Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" (Mk 11:9-10).

We’re familiar with this Gospel from another context, that of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We read one of the accounts of Palm Sunday each year as we begin the observance of Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter time, for Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem sets in motion those events. It is this entrance that brings the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of the People to a head, leading to the events of Good Friday and Easter Day.

Today, of course, we read this story in a different context and with a different purpose, for the light it sheds on Christ’s coming into the world. We are not yet at the crisis point of Easter, but instead at that point at the end of the Church Year when we are focusing on the entrance of Jesus into our human reality. Jesus’ disciples and the people who greet him as he comes into Jerusalem are expecting the Messiah, the one who is to establish the kingdom; they are on the edge of expectation, believing that Jesus is the one. "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!" is the cry, associating Jesus’ entry with the kingdom that the Messiah is to establish. "Hosanna" is repeated by those assembled; a word which literally translated means "save now" or "may God save". Once again, the word points to an expectation that God is intervening; that now is the moment long awaited by the faithful.

It is at this precise point that we too stand. Mark’s Gospel expresses the belief of early Christians that they were living in a time when all these things were being fulfilled. Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection, are the beginning of a new age, which will be completed when he returns in power and great glory. It is the age of the Messiah, the age of the Kingdom, when a new reality is established and worked out. It is an end-time, when Jesus’ work is completed, and the victory won. Life over death, forgiveness over sin, salvation and healing over despair and separation.

We live today in this new age, in this end-time, just as surely as his followers then did. So it’s proper for us to have a keen edge of expectation equal to theirs, as we watch and see the way in which God’s Kingdom is being worked out among us and established in its fulness. As the writer John puts it in our second reading, from Revelation, "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near" (Rev. 1:3). This is why we pray, "Thy Kingdom come", because we too are expecting this kingdom to be established and the work completed. But this Kingdom which is to come is in some sense already present, and we are living in the time in which it is fulfilled.

The words of the disciples and the people as they greet Jesus in our Gospel today are also words which we use in our worship, and so they remind us that it is in our worship that we see most clearly the reality of God’s Kingdom present in our midst. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest" are words we repeat at every Eucharist, the words of the disciples and the people. This, too, is a moment of keen expectation for us, for in the Eucharist that we are celebrating we are seeing the promise of the Kingdom fulfilled. Jesus’ forgiveness at work in our broken lives; his victory over death, and new life shared with us in his Body and his Blood; salvation and healing being given to us as we are brought together in fellowship and communion in God’s community, the Church. The Church is not the Kingdom, but it is here, especially at the Eucharist, that we can see something of that Kingdom in outline, prefigured, present in our midst. This is the moment when the kingdom breaks through, and the future becomes present here and now.

God is entering our reality; Christ is coming into the world; we celebrate the Eucharist and see the outline of the Kingdom. Forgiveness, new life, healing and community: how will we respond? God has done this great thing; God is doing this great thing even now; what sort of people are we called to be as we enter the new reality and claim it as our own through grace? Surely our hearts and minds will need to be transformed. It is a new country, another world; but Jesus Christ himself beckons us forward to claim it for our own.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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