Theme:
Two Meditations
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey…. Zechariah 9.9 (NIV).
Meditation 1
It was June 1967, during the
Six Day War, between
They drove on through the
streets and finally arrived near the
Within a few moments, a jeep
came careering up the steep street. It was the Chief of Staff himself. His
adjutant said later, Everyone was looking around for the way to the Wall,
running like crazy, but we couldn’t find the street. Rabbi Goren was there. He
said follow me….. We kept on running and we got to the Wall. I was the seventh
to get there ! The
Rabbi did not stop blowing the shofar and reciting prayers. The troops burst
into song singing
either fighting
their way through, like the Israeli paratroops,
or visiting
on pilgrimage to the
In around 500BC, the
prophet Zechariah declared that at the moment appointed by God, a man, would
come through the gates of
this man would come as a king, an extraordinary king……..
Extraordinary,
because this king would come, not in violence but in peace, not in conquering
might, but in lowliness, sent by the living God.
His
victory would be over the sin of the world and death.
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of
a donkey….
This is,
of course, Jesus.
Jesus, whom we see
riding on a donkey in through the city gate of
Jesus the King, who rides into
this is where
this is where the Sanhedrin meets,
the Council that will condemn Jesus to death,
and outside its walls is
Yet, still Jesus enters its gates ……
Why ?
Because He is the Servant, promised by the
living God,
In Isaiah 42, the prophet declares that the Lord’s
Servant, will come, He will leave the presence of God and come among God’s
people, a light to the nations, light for the whole world. This is who the man
coming through the gates of
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
And here is how Paul puts it in Philippians
chapter 2, Paul says,
Think on Jesus Christ of
His own loving free will the Lord gave up all He had in the Father’s presence
in heaven, and became a servant, He became a human being. He was lowly and
walked the path of obedience all the way to death, His death on the cross:
And it is as we read Matthew’s Gospel, and
ponder for a moment,
that we realise just how deep the gospel is
here…..
You see, what we have here before us in the
Gospel………
speaks of the whole loving purpose of God,
though
though this is where
the place of betrayal,
though this is where the Sanhedrin meets,
the Council that will condemn Jesus to death,
and though outside its walls is
Yet, still Jesus enters its gates ……
enters its streets,
weeps for its people,
in seeing Jesus coming through the gates of
we see, in fact, the loving purpose of God,
not just for the city then,
but for the whole world now……..
though this world, is the place of violence and bloodshed, and hostility,
though this is the place of betrayal,
though this is where Jesus was condemned to death,
and died on the Cross,
Yet, still Jesus has come into this world ……
and in seeing Jesus come into this world,
we see, in fact, the loving purpose of God,
but for the whole world now……..
For
God so loved the world so much, that He gave His only Son,
that whoever believes in Him may not die, but
have eternal life
AMEN.
Meditation 1
Jacques Derrida, who died a
year or so ago, was a famous French thinker, a philosopher. In a documentary,
he was asked to say something about his life.
The past, the present, and the
future………
This is what he said about the
future……….
He said: You know, there’s a future which is programmed,
predictable, a future that is scheduled.
But there’s another future to come, something or someone will come and it’s
a future which is not predictable. For me that is the real future….. the unpredictable one. The Other
who comes when I don’t expect it.
The real future….. the
Other who comes when I don’t expect it……
All the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
tell us of that day when Jesus set out for
As Jesus came towards the gates of the city,
we see all kinds of hopes and expectations,
there in the crowd………
Some shouted "God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord",
the traditional welcome for any pilgrim who came from far away to
Some, we are told, laid down coats and robes on the road and waved
palm branches before him as He approached the city gate, thinking He was
something to do with the festival going on in the city.
Some were expecting Him to be a new king, who would bring about a change of regime, to
breathe life into their nation. There were probably many who were looking to
Jesus to liberate them, start an uprising this Passover.
So, what we find in the gospels is that the crowd really
did not understand what Jesus He was doing, or who He was. Few it seems,
could see that the prophecy of Zechariah was unfolding before their eyes,
unfolding in reality, on that day outside
And yet, as
Jesus came into the city,
those wonderful, ringing words of the prophet Zechariah
were unfolding in reality
"Do not be afraid, Daughter of
the One who was to come, had come !
"Do not be afraid, Daughter of
You know,
those words did not simply unfold in reality
on that day when Jesus came through the gates of
in an
important way, they are the mark of the life of the early Church too, the early
Church, just like Zechariah the prophet…….
looked
forward, in serious, dynamic, powerful hope that Jesus would come……..
This was
the air that the apostles breathed, and the
the
early believers lived, looking towards the horizons with expectation, looking towards each dawn to see if this was
the day.
if this was the day, dawning………
They, the believers, the Church
lived in the light of that day, when Christ would return….. In the New Testament, we find this keen
sense, this expectation, that Jesus Christ is coming, a keen sense of His return,
an enormous confidence……….
in which they too could say………
"Do not be afraid, Daughter of
Paul
proclaims in the letter to the Romans,
our salvation is nearer now than when we first
believed,
the night is nearly over, the day is almost here………
Christ is coming !
so,
writes Paul, put aside the deeds of
darkness, put on the armour of light, clothe
yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ……….
This is how we are to live !
Peter, in his letter, tells us
– that the prophets of old, searched intently, with the greatest care, with the deepest longing, looking for the day
of Christ’s coming, as the Spirit of
Christ in them pointed them to the day when the Lord would come.
As we come to know Jesus
Christ ever more deeply,
deepening in the love of the Father, through the Spirit working in us………..
so,
as this happens, our hope, for His
coming, will deepen
As our life
in Him deepens, so will spring deep within us, that longing
for His coming again, and for what that day will mean for us.
"Do not be afraid, Daughter of
AMEN.