Daily Affirmations - Day 1- Lowly and Victorious: Your King Comes

This week's Theme: Lowly and Victorious

---

Day 1: Your King Comes

My colleague Bruce struggled to voice his request. It came out in a big rush of breath. Would I kindly go with him as his guest to a wedding?

Bruce explained a few details of the complicated personal situation that led to his request. I already knew a little of his story from general office conversation. I felt empathy for him, and having no specific plans for the weekend, I agreed to go to the wedding with him.

“There’s only one thing,” Bruce said to me, once I signaled my willingness to go as his guest. “We’ll have to take public transportation to get there.” I listened as he detailed this new information and then I declined apologetically.

Before you hasten to judgment, let me explain that my worst transgression was not one of pride; only of careless, impulsive youth. I had acquiesced too hastily, without knowing all that I needed for my decision.

It turns out that the wedding was in a far-off suburban location and public transportation would be long and arduous. The practical reality would include, (to the best of my recollection), two buses and a train, with some walking in between— and in wedding finery!

Not to mention the implications of coordinating bus and train schedules for our late-night return trip to my inner-city neighborhood. (These were the days of long ago and far away when the concept of ride-share was not even a glimmer on the horizon, and taxi prices were astronomical).

I felt terrible when I saw his crestfallen face; I understood the pressure he felt in his circumstances. But they did not justify the complications, the inconvenience, and the safety concerns of such a trip.

I had no presumption of, or desire for luxury transportation, but never for a moment did I envision a convoluted public transportation travel plan as part of the invitation. So my too-hasty acceptance of my colleague’s invitation was based on faulty expectations and false assumptions.

I can't help noticing a few parallels with another invitation as I reflect on "Palm Sunday" and the events leading up to the crucifixion and the resurrection. Though in many ways vastly different from mine, the circumstances around this other invitation also included faulty expectations, false assumptions, and a surprising transportation plan.

For three years Jesus had "done life" with a motley group of followers, who had responded to His invitation "Follow Me." He had taught them, encouraged them, challenged them, corrected them. They had eaten together, lived together, socialized together. And during that time they had come to recognize with increasing clarity that Jesus was the One Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote... (John 1:45).

Even when His teaching went against conventional understanding, and was declared by many to be hard, and unacceptable, the Twelve remained steadfast in their conviction. Peter spoke for them all: We have come to believe and to know that You are the Holy One of God (John 6:50-69). And when Jesus asked the very pointed question, "Who do you say I am?", it was also Peter who answered for them all: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15-16).

Yet through all the convincing evidence, the teaching and the encouragement, the challenging and the correction, their concept of Messiah was built on faulty expectations and false assumptions formulated for centuries around a national identity and a secure earthly kingdom. For them the invitation, "Come, follow Me," was a joyful summons into a new era, with their nation freed from Roman rule and oppression, and restored to the glory days of King David.

Remarkably, they failed to grasp the sobering reality of Jesus' explicit explanation: “We are going up to Jerusalem,” He said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn Him to death and will hand Him over to the Gentiles, who will mock Him and spit on Him, flog Him and kill Him. Three days later He will rise” (Mark 10:33-34).

With the privileges of status, glory, worldly rule and grandeur foremost in their minds (Mark 10:35-37) they chose to overlook the parts in the Law and the Prophets that described the Suffering Servant (Isaiah 53), and the righteous, lowly, and victorious King who would choose the humblest mode of transportation:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).

And even as the events of the triumphal entry unfolded before them (Matthew 21:1-11), they still had not grasped the radical concept of Messiah, who had come, not to conquer Rome, but to establish His infinite kingdom far beyond the narrow confines of earth.

Two thousand years later, many still hold fast to their own specific ideas and imaginings of how and when Messiah— God and King— should respond to this world's citadels of oppression, evil, and suffering. And even though Scripture shows us that God has already set in motion His plan to redeem and restore the world— even though Jesus told us that until His return, in this world we will have trouble (John 16:33), they continue to cling to perspectives formulated on earthly parameters.

They remain derailed and stranded in the hopelessness and the despair, the bitterness and the unbelief, the fear and the doubt that result from faulty expectations and false assumptions. The disciples, too, camped for a while in that dark valley.

But in the end, they left us a story of triumph. For they were to experience a seismic shift in understanding, in outlook, in vision. The crumbled hopes for restoration, the angst of betrayal, the bitterness of denial, the agony of crucifixion, and the hopeless despair of burial were swallowed up in an empty tomb, as the staggering magnitude of Resurrection shattered all their limiting notions of Messiah, of God, of King.

And finally, they could truly shout from a new depth of understanding, "Hosanna in the highest!"