Sermon for July 7, 2014

This being Independence Day weekend, radio, TV, and the internet focus on all things patriotic. And as we struggle with the hangover of two bitter wars and new insurections in the Middle East where we spent so much money and shed so much blood, politicians continue to focus on victory. Put those two things together--patriotism and victory--and you’ve got an almost unbeatable combination. Iit is very helpful for the coffers of any corporation and the  future votes for any politician to talk patriotically of this nation’s manifest destiny to exercise dominion from the Atlantic to the Pacific and of our nation’s supposedly divine selection as a city on a hill. We celebrate our success.

This being the week nearest July 6 in our lectionary, coincidentally we have a lesson from Zechariah that addresses the patriotism of Hebrew people, as it talks of God’s victory and paints a picture of God arriving like the Allied forces liberating Paris some seventy years ago. The lesson is complete with talk of bow and arrow, the weapon of choice in the ancient Middle East, and how the new kingdom will stretch from sea to sea. Sound familiar? It fits so nicely with our image on Independence Day of ourselves as God’s chosen, indeed God’s weapon to bring peace and stability. But it also explains why the Middle East remains such a disputed chunk of real estate after all these years and why world peace is so elusive. Anyone—Christian, Jew, or Muslim—who is trying to win any sort of war will do his best to associate himself with God triumphing over God’s enemies as the precursor to peace for future generations. The lesson from Zechariah seems custom tailored to a patriotic weekend.

There is a problem, though, in this close association of God with triumph in war. It is that the king’s appearance on the scene in Zechariah does not exactly mirror the image that the typical conquering leader projects in the real world of war and submission. This part of Zechariah was likely written in the fourth century B.C. For two hundred or so years, there had been no Jewish king in Jerusalem. The glory days of David were long gone, about seven hundred years gone, to be exact. The Babylonians had conquered the region and lost it to the Persians. There had been exile and return. It was only by Persian beneficence that the Temple was rebuilt. And perhaps by the time these verses were written, the Greeks had finally taken over from the Persians.

The patriotic thing for Zechariah to do for an underdog audience would be to talk of victory, and he does rally the troops, so to speak, as surely as any D-Day general could. In fact, this piece of scripture has been used by Jews to state their confidence in a messiah’s eventual arrival, and it has been used by Christians to state our assurance that Jesus is the Christ. Yes, the king is coming victorious, and that makes any underdog swell with pride..

But Zechariah starts going counter-intuitive on us, and it may be exactly that propensity of his that becomes good news for you and me and everyone who is seduced by power or shamed by failure. The first catch is that the king is coming on a donkey, not exactly the triumphant war steed. And that might be okay because the donkey was associated with King David and perhaps with the judges of Israel. But here is the second catch that makes it not so okay. In the Old Testament, the biblical story is that when David was seen riding a donkey, it was not in victory coming into Jerusalem, but in humility as he was running away from that city when he was losing the battle. If you need a more current example, imagine that we in this country were told that our leader coming in triumph would be George Washington in a row boat, not the President of later years, but the general early in the war for independence, when he lost big time in Manhattan and had to escape by river after 3000 of his troops were taken captive. Jerusalem or modern America, here is your king; here is how peace prevails, in the form of one who has been humbled by failure.

This is exactly where our good news comes in. Our story as every day humans is that we are often so embarrassed by our failures and simultaneously so seduced by the world’s unquenchable thirst for power and success that we fail to see God in everyday lives. The myth of our own telling is that God is only on the side of winners. We fail to see the risen Christ in the ordinary, either in our own broken lives or in the lives of our all too human neighbors. We then end up at war with ourselves and at war with our neighbors.

But Zechariah reminds us that ultimate victory comes as we learn to see humility and its attendant shame as more than simply yet another thing from which to run. Zechariah states that the dominion of ultimate goodness begins when we see humility as a virtue, when we see David on a donkey and realize that it is what ultimate peace looks like. If we want peace, be humble. The thirst for power, both for the individual and for nations, will only lead to more war. Zechariah calls us to see the glory of riding into town on a donkey. It is a message away from which any politician will run, and in our personal lives we all too often simply don’t get it.

This is the message that the gospel writers were also trying to get across in telling the story of Jesus. If you remember, they had Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey prior to his crucifixion. And at his ascension, the disciples were reminded that Jesus would come again in the same way that he departed. They are scenes taken straight from Zechariah. The kingdom comes when we welcome humility. Knowing that truth will bring more peace to our lives than any amount of bluster or power or preparation for war.

Peace comes in walking humbly. Humility is the ultimate weapon that will change our lives and change the world. In humility, resurrection becomes possible, because one definition of resurrection is to see that which was dead in a brand new life-giving light.

Perhaps the serendipity of this day, with our patriotic talk of God loving a winner, is to put our pride toe to toe with the prophet’s admonition that if we want peace, we will give up such trappings and exhchange them for a ride on a donkey. Pride loses. Our armament will become humility. Only then will the face of the earth be changed. Only then will the peace arrive that all of our struggles have never managed to bring about. It is then that our independence will be replaced by a radical dependence on God’s love.  It is then that the celebration of the kingdom begins. Amen.