Triumph and disappointment

Zechariah 9:9-10, 16-17

9 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

    Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you;

    triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey,

    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

10 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.

16 On that day the Lord their God will save them, for they are the flock of his people,

for like the jewels of a crown

    they shall shine on his land.

17 For what goodness and beauty are his!

    Grain shall make the young men flourish,

    and new wine the young women.

Matthew 21:1-11

1 When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” 4 This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

5 “Tell the daughter of Zion,Look, your king is coming to you,    humble and mounted on a donkey,        and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

What - if anything - do you expect from God?  What do you hope for?  Is what you hope aligned with what God has promised?  

I have to say it every Palm Sunday, but there’s something disorienting about Holy Week, as we go from Jesus’ triumphal entry, the crowds crying “Hosanna”, hailing Jesus as king, then just a few days later the crowds are crying “crucify him”, then he’s nailed to the cross.  How do we get from here to there?  

What people expected of the messiah was shaped by many prophecies, including the one we read from Zechariah, which envisions a joyous day when a king will arrive humble yet triumphant, riding a donkey, who will put an end to war and bring peace, ruling from sea to sea.  It is just this image which Matthew cites in his Gospel.  That Jesus entered Jerusalem like this was no accident; he signals to the gathering crowd who he is, and they get the message.  They welcome him as the long-awaited king, the one who will fulfill this prophecy and all the others. 

In Jesus’ day the Israelites found themselves vassals of the Roman Empire, subject to Rome but able to practice their religion - provided they didn’t make any trouble.  This wasn’t the worst situation they ever found themselves in, but it was far from idea, and like subject peoples everywhere, they longed for deliverance, that the God who had delivered them out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land would again deliver them from their oppressors.  The people awaited a great king like David who would lead them in triumph over their enemies.  And if you’re already inclined to that expectation, it’s not hard to see how you find it confirmed in Zechariah: Our king is going to rule over everyone and everything.

As is always the case, Scripture shaped their expectations even as their expectations shaped how they read Scripture.  We see what we want to see.  It’s ironic that, as they saw Jesus riding a lowly donkey into Jerusalem, they apparently saw in this moment the one who would conquer their oppressors.  The air was full of anticipation. 

The Scribes and Pharisees obviously understood that, with this gesture, Jesus identified himself as the coming Messiah.  As I said a couple of Sundays ago, the curious thing about the religious authorities is that they don’t seem concerned with questions of truth.   Not only do they dismiss the possibility that Jesus could be the messiah, it’s obvious that they don’t want him to be the messiah.  In fact, they may not want anyone to be the messiah.  The scribes and Pharisees held power and prestige amongst the Jews, but they were still the rulers of a people ruled by other rulers.  Rather than longing for the kingdom of God, it seems they were content with the status quo - their status was already as high as it could reasonably get - and their principal concern was maintaining their position.  Anytime a Jew showed up claiming authority, their first impulse was to regard him as a threat, lest the Romans get spooked and punish everyone.  

That the crowds turned against Jesus certainly owed to the influence of the religious authorities, but it seems they were not terribly difficult to persuade.  As subsequent events unfolded, it quickly became clear that Jesus was not acting out they scripture they’d imagined.  They increasingly regarded him as a trouble-making imposter.  The enthusiasm with which they hailed him is directly proportional to the disdain with which they mocked him.  We raise people up just to cut them down.  Instead of holding ourselves responsible for our foolish hopes, we blame others for deceiving us.  

Probably all of us know something of disappointment in Jesus.  Whether you grew up in church or came to faith later in life, there have probably been moments when you were expectant, even certain, about something that Jesus was going to do for you or some one you prayed for, only for nothing to happen.  Or perhaps you were convinced that if you believed in Jesus then everything was going to work out, that all of the rough places would be made smooth.  Maybe you absorbed teaching about Jesus that your actual experience of life increasingly called into question; the things you were told were true sure don’t seem to be true.  And then what do you do?

One option is to concede that all of this stuff about Jesus was nonsense, that it’s only for the weak and feebleminded, that anyone with their eyes open would not possibly believe.  You might even quote Paul: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”  At least in “high culture” this is the default attitude toward anyone who actually believes Christ is king.  Abandoning the faith, feeling a bit foolish for ever having believed, is a journey a lot of people have taken.  

The thing about the crowds on Palm Sunday is that they proclaim the truth even as it’s clear that they don’t really understand the words they proclaim.  They are right that Jesus is king, but they don’t really know what that means.  

It’s a discomforting thought, but we must continuously face up to the reality that, to some degree or another, when we confess that Jesus is king, even though we speak the truth, we don’t fully understand what we’re saying.  We have ideas in our head that others have imparted or we’ve made up ourselves about who Jesus is and what he’s all about it.  It’s inevitable that we create Jesus in light of our expectations rather than conforming our expectations according to what Jesus has said and done.  

The truth which is plain to see but which nevertheless remains hidden from view is that Jesus is a humble king, he arrives not on a war horse but a donkey, he triumphs not through making his enemies suffer but by suffering himself.  It’s so tempting to believe that Jesus intends to facilitate whatever it is we take to be a “triumphant” life, when what he promises is that true life, abundant life, is found when we follow him to the cross, that the triumph over death comes through faithfulness even unto death.  Jesus promises that if we die to ourselves we will rise with him.  If we expect Jesus to lead us in triumph that avoids the cross, we’re going to be disappointed.    

The thing is, Jesus does ultimately promise what the crowds hoped for - though on a much different timeline.  It’s tempting to claim that they wanted a material deliverance when what Jesus brought was a spiritual deliverance, that he’s a king not on earth but in heaven.  He saves us from the power of sin and death, but doesn’t deal with the Romans or earthly oppression.  Our salvation happens in some invisible realm, and the crowds were guilty of profound category error.  

The spiritual/material distinction runs deep in our thinking, but Jesus, in his incarnation, in the Word made flesh, makes it impossible for us to separate them.  The salvation the Gospels envision is indeed a time when, in the words of Zechariah, “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.”  Or in the words of Jesus, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven”.  

If we are disappointed in Jesus it might because - not that our expectation were too high - but that they were too low.  Jesus does teach us to expect a new heaven and a new earth, but this possible not despite the cross but because of it.  That the kingdom comes is only because the powers of sin and death have been defeated, because finally the one who is humble will be exalted.