A Glimpse of the Future

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

July 6, 2014

A Glimpse of the Future

Zechariah 9:9-12

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 warhorse 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.

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
   I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.

Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
   today I declare that I will restore to you double.

Surely the one who claims to speak for God must be mad.

The centuries have proven the point:

let the prophets speak,

speak from the deepest recesses of their minds

and their words sound like so much gibberish,

so much nonsense,

so much rubbish:

“See the day! See, it comes!

Your doom has gone out.

The rod has blossomed, pride has budded,

Violence has grown into a rod of wickedness.

None of them shall remain,

not their abundance,

not their wealth,

no pre-eminence among them….

The time has come…

They shall know that I am the Lord.”

(Ezekiel 7:10ff)

Who wants to listen to such words?

Think about those who have spoken them:

Ezekiel, a man prone to hallucinations;

Amos, a shepherd, filthy and foul smelling;

Jeremiah, a mere boy, almost laughable;

Hosea, whose very life was a scandal.

And now comes another who dares to speak for God?

A man named Zechariah,

unknown, undistinguished,

telling the people,

“Do not be like your ancestors!”

(Zechariah 1:2)

and then telling anyone who would listen of his visions.

A strange man, an odd man.

The people don’t need anyone

to speak God’s word to them.

Everything is fine; everything is good.

After decades in captivity under the Babylonians,

the people have been freed, freed by the Persians,

freed and sent back to their land.

They’ve gone back to the land God gave them

and rebuilt homes,

planted crops,

expanded their orchards,

tended their flocks.

The crisis of the exile is over and

God’s blessing is clearly on them

for the people prosper.

What need is there for a prophet?

And yet this Zechariah insists on speaking,

speaking an absurd word:

a king riding a donkey?

Even a young child knows that

a king rides a horse, a warhorse.

A king exults in power and might.

What king would ride a donkey,

his feet dragging in the dust

as the animal plods its way along?

A king rides his horse in triumph,

not humbly and in humility.

The prophet speaks nonsense,

he speaks rubbish.

Pay Zechariah no heed.

You and I hear this passage on Palm Sunday

connected with the gospel texts that tell us

of Jesus’ riding a donkey as he entered Jerusalem.

We refer back to this Old Testament text,

Zechariah’s words spoken more than 500 years

before Jesus sat on the donkey’s back.

We hear these words

as a prophecy of the coming of our Lord.

The words of Zechariah point to Jesus

as the Messiah.

Yet, the Lectionary assigns this text to a Sunday

far removed from Palm Sunday

because the words stand powerfully on their own.

The prophet speaks to you and me here and now

even as he spoke to the children of God in those years

following the Babylonian Exile.

The prophet gives us glimpse of the future,

God’s future,

the future that God will create.

It is a future in which all our assumptions

are turned upside down:

A king will ride a donkey,

his feet dragging in the dust.

A king will put an end to war

as he commands peace to all the world.

A king will restore hope

for even the most forlorn.

To ride on a horse is to tower above;

it is to look down on the people.

But to ride on a donkey is to be at eye level with all,

the king and the people looking one another

straight in the eye.

From the back of a donkey

the king sees the world as the people see it,

and the people see the king as one of them.

We cheer the battle-hardened king,

admiring the glint of his sword.

Yet, the psalmist has told us,

A king is not saved by his great army;

a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.

The war horse is a vain hope for victory,

and by its great might it cannot save.

(Psalm 33:10ff)

In God’s future God’s king will bring peace

to even the most belligerent of enemies.

War will be no more.

How can we even imagine a world like that,

when there is so much violence

and war all around us?

But in God’s future God’s king will bring peace.

                                            

The king will bring a broader and wider peace,

reconciling not only those who

war against each other,

but reconciling those who have simply

turned away from one another:

parent and child,

brother and sister,

husband and wife:

two who were once friends,

caught in an argument,

neither willing to take the first step to reconciliation.

God’s king will melt the iciness of their hearts

and the two will sit together again

and they will know peace.

This king will bring peace of mind,

peace of mind to those who feel alone,

adrift,

forlorn,

those who feel themselves caught

in the depths of a pit,

barely able to see light.

To them God’s king will bring hope,

God’s king will bring peace.

This is God’s future.

This is our future

if we’d only embrace it.

Our future,

as unimaginable as it might seem for us:

everyone getting along,

everyone at ease,

everyone at peace,

These sounds like they are the words

of a mad prophet!

But our Lord’s Table gives us glimpse of that future,

God’s future.

For our Lord invites all to come to his table,

invites all to come and be nourished,

come and be fed,

come and know peace,

come and find hope.

This is a table where all are fed,

and no one goes hungry.

This is a table where all are reconciled,

sitting together,

no one more important,

no one less important.

This is a table that gives us a glimpse

of what God wants, what God plans.

The future is already unfolding.

The King has already come,

come riding, humbly, on a donkey.

This King calls us to lives of peace,

lives of grace,

lives of reconciliation.

Do we hear his call?

                                   

The prophet admonishes us:

“Whether we hear or refuse to hear,

whether we see or refuse to see,

The time has come…”

the King is among us, our King.

God’s future has begun.

AMEN