A Lowly Glory--March 22, 2021

 A Lowly Glory--March 22, 2021

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war-horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth." [Zechariah 9:9-10]

God's kind of power has never needed a P.R. consultant to hype up God's "brand."  In fact, the God of the Scriptures has always insisted on a kind of lowly glory that doesn't need to brag or boast.  In short, if you have to talk about how "great" you think you are, or need to hoot and holler to get others to notice how "great" you think you are, you are out of step with the ways of the living God.

That has always been true, even of the actual kings and leaders of God's people, going back to the days of ancient Israel.  Israel's kings were supposed to be different.  They weren't supposed to be sovereign--they were shepherds serving under the true lordship and reign of God.  They weren't supposed to trust in their own military power, armies, wealth, or reputations--they were supposed to trust in the covenant faithfulness of God.  And they weren't supposed to judge their success or failure based on how the stock markets were doing or how rich the richest were getting--they were supposed to hold themselves accountable to whether the people were being guided to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.  All of that was supposed to be true from the days of Israel's first kings, even though they all to one degree or another, fell short and sold out for the conventional ways of ruling: bluster and bloodshed and bragging about wealth.

So it's against that backdrop that the words of the prophet Zechariah need to be heard.  When the prophet imagine a future king coming in victory but riding on a donkey, it wasn't a random image or obscure prediction of some unlikely thing.  It's not like the way we think of "prophecies" in pop culture, or even in the old Greek myths.  In the old stories about the Oracle at Delphi, for example, the prophecies made by the Oracle were often so enigmatic that you could completely misunderstand them--that's how Oedipus ends up killing his father and marrying his mother even though he was trying to run away from bringing that prophecy about.  Or in the fairy-tale of Sleeping Beauty, Malificent's curse on Aurora--that she'll prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and thereby fall into a death-like sleep--leads the kingdom to banish all spinning wheels, but still is fated to touch a spindle anyhow.  Or in the old legend of King Arthur, the old prophecy said that the true and rightful king would be able to pull the sword from the anvil, but that wasn't the usual expected way for kings to establish their reign.  These mythical prophecies were all unexpected and even bitterly ironic.  That's not how Zechariah intended his words.

No, when Zechariah announced a coming king who would ride on a donkey, heads were supposed to nod and folks were supposed to say, "Yeah! That's how our kings are supposed to be--lowly and servant, not as dictators, tyrants, or egomaniacs!  That's how God's upside-down power works!"  It was a reminder that God's ways were never supposed to be conflated with the world's usual means of piling up wealth or rattling sabers to get your way.  It was a reminder that the people of Israel and Judah were supposed to embody an alternative lifestyle--an upside-down valuing of things where justice and mercy, peace and righteousness were more important than having a bigger army or a more impressive arsenal.

And so when Jesus comes along on the day we call Palm Sunday, riding into town on a donkey--and a borrowed one who has never been broken or trained to have a rider before, at that!--it was less about checking a box for the fulfillment of some ancient oracle's prediction, and more about embodying how God's Reign was different from the rest of the world.  The Empire would be marching in their soldiers in tight formation, their matching uniforms and gleaming helmets and weapons clanging in the rhythm of their lock-step movements, to show their power and bluster and to remind people who was boss... and then there was Jesus, offering a minority report. His entry into the city was both a deliberate mockery of Rome's image-obsessed military pageantry, and also a callback to what Israel's identity was always supposed to be: humble, serving, faithful, and good.  His choice to ride the stubbornest creature on four legs--and one that had never been ridden on before at that!--would have made for a sharp contrast to the organized precision of Rome's military parade.  And the rag-tag flinging of palm branches and stray cloaks on the road rather than the matching red banners of the Empire would have driven the point home: Jesus doesn't reign like the empires and emperors of history do.  Jesus' kind of reign really is what all of Israel's kings before were supposed to be like but could never bring themselves to fully commit to: Jesus is the king who doesn't need to brag, doesn't need to shout about his greatness, doesn't need to threaten others to get his way, and who doesn't need to kill to be victorious.  He dismantles the tools of war by dying at the hands of the empire, not by killing his enemies.  He creates peace, not by coercion but through suffering love.

And this, dear ones, is our legacy.  This is the story we have been brought into.  This is the upside-down perspective through which we are called to see the world.  It is a glorious vision--but it is a lowly sort of glory, to be sure, from the world's vantage point.

Let me ask, then--what will it look like in your life today for us to be people of this lowly glory?  How can we be more dedicated to serving and putting others first rather than puffing ourselves up?  How can we see the good of others before ourselves or our own group, and see in those choices the character of the Reign of God?

Today, what if our lives were full of such wonderfully lowly glory?

Lord God, turn our vision and our values upside down to align with your own humble reign and suffering love.