“Behold, Your King Comes to You”
Zechariah 9:9

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas
Palm Sunday—April 9, 2017

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The text for our Palm Sunday meditation is from today’s Old Testament Reading in Zechariah, a prophecy of the entry of King Jesus into Jerusalem:

“Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey.”

Even if you are a skeptic about matters of religion, you have to admit there’s something really weird going on with the city of Jerusalem, and its strangely supersized role in world history.  For, by the standards of the Roman Empire at the time Jesus entered the city on the first Palm Sunday, Jerusalem was a second or third-rate backwater, nothing in comparison to the great Imperial city of Rome, not nearly measuring up even to the Roman provincial capital at Caesarea, a grand, palatial city about 40 miles away, along the Mediterranean coast. 

There were lots of other cities more advanced, more magnificent, more important it would seem to the world.  And, yet, it is very odd how Jerusalem so often finds itself right at the very center of world events.  For such a small, relatively obscure city, time and time again we find big things are happening there, key events to the whole destiny of humanity and history of the world, events far out of proportion to the city’s small size and seeming insignificance.

Over the centuries, Jerusalem has witnessed lots of famous kings or their armies riding in as conquering heroes.  The Biblical kings of Saul and David and Solomon.  Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians, Cyrus of the Persians, Alexander the Great.  The Roman rulers Pompey, Vespasian, Titus, and Hadrian.  All the way down to the British claiming the city for King George V in 1917.

But, over all those years, among all those conquering kings, there was never one like this: “Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey.”

King Jesus comes, not to the salute of royal trumpets, but to the waving of palm branches, and a carpet of coats, and the cries of children.

King Jesus comes, accompanied not by an army of mighty warriors, but a small band of mostly former fishermen.

King Jesus comes, not in a grand display of kingly might, not on a magnificent white steed, but “gentle and riding on a donkey.”

Most of all, King Jesus comes, not with the dreaded retribution, and terror, and carnage that conquering kings would often bring, but “righteous and having salvation.”

In ancient times, the entry into a city of a conquering king was a common event, and not usually a joyous occasion.  For, usually it meant death, and destruction, and retribution, mercilessly meted out upon all who had opposed him. As an archaeologist in the Middle East, I have uncovered many times the evidence of what usually happened when a conquering king came in triumph.  For, in the archeological layers that record the past for us, every so often there is inevitably a thin, dark, black line, called a “destruction layer,” all that remains of a city that was once conquered, and ravaged, and burned to destruction.  It is not unusual to see this pattern over and over again in the same city, building and destruction, rebuilding and destruction.

When the Jewish people revolted in 70 A.D. and the Roman Emperor Titus re-conquered Jerusalem, we still have the report in which he wrote, “I left not one stone standing upon another.”  They again revolted against Rome in 135 A.D., and once again Jerusalem was completely destroyed, by Emperor Hadrian.  This time, he also cut down every tree for miles around, and plowed into the soil all around the city salt from the Dead Sea, to sterilize it and make it uninhabitable.  That was the punishment for rebelling against Rome!

Spiritually, that is what we all deserve from King Jesus.  We should not rejoice today but be terrified by the coming of this conquering King! For, we have rebelled against him, by our sin and unfaithfulness, and we deserve from him destruction, and death and, damnation.

“Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey. Hosanna in the highest!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 

Blessed is he, for King Jesus comes to you today, not with the punishment you deserve, but “righteous and having salvation.”  King Jesus comes, not to punish you, but to save you, by paying himself the penalty your rebellion against him deserves.  King Jesus comes, not to mercilessly mete out upon you suffering, and death, and destruction, but in the ultimate act of mercy, to take it all upon himself, in your place.

“You are a king, then?” Pilate asked.  “You are right in saying I am a king,” Jesus answered. “In fact, for this I was born, and for this I came into the world.”

Among all the conquering kings that ever entered Jerusalem, there was never one like this.  “My kingdom is not of this world” he declared.  And that is why we rejoice today at the coming King, because his is a kingdom of grace, and mercy, and love, and forgiveness—for YOU!

“Behold, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey. Hosanna in the highest!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”