first half of this text is proclaimed right at the beginning of every Lutheran funeral service. St Paul brings us to the cross roads of the Calvary cross by reminding us of our baptism. Although we know that while in the midst of life we are in death, the crossroads of Calvary switch it around – in the midst of death we are in life. Baptism is the key, we are placed on a new path at the crossroads of Calvary! We live in the midst of hopelessness with hope, in the midst of chaos with peace, in the midst of wretchedness with joy, and in the midst of lovelessness with love, because Christ’s death on the Calvary cross is the death of death. And when death is dead we are in life; eternal life with the one who was raised from the dead.

Let’s now march to the cross with hope, peace, joy, and love, and lay all our lovelessness, wretchedness, chaos, and hopelessness at the foot of the cross having been blessed with Christ’s victory over death, blessed by his holy presence, and blessed by the assurance of our resurrection and eternal life. Amen.