Chemnitz’s Homily Outline for the First Sunday of Advent (Ad Te Levavi)

The following is my translation of Chemnitz’s homily outline for the First Sunday of Advent (Ad Te Levavi) found in his Postilla (Vol. I, pgs. 4–5). The gospel text is Matthew 21:1–9. Parentheses indicate the Scriptural citation or contain Chemnitz’s notes. Square brackets indicate my personal annotations. See also Chemnitz’s homily outline for Palmarum.

Chemnitz’s Homily Outline:

1. “Firstly, here with today’s Gospel, we thereby make the the beginning of the Sunday gospels in our churches, we deal with the fact that our King and our High Priest is not a newly introduced Messiah, but rather, He is the same one who was promised to the Fathers, in whom they also hoped, the one whom God the Father finally has sent and given that all the world hear Him (Deuteronomy 18[:15–22]), and through whom they ought to be saved, to whom God has pointed us toward in prophetic Word, and He alone that we ought to hear, receive and thereby abide in. This foundation is shown and demonstrated today to all pious Christians from God’s Word, so that we may be certain that we have the right Messiah, and, besides this, that we have the old faith which all the Fathers and the Prophets had. Of these two chief points the Jews were lacking, who when their Messiah came to them, they did not want to recognize Him nor receive Him, as John laments in John 1[:11], “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him,” etc. Even today, the blinded Jews are lacking both of these two pieces and thereby lose their salvation. Here, we hear who the right Messiah is, and how we ought to correctly recognize Him and accept Him with the old pious Jews and the holy prophets, that we do not want to know of any other messiah than the one whom the Fathers and the Prophets saw and knew in the Spirit, and the one whom they also pointed us toward.
2. Besides this, we ought to consider this in relation to Advent, what a great blessing of God it is that that this Messiah did not only come once in the flesh to accomplish the work of salvation such that He is now gone now that He is in His glory and will no longer concern Himself with us, His children, here on earth as to whether we come to salvation. Rather, we ought to lift up our souls today and learn to recognize this grace and blessing of God, that the same one who obtained and merited salvation for us wants also to come to us now today and also bring it about with us that He will give us into our laps the goods which He has obtained for us that we may also partake of them through the means [of grace], of which the prophet speaks when he says, “Say to the daughter of Zion: Behold, your King comes to you!” [Zechariah 9:9], etc. And who this daughter of Zion is, namely, not only the Jews, but rather also the Gentiles, until the end of the world, as the prophet says. And when we are reminded of this and told this today at the beginning of the Sunday gospels, so we ought to thank our dear Lord Jesus Christ for it from our hearts and be happy about it, as the prophet says, “Rejoice, you daughter of Zion!” so that when we go elsewhere, and do not consider this high and great blessing of God as we ought and do not always thank God for it, that we nevertheless today do this at the very least in the great congregation of God (Gemein Gottes), when we are with one another so that God may be given His due of many thanks from many people together, as St. Paul says in His second epistle to the Corinthians [2:1:11, 14, 15; 9:12, 15].
3. But chiefly, this is also to be well-noted, that in today’s Gospel we have a beautiful guide as to what the right ancient religion and doctrine is, which bears witness that this alone is the truth of the divine Word and is a power of God unto salvation for those who believe in it (Romans 1[:16–17]).”