First Sunday in Advent—Hosanna: The Cry of Advent Faith
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“The disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him on them. And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road. Others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:
‘Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!’” (Matthew 21:6–9).
We have come to the beginning of a new Church Year. The season of Advent is now upon us.
And that means that we are in this new part of the Divine Service—the Divine Service through the Church Year—part of that bulletin insert, where we are talking about the Introit and the Kyrie.
I just said it, but I will say it again: the theme is that we come before God as sinners needing mercy for all things in life, and we await Jesus who will advent to us and bring us peace.
Like I said, this week there are a few questions and answers related to the Introit and the Kyrie.
“Introit” comes from Latin—introitus—meaning “entrance.” And Kyrie eleison means “O Lord, have mercy upon us.”
That part of the service that we sing—Kyrie eleison—is Greek. Most of the other parts of the Divine Service that are called Ordinaries, because they are ordinarily sung—like Gloria in Excelsis Deo—they all have Latin names.
The Kyrie is the only one with a Greek name: the Greek words for “Lord” and the verb “to have mercy upon.”
The Divine Service technically begins with the Introit, and the Confession and Absolution is a preparation for the Service.
There are these themes—I did not come up with them myself. They come from a video I will send out this week in our This Past Sunday email, and you can also find it on our How We Worship page on our website. At the bottom of that page there is a video called Liturgy and the Life of Christ.
That video shows not only how the Church Year takes you through the life of Jesus, but also how the Divine Service every Sunday takes you through the life of Jesus and the story of salvation.
And we are going to talk a little bit about that today.
But that video shows you the whole big picture.
Like I said, the Divine Service technically begins with the Introit, and then we sing the Kyrie eleison—“Lord, have mercy upon us.” And it is Greek.
It comes from the New Testament itself, from the original Greek. The words for Lord and the verb to have mercy occur together in several places.
They occur in Matthew 15, when the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and begs Him to help her demon-possessed daughter (Matthew 15:22).
They occur in Matthew 17, where a father begs Jesus to heal his son who is suffering from epilepsy and is demon-possessed, whom the disciples were unable to heal (Matthew 17:14–18).
And the third place in the Gospel of Matthew where Kyrie and eleison occur together is in Matthew 20, where the two blind men hear that Jesus is passing by and cry out, saying, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!” (Matthew 20:30).
The multitude that followed Jesus warned them that they should be quiet, but they cried out all the more, saying, “Have mercy on us, O Lord, Son of David!”
So Jesus stood still and called them and said, “What do you want Me to do for you?”
They said to Him, “Lord, that our eyes may be opened.”
So Jesus had compassion and touched their eyes, and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him (Matthew 20:31–34).
That last example of the Kyrie eleison—the “O Lord, have mercy upon us”—points us to a miracle unique to the work of the true Messiah, of whom the prophets wrote: the Anointed One whom God would send to save His people and establish the New Covenant in His blood.
That miracle was the healing of the blind.
God had spoken through the prophets words like these:
“I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand;
I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the Gentiles,
To open blind eyes,
To bring out prisoners from the prison,
Those who sit in darkness from the prison house.
I am the Lord, that is My Name;
And My glory I will not give to another,
Nor My praise to carved images.
Behold, the former things have come to pass,
And new things I declare;
Before they spring forth I tell you of them”
(Isaiah 42:6–9).
The cry of “Lord, have mercy,” or “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy,” is more than people simply asking for help.
The two blind men are saying something more than just asking Jesus for assistance.
It is a confession of faith in the Messiah whom all God’s people of the Old Testament looked forward to seeing for themselves.
The lepers who cried out eleison—“have mercy on us”—the parents of demon-possessed children, and the blind: all believers in the Messiah cry out for our Lord’s first Advent among His people.
They are the multitudes who went before, like in our Gospel this morning.
They looked for the day of the first Advent of our Lord.
And we now sing the same words with them, as we call upon that same Lord to make His Advent among us in the Church through the Means of Grace.
And we await Jesus who will advent to us and bring us peace on the Last Day.
We join in the same song for the same things.
Some of you might have wondered—maybe it was only me—why we would sing “Lord, have mercy upon us” right after we have received Absolution.
Because the first thing that comes to my mind, at least when I say “Lord, have mercy upon us,” is that I think I am confessing sins. And that is one way to say “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
You can also say “Lord, have mercy upon us” like we do in the Litany, when we are praying for people, or when something bad has happened to us or our neighbors, and we cry out, “Lord, have mercy.”
But there is also another way to cry out, “Lord, have mercy.”
Like the two blind men: they cry out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy,” confessing these words even when they are told by the multitudes to be quiet.
We sing these words with them as a confession of faith in the Son of God.
It is an assertion that Jesus is Lord—the Begotten of the Father from all eternity.
“Lord, have mercy upon us.”
