It seems reasonably clear that, historically Jesus, as a good Jew who would have known this, followed this text from Zechariah which is part of the reading from the Gospel, about his entry into Jerusalem: the Messiah coming on a donkey. I want to talk about that because its crucial, this donkey business. But let me again warn you that I think, at least in the Church that I grew up in, this whole business of this week was drastically distorted. Because, I was taught that all these texts that we've read, Matthew, the Philippians, Isaiah, all of these texts represented Jesus as divine. That's not the case. The Church did not absolutely and unambiguously decide on the divinity of Jesus for 300 years after this. And if it was so clear that Jesus was divine they would not have had to have had 300 years of argument and struggling over this. So, we need to see that we are talking about a human being. It's out of that understanding that all these texts come. If we don't understand this as a human drama then it's, just something taking place over our heads, which we may be more or less interested spectators at, but which really does not touch us.

It is very likely, according to a number of scholars, that Jesus really did think that he was the Messiah. Which means what? Not a divine person. Even the title "son of God" does not mean, among the Jews, "divine person". It simply means a good Jew. Anybody who is really faithful to God is a "son of God" or a "daughter of God". The Messiah was just a human being that God chose effect what God intended, such as enabling people to beat swords into plough shares, spears into pruning hooks and so transforming, by the power of God, a world so that lions and lambs lie down together and that the poor are judged fairly.

About the text from Zechariah, with the Messiah entering Jerusalem on a donkey, two things are important. First of all, the return of the Messiah was to mean that Israel, which was in exile...... That they were apart from God, separated from God and therefore separated from themselves and from each other, that the Messiah was to somehow bring Israel back from exile, to restore them to God, themselves and each other. Thus the great text Zechariah. If you read the ninth chapter of Zechariah, you'll see how he lays this out: that the Messiah is God's agent, bringing us back from exile. The way he's going to do it is not by using the normal means whereby human beings affect stuff, namely, by violating each other in one way or another, however subtly. Because this is de facto the way I get things done with other people, by threat, by menacing in all kinds of ways, promising to give, threatening to withhold. It's all violence. It's all oppression.

Jesus did not come, or the Messiah according to Zechariah, did not come on a warhorse, which was the absolute instrument of battle, of violence. But the Messiah, according to Zechariah, was to come in this radically different way. On a donkey, which was basically used to carry loads. It was a radically innocuous animal. So, Israel's exile and Israel's distancing from God was not to be overcome by some kind of violence. It was to be overcome in this radically different way, this absolutely non-violent way.

Now Paul quotes this hymn in the Philippians, about Jesus being in the form of God which simply means being human, (because we are all in the form of God. Remember the Genesis line - Let us make humans in our own image.) And the difference between Jesus and the rest of us is that he precisely did not think that he had to work violence to create room for his life in this world. He did this in a world in which everybody else used violence as a standard mode of operation, violence in all kinds of ways. Jesus did not and, this is why God was so pleased with this man and raised him and gave him a name that is above every name. So, that's what the text has to say to us today.

I'd like to propose again, this business of illumination, as we come up to Holy Saturday with the light of Christ being physically there in the form of the Pashcal candle. One of the things that I hope has happened for me and for you is that we become aware of enlightened as to how exiled we are, how far are we removed from God and from ourselves and from each other. So Jesus illumines us by his human career, in clarifying what it is to be home with God, thereby, helping us to see that we are not there, we are exiled from God, by our lack of courage, by our impatience, by our multiple dishonesties, by all the strategies we use to hurt each other or to distance ourselves from each other. Jesus not only illumines the shape of our exile from ourselves but, above all, shows us how that exile is to be overcome.

I would like to think that I could do it under my own steam. I'd like to make a will act. I'd like to bring in the marines, or use whatever technique or strategy I would have to use, to accomplish my return from exile. But it doesn't work. It works only in this humble search for God and for myself. Again, we have not only had Jesus illuminate our exile but show us how it is to be overcome. Quietly. Peacefully. Unobtrusively.

And the older I get, I'm more and more convinced I'm becoming more Calvinist or Augustinian I suppose in my view of things. I look around at the world which is in large measure God - free. The world I inhabit is basically God - free. The world of television. The world of the media. It's God - free. And so the more I come to have some sense of how I am personally exiled from God, myself and to each other, I'm also more and more aware that there's not much that I can do to redress that condition. Maybe the very first thing, to acknowledge that I cannot do much myself, is the first step in the return from exile.

Now we do have all these wild, excessive sounding statements -"Without you we can do nothing", "I am the vine, you are the branches." Cut off from me you are totally feckless. But it is difficult to believe that. Sure, I can do it. I'll make a will act. I'll get a therapist. I'll read a book. I'll make enough money. I'll get enough status or job security or whatever else I need to sustain myself. What Palm Sunday says, is that it won't work. None of it will work. None of it.

And so we have in Holy Week the opportunity to see how full humanization plays out in an exemplary way in the life of this man, who was a Jew, was a member of an exiled people. But he saw this exile, he saw the exile of his people. And his whole passion and death is his answer as to how you overcome that exile. All of this, it is not very palatable. It won't sell, folks. It won't sell. I can't use diplomacy or public relations or anything else to make this more palatable, although I want to in the worst possible way! I want to fake it in some way. I want to use some means to dress this out in a way that would be more appetizing and appealing. And there's absolutely no way to do it. Because the religion of Jesus is not some kind of emotional buzz, spiritual uplift. It's not a moral rectitude. It is a vision of life. It is a vision of who I am and the world I live in. That's what it is primal. And we get Holy Week, this privileged opportunity, to look at that with an intensity greater than any other time during the year, to try to knead it, like yeast, into our hearts.

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Created: 30 Nov 1996
© Copyright: R. Trojcak, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002
London Ontario Canada
Last Update: September 05, 2005
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