Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

My dad told quite a few Aggie jokes while I was growing up, but when I headed off to Texas A&M, that's when he really started piling them on. Once he quipped, "Did you know that the phrase 'smart Aggie' is an oxymoron?" To which I replied, "On the contrary, 'smart Aggie' is redundant."

At first glance, the phrase "humble victory" seems like an oxymoron, words that don't seem to fit together. Victory usually comes by power and might, not by humility. But during Holy Week, we will watch Jesus accomplish a humble victory over our greatest foes: sin, death, and the devil. And He freely gives us the victory of eternal life by grace, to be received by faith alone. But we can't see His humble victory with our eyes, but only through faith. As we ponder this week on Christ's entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and then His sufferings and death, Christ looks anything but powerful and victorious, but rather humble and defeated. So if the Christian Gospel is true, that means that Christ must have accomplished a "humble victory" which seems like an oxymoron, but as we'll see, "humble victory" is the paradoxical way our God accomplished salvation in Jesus Christ, the way He distributes that salvation.

On Palm Sunday, many Jews had come to think that Jesus might be the Messiah, the coming King sent by God, the son of David they thought would restore Israel to the glory it had experienced under David and Solomon. So the crowd was excited about the prospects of Jesus being a powerful political figure who would liberate the Jews from Roman oppression.

But Jesus had other plans. He wasn't that kind of king, and His kingdom is not like others in this world. He was a humble King, who placed Himself under the Scriptures; He came to fulfill the Scriptures, and as we heard in our Old Testament reading, the coming King would be humble, lowly: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." Jesus had to be a humble King, because the Scripture said He would be. And we can learn from His example here: when we sinfully rebel against God's Word and think we know better than He does, we must remember that God's own Son did not balk at placing Himself under the Holy Scriptures, so we also must humbly bow before God's Word to receive its teachings.

And from God's Word we should recall the time Jesus said to His apostles, "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45). If this King was going to win victory over sin and death for His people, it was going to be through humble self-giving, not by an outward show of power and might. And in doing this, He sets the example for us also, that we are to be humble servants of others.

St. Paul put it this way in today's Epistle: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8) Jesus is not your typical King, power hungry and ruthless-but humble, a servant. Even though Jesus, as the Son of God, truly was equal with God the Father, He did not consider this something to brag about, but instead humbled Himself, made Himself nothing, took up human flesh in order to obey God's Law perfectly in our place, and then fulfill the substitutionary death for our sins that the Scriptures predicted.

And this Good Friday, we will see Christ's humility in His suffering and death narrated in the Gospels. While worldly rulers make their mark by the exercise of their power in their lives, King Jesus makes His mark by His refusal to exercise His power and instead suffer and die. It is only in His lowly Passion that we finally understand the reason Jesus entered Jerusalem in such a humble manner and the sort of Messiah He would be. Only on the cross can we see that He is the Messiah, God's servant, the King of the Jews, just as the sign above Him said. As Isaiah the prophet had predicted, "He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Again, Isaiah said, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed." Only the death of the Son of God could accomplish all of that.

Yet through all of Christ's service, suffering, and dying, we also know that through this He was victorious over sin, death, and hell, and won the victory of eternal life for us. So His victory indeed is a humble victory, and that's no oxymoron. With Jesus these two words fit together perfectly. "Humble victory" might seem like an oxymoron, but it's not; rather, "humble victory" a mysterious paradox by which God has reconciled the world to Himself in Jesus Christ.

And then, out of pure grace and His zeal to save you, God gives you participation in this victory through the humble means of words, water, bread, and wine. In the humble waters of Baptism, which seem to be weak and insignificant, the Lord places His Word to forgive your sins, grant you adoption as God's children, and unite you with Christ's death and resurrection, giving you the eternal victory. When Satan and your conscience accuse you of guilt and shame, the Lord calls you here to humbly confess your sins and receive Absolution through the pastor, Christ's "humble instrument" (TLH 331) placed here to give your conscience strength and encouragement in the forgiveness of sins.

And now this morning we again sing out to greet this King who humbled Himself so that He could suffer to save us from the guilt of our sins, as He triumphally enters into our presence with His true body and true blood, as we cry out: "Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!" "Lord, save us now!" That's what "Hosanna" means. And the Lord does it. Jesus gave His body and shed His blood on the cross, for you, for the forgiveness of all of your sins, and now He comes to give you that same body and blood in the Holy Supper. You have a King who truly sets you free from sin, death, and hell, by His humble victory over all your foes.

So now, take up your cross daily and follow after this humble King each day, living humbly in the confidence that for Christ's sake, God is pleased with you and has set you free from eternal death and has given you the victory of everlasting life. We prayed for such humility to follow Christ's example in our Collect of the Day: "Almighty and everlasting God, who hast sent Thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take upon Him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross that all mankind should follow the example of His great humility, mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of His patience and also be made partakers of His resurrection."

But what we pray for there, God has already given us in Christ. In our Epistle, Paul says, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus." That is, have this mindset of humility that has already been given to you through Baptism into Christ and faith in Him. So how does this mindset work out in practice? In the verses leading up to our Epistle, St. Paul shows us the way of humble victory over selfishness, the way that Christ Himself lived. St. Paul wrote, "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

The mindset or attitude or outlook described here is given to you in Christ Jesus your Savior, so live it out: "be in full accord and of one mind," that is, united in Christian faith; then "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves," and look out for the interests of others, helping your neighbor wherever you can.

Of course, you can also see in this description of the Christ-like life of humility how often we have fallen short, and we poor, miserable sinners certainly have often done things from rivalry and conceit, proudly considering ourselves more significant than others, looking out for number one and forgetting about our neighbor. Too often we have been like Mac Davis, finding it "hard to be humble when we're perfect in every way." For these sins we must repent and ask for God's help to put these sins to death, but the Good News this Holy Week is that Jesus came not merely to give us an example, but much more than that, to accomplish humble victory over the condemnation that we all deserve for our sins, so instead He has given us the victory in the forgiveness of all of our sins, and in the bestowal of His perfect righteousness over us. And therefore, as St. Paul concludes our Epistle, "Therefore God has highly exalted [Christ Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.