And then “Son of David, have mercy upon us” is a confession that He is conceived in time: God in human flesh, born of the Virgin Mary; that He is the God-Man, and He is our Lord.
He is God in human flesh, and He has come to show us mercy.
That is another way to sing “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
The Kyrie is the beginning of the Divine Service right after the Introit, and it is a part of that story of salvation that I told you about, where we are going through the whole life of Jesus in the Divine Service.
The Kyrie is reminding us that the story of Jesus saving us starts before He is born.
It starts in the Old Testament people of God—the Old Testament Church.
They had the oracles of God, the prophecies of the Messiah.
The Old Testament Church was like a woman preparing to give birth to the promised Seed, like Eve, with the promise given to her in Genesis (cf. Genesis 3:15).
And their cry altogether is, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
The same cry of the two blind men: “Lord, Son of David, have mercy upon us.”
When we sing it, we are remembering that the story starts before Jesus is even conceived and born.
But we also cry out with the saints who follow our Lord’s saving work on earth—that we follow that saving work—and we are joyfully preparing to receive mercy from Him here and now in the Divine Service.
And we also cry out for Him to make that final Advent.
During Advent, to emphasize this, we do not sing the Gloria in Excelsis. It was accidentally printed in the bulletin, but I was reminded not to sing it.
That is to emphasize its importance, because we are going to sing it again on Christmas—because those were the words that the angels sang to the shepherds (Luke 2:14).
So we sing it with those who came before to announce to us the birth of the Lord, the birth of the Messiah.
We sing the same words.
And we also sing them with the saints who come after the Lord was born to save us.
And as those whom He will come and dwell among in humility under bread and wine—just as He came and dwelt in humility in body and blood as a baby in a feeding trough—and as those who wait for Him to come again in glory.
We are those who follow after, and we sing it with those who came before.
We sing, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord,” in the song that begins before we partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus.
We sing it along with those who came before the Lord Jesus, like in the Gospel this morning, as they saw their Messiah coming into the great city of the King—to the place where the Temple is—to offer Himself up as a sacrifice for sins on the altar of the cross.
But we also sing it with the saints here, who are about to see Him come to His people—who are now His Temple—to give that Body and Blood that He offered to the Father for our sins to us as a Sacrament and a seal.
It assures us that our sins are forgiven.
It assures us that we can wait for Him to come in glory—not as a Judge to destroy us, but as our Savior to bring us, body and soul, into His eternal Kingdom.
That is how we sing those same words that we heard in the Gospel this morning.
Now, we sing them with those who came before our Lord, and with those who follow after, and with those who look for Him to come again.
And we sing, “O Christ, Thou Lamb of God,” on this day.
We sing it with Saint John the Baptist, who came before the Lord to prepare the way before Him—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
We sing it with him.
And we sing it with those who follow after, after He has dealt with our sins, after He has become the propitiation—not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).
We sing these words not to a dead Lord, but to a crucified and risen Lord.
We sing it as those who follow after Him—crucified and risen—and we sing it as those who look forward to the day when we will sing that same song to the Lamb with all the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
The same way you hear it in Revelation:
“You are worthy, O Lord,
For You were slain,
And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,
And have made us kings and priests to our God;
And we shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10).
That is what they will sing.
And we will sing it in the resurrection to our slaughtered yet standing Lamb.
And that is what we are doing when we sing the words that Saint John the Baptist spoke before us.
We join with all the saints who came before the Lord entered to save us from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
We join with all those saints who now follow after the Lord, receiving mercy from Him now as He enters this place to keep us firm in His Word and faith until we die.
And we sing with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven—and with all the saints dwelling on the earth—the same songs as we await the final Advent of that same Lord, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who was offered once to bear the sins of many, our blood Brother and Redeemer, who to those who eagerly wait for Him will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation (Hebrews 9:28).
Let us pray. O Lord Jesus Christ, King of all wisdom, power, righteousness, and grace, look today with mercy upon us who are troubled, and through Your Holy Word grant us Your blessed friendship. And because You are the eternal Light, and nothing is hidden from You, behold today our misery, danger, and distress. Come to our aid with Your grace and might. By Your meekness, cover our burdensome sin and transgression; impute to us Your righteousness, and despise not our penitential sighing and wailing. Receive us, O blessed King, into Your protection, and stand against the devil, the world, sin, and hell, that they may have no power over us. Grant that we may spend our time here among the flock of Your people and Your Church. Strengthen our hearts with the rich consolation of Your Word, and refresh our bodies and souls through the partaking of Your true Body and Blood. To this end, we commit unto You not only our clothes and temporal goods, but our whole selves entirely. Lead us, Your poor orphans, upon the right way and ascent to eternal rest, that with Your dear angels we may know, honor, and praise You fully in eternity. For You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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