King Jesus

We begin in the Gospel of Saint John with a citation from Holy Scripture, from the Book of the Zechariah:

The Lord has ordained that a tableau — a lesson depicted on an living icon — be broadly displayed on earth concerning kingship and power. It is wide in scope. It begins with His entrance into human history in David's Royal City, but not in a costly, jewel-encrusted cradle. Rather, He lies amongst barnyard animals in a manger, which is a feeding trough. (The word comes into English through the French mange, to eat.) For his family is esteemed too lowly to be accorded even the meanest accommodations at an inn though His Mother is in extremis, about to give birth. Today, He makes His royal entrance into the seat of first-century royal kingship, Jerusalem, but not riding a broad-shouldered stallion through an arch of victory as in Rome. No. He makes His royal progress sitting astride the humblest among beasts, the donkey. Truly, even that humble animal is too exalted for His purposes. So He rides the foal of a donkey, a donkey's colt, in a culture that deemed children to fall beneath the dignity of mature humans. (Indeed, in Graeco-Roman art, people of lower social rank were depicted in the stature of children.)

This is no accident, no first-century cultural particularity which eludes us. It is explained in the ninth chapter of Zechariah. The donkey, a laughable shadow of a horse, has been carefully chosen. For our God is nauseated to the point of rage by human vainglory:

The vision of Zechariah here is one of a kind of peace, announced by a sovereign God, in the midst of invaders ruinous to Judah. But, today, on the occasion of the Lord's entrance into an armed camp, the occupied Jerusalem, this Victoriosissimum regem, this victorious king, comes. He comes .... alone and with nothing. There are no laurels upon His brow, no glittering entourage in bright armor, He comes .... having nothing, emptied of His Almighty glory and power.

The scene will anticipate His being delivered into hands of the Roman power, Pontius Pilate:

or more pointedly,

The point here is not pacifism but rather awesome power .... set aside, Almighty power set beside earthly power. For Who rides in a carefully staged victory procession through the high gates of the ancient city having no army, no personal guard, nor even a proper horse? Either He is a madman, or He is God.

One way to the read the Holy Scriptures is as a long meditation on kingship. That the Lord Jesus does not wish to be compared to earthly kings — an absurd proposition — He has made dramatically clear at the feeding of the multitudes. As He will say to His Disciples later in disgust,

God had brought the multitudes alone into the wilderness and fed them manna. Do the people not perceive it, the hallmark of their identity, God's chosen people, the people of the promise?! Do even the Twelve not perceive it?! He had asked them, "Who do you say that I Am?" and then revealed His Divinity of the Mount of Transfiguration. He has raised the dead. He has healed the incurably lame and disfigured. He has tamed the winds and waves with the mere utterance of a word.

The witless multitude think it a grand thing to crown Him king after seeing His marvelous "magic tricks." What?! Do they not understand that they stand before Almighty God?! Do they not remove their sandals and press their foreheads to the ground?! Instead, their response is little more than strike up the band and declare a holiday.

Their response, lacking all proportion, was foreseen nearly two millennia earlier, described in the First Book of Samuel, where the multitude demands,

And the LORD (through His prophet) declares,

But a king they must have! For kingly pomp thrills them, like unto the ostentation of Tyre and Philistia. And, no doubt, the memory of the Faro's pageantry has not faded from their collective memory.

Samuel is disconsolate. And then the LORD utters one of the saddest and most important sentences in all Holy Scripture:

Thus does the lofty ideal for mankind — God enjoying daily communion with His people in Eden, God alone with His people in the Sinai wilderness, God ensconcing his people within a Land of Promise with Himself in the midst — fails. God's plan for mankind fails. God is pushed aside as Israel becomes fascinated by the shiny baubles of other nations, a new idolatry.

What exactly does it mean when theocracy fails? What does it mean when God-as-king is overthrown? To understand this complex question, let us consider the possibilities for human governance replacing God's rule. History provides examples. We find one in the fourteenth-century Europe with Pope John XXII, who sets out to subjugate the world with armies, inquisitors, torture, and burnings at the stake. He excommunicates the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV. Here is the far right-wing, police-state example of human governance in God's Name. On the other side, we have the extreme, break-away Franciscans under the leadership of Fra Dolcino gathering armies of guerrilla fighters, robbing and killing the wealthy and re-distributing their lands and riches to the poor. Here is the far-left wing, communist example of governance in God's Name. They called themselves "the New Apostles."

Here is context for the Master's prohibition on political governance by His Church. And He tells the Twelve,

Not to claim prerogative, but to give all claims away, even to give one's life .... as a ransom. In this we hear echoes of the Damon-and-Pythias ideal of friendship so prized by the Apostles, which Jesus had distilled into one golden sentence:

What does it mean when theocracy fails? It means that we have failed, that we have come to the ultimate end of our worst excesses. For God's ideal for governance is that we rule ourselves — reigning in our excesses, conquering our lust for power, money, and sexual self-gratification. Each morning and evening, we pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" — God's will for each of us honored on the earth — this is theocracy.

And then nearly two thousand years after the prophet Samuel and about two thousand years ago, He appears: God in our midst, Emmanu-el. We had forgotten who or what we were supposed to be. We had forgotten where we were going. So once again He showed us the ways of God. He showed us perfect justice. He showed us perfect mercy. He healed disease and raised the dead, leaving no doubt that He is Life itself, our Lord and our God, the Holy One of Israel. And He takes the multitudes into the wilderness not once but twice — the 5,000 and then the 4,000 — where every person is satisfied with the Bread of Heaven. Almost nothing is left over, for this is the nature of God's provision and governance — that we depend always on Him. He is our security for tomorrow, and trust is the nature of theocratic governance.

But as Israel made demands for a king of Samuel, so they demand a king from Jesus. And this repeated demand marks the limit of what God will stand. As God had replied, "Give them their king," so the God-man set His sights on Jerusalem and shows them a king. He rides through the fickle crowds who had rejected Who and What He Is. He hears their mania. He sees their clamor. And He rides on in silence upon a beast that mocks earthly kingship.

Before long, they will resent His indifference to their zeal and adulation. They will revile Him in their manic state of soul and mind. And they will cry out, "Crucify! Crucify Him!"

Pilate will ask them, "Do you not want your king?" They reply, "Give us Bar-Abbas!" which is translated, "son of the father" .... of another kind of father, the father of lies, rebellion, murder, and self-deception. Here is the father of towering pride and pandemonium .... all demons.

King Jesus rides the beast that only God could ride: the little foal of the lowly donkey surrounded by the glittering and gaudy display of Roman power. Ride on in majesty, O King of realms beyond our reach. Ride on, O Author of our lives! Ride on, ride on, O Lord and God, for we yearn for Your rule and mastery of the world! Ride on, O Sovereign Dread, for we are the sheep of Your hand and the lowly lambs of Your pastures. Ride on in majesty, Emperor of the Universe, for Yours alone is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory unto the Ages of Ages. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.   Amen.