Who's Your Jailer?

Who’s Your Jailer?
Zechariah 9:9-12; Romans 7:14-25; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-27

Is it Palm Sunday already? you ask. That’s when we traditionally hear this reading from Zechariah. There’s a reason beyond the image of a king coming into Jerusalem “riding on an ass, on a colt, the offspring of a donkey” that this reading gets used for Palm Sunday. This king will speak peace to the nations. Peace – shalom – is not just the absence of war; it is the equilibrium of relationship with God and with humanity that is characterized by justice, integrity, humility, compassion, empathy, and worship and praise of God.

To put this into perspective, we need to know that Zechariah’s prophetic work belongs to the post-exilic period, when the remaining Jews were back in Judah, having been released from captivity in Babylon. Their captivity was traded for being subjects of the Persian Empire. Yet even Persia’s might was no guarantee of security, and the Jews lived under the possibility of being scattered once again due to the threat of attack by other nations. Most of the Jews were not well-off, and many still had dreams of someday living in a kingdom of their own under a messianic leader. But, for the present, that seemed impossible.

In that dark mood, chapter 9 begins with a prophetic word against various foreign nations, telling of God’s coming judgment passing through those lands, moving from north to south. Some of the cities named in these verses have great wealth and military might, yet they are all powerless when God’s judgment comes. Finally, having crushed these traditional enemies of Judah, God camps at the temple “as a guard, against anyone departing or returning. A slave driver will no longer pass through against them” (v. 8).

It’s in that context of “battle over ... mission accomplished” that the reading for today calls Jerusalem to “rejoice greatly” because of the messianic king’s entry into the city. This messiah arrives “triumphant and victorious,” yet also “"humble,” for he’s the proclaimer not of his own accomplishment, but of peace to the nations, a peace that God’s judgment has made possible.

Why is this message from Zechariah important for us today, when it isn’t Palm Sunday? Let me begin with a poem by colleague Thom Shuman, whose gift of words is so often a blessing. He calls it “internee (Zechariah 9:9-12).”

from the shadowed corner,
I used to stare
up at the small
window set high
up in the wall,
waiting for the moon
to appear (even if
only a sliver,
imagining you were
keeping an eye on me;

for hours on end,
I would stand
at the door, holding
onto the bars
worn smooth by
all the hands before me,
waiting for you
to come by with
your cart full of books,
handing me the
words you knew
I needed, brushing
the back of my hand
with fingers as light
as Emily’s feathers;

in the early morning,
when even the guard
is too bored to notice,
you tunnel in,
taking me by the hand
and leading me out to
where your muster
of misfits waits,
and you swing me
onto the bowed back
of that borrowed
farm animal,
and we follow
that route marked

Hope.(1)

What Zechariah tells us is that we have a choice between being a prisoner of despair or of hope. In fact, the phrase “prisoners of hope” is right out of the Zechariah text, with the prophet speaking for God, who says, “...by the blood of your covenant, I will release your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, prisoners of hope; moreover, declare today that I will return double to you” (v. 12).

Zechariah was not speaking about literal prisoners. The people of Judah had been released from exile in Babylon and had returned to their homeland. But they had become prisoners in another sense. The destruction to which they had returned was overwhelming, and it required great energy just to cobble together the things needed for a subsistence-level existence. As a result, many had become prisoners of despair.

If Paul were here today, he would likely tell you that despair is sin. And sin is the Law, since Law enables sin because there is no way that any one of their own might or effort can obey every aspect of the law. “I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do....it’s sin that lives in me.... The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it.”

We are burdened by the guilt of doing the things we don’t want to do and not doing the things we know we want to do or should do. That is the despair of which we are prisoners, or as Paul calls, slavery.

None of us are going to claim that we even try to follow the Law which Moses mediated between God and the Israelites. After all, we eat shellfish, we poach veal in milk, we wear clothing of mixed fibers, we do work on the Sabbath, we pay or exact interest, and we don’t give up borrowed possessions every seventh year.

What we are enslaved to are traditions, expectations, norms. Citing the work of sociologist Will Herberg, Diana Butler Bass says that some fifty years ago, Americans were unwaveringly and overwhelming religious. Herberg’s figures indicate that in 1960 three different surveys pegged belief in God at 95, 96, or 97% of the population. Church membership was 75%. Those who prayed occasionally were 90%. They believed in life after death, heaven, hell, the Bible as an inspired book, and the importance of giving religious instruction to children. They held religion to be of very great importance. However, Herberg noted that there were discrepancies in the data. When pushed, more then half of Americans admitted that these views had no impact on their political or business practices. He concluded that belief in God might well have been a social convention, more norms than committed beliefs.(2)

If religious practices were more social norms than committed beliefs, then they were a slavery which polls show that two generations later typical people have shed, as those who call themselves spiritual but not religious have grown to nearly a third of all people.

When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest; put on my yoke, and learn from me,” he was not calling people into a slavery of norms and rituals and behaviors. He was not offering to exchange one imprisonment to despair with another. He called people to hope. Each of us lives with despair and hope. If you feed despair, eventually it will grow and devour hope. If you feed hope, it will starve despair of its reason for being.

Jesus’ “easy to bear” yoke and “light” burden is hope. He offers to exchange our despair for his hope. He offers himself physically as sign and seal of the reality that he is the donkey-riding messiah who humbly takes upon himself all despair and replaces it with hope. This table of bread and wine is our ever-present remembrance that redemption, hope, and freedom are all grace-filled acts of God which God alone, through the power of the Spirit and the compassionate obedient life of the Word made flesh, has accomplished. This is the table of life, of pardon, of freedom. We are no longer prisoners of a jailer called despair. We are free to choose to become bond servants of the one who gives life.

Let us respond to Jesus’ gracious invitation.

(1) Thom M. Shuman, http://www.prayersfortoday.blogspot.com/, July 2, 2014.
(2) Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), p.44f.
General Resource on Zechariah: “Prisoners of Hope,” Homiletics, July-August 2014, pp. 8-12.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.