Your King Shall Come to You - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, friends. We come to this 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, this midsummer weekend, and we're reading in our first reading from the prophet Zechariah. Can I suggest to you, the prophet Zechariah, maybe not as well-known as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and company, but is a very important figure for the Lord Jesus, that Jesus very carefully attended to the book of the prophet Zechariah, because many of the elements in it Jesus fulfills in his ministry. Now, nowhere more famously than in this prediction. Listen to Zechariah. See, your king shall come to you, a just savior is he, meek and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass. Now, it's interesting. Israel's waiting for a king. That's a basic theme in the Old Testament, right? Adam, in fact, is seen as a king who went bad.

0:55 And from the time of the fall, Israel's waiting for a king that will actually lead the people well to the Lord. And so from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, in their own way are kings, and then up through Saul and David and Solomon, et cetera, Israel's looking for the leader who will bring the people to the Lord. So the long wait. Well, what will he be like? And this is where Zechariah is very interesting. You'd think a new David, right, the messianic king, would enter his capital city in triumph, in stateliness, riding a great charger. No, here's how the king will come. Meek and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. So on a little young beast of burden. That's how he comes.

1:48 And does he come full of energy and violence and threats, like a mighty king in the ancient world would? Even as our leaders today, we tend to look at them as these mighty figures. No, he's meek. Well, Jesus, of course, imitates this exactly. That's how he comes into his holy city. Think of Palm Sunday, so purposely fulfilling this prophecy of Zechariah. But now listen as he goes on. Mindful that Israel, ancient Israel, is a very warlike people. Go back, if you doubt me, to the book of Joshua, the book of Judges. Look at the accounts of Israel's warfare, the brutality, the violence of its leaders and all that. It's a warlike people. And I'm not blaming Israel. All the ancient peoples were like that. But listen now as Zechariah describes the work of this triumphant king.

2:48 He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim. Ephraim just means northern, you know, like Israel. And the horse from Jerusalem. The warrior's bow shall be banished. He shall proclaim peace to the nations. What? I imagine people in the ancient world say, what? This is your triumphant king? And see, we see these things as rather quaint, maybe, because we see them in picture books. But he shall banish the chariot. For ancient peoples, the chariot was terrifying. We'd have to think of something like a tank, you know, the most highly equipped tank on a battlefield. To have this metallic thing with wheels, and it's being drawn by mighty horses. Think of a simple ground soldier, infantry soldier with a spear. The chariot was terrifying.

3:46 That's what a mighty king would use to terrify his enemies. No, he's going to banish the chariot. No tanks, right? And banish the horse from Jerusalem. Well, again, the horse, don't think of a horse like just galloping peacefully around a field. the horse was a mighty instrument of domination. Again, someone that is riding a horse and armored and with swords and spears, fearsome, he's going to banish the horse from Jerusalem. The warrior's bow shall be banished. We think of bows and arrows at the Olympics and we see them as kids practicing in PE class or something. But in the ancient world, to say bow and arrow would be like saying an AK-47. I mean, that was the means you used, the most aggressive instrument you had to conquer your enemies.

4:40 He's going to banish tanks and AK-47s and all these instruments of war. And then he'll proclaim peace to the nations? I mean, ancient kings are expected to impose their will on the nations, maybe, if you want to call that peace. But authentic peace and in the absence of all the instruments of war? that's what he'll do. And now, press it further. Zechariah is still speaking. His, the Messiah's, his dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Now, Zechariah, when was he writing? Well, he's a figure around the time of the return of the exiles from Babylon, the time they're building the second temple. It was a kind of low point in the history of Israel. You know, Israel reached its highest strength under David and Solomon, and then the kingdom falls apart, and then the northern kingdom is attacked by the Assyrians. They're carried off into exile. The southern kingdom is attacked by the Babylonians.

5:45 They're carried off into exile. The nation's effectively destroyed, and now they've begun, some of them, to kind of trickle back to Judea and Jerusalem, and they're tentatively rebuilding the destroyed temple. That's where they are. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. No, nothing like that. They're a little nobody, little nothing of a country at a low ebb in its fortunes. And what does one of its prophets say? His dominion, the king of Israel, will be to the ends of the world. It's one of the most extraordinary things, everybody, just from a purely historical literary standpoint of how these Hebrew prophets were able to say what they said, because nothing in objective history would validate this. But yet they see this nonviolent, peaceful, humble, and meek king would extend his authority to the ends of the world.

6:50 okay so you say all right that's his ancient text and this guy was dreaming and but here's the thing everybody it came true and it's true empirically today what do i mean i mean when they saw jesus and his work they saw the fulfillment of this prophecy yes he enters into the holy city just as Zechariah said he would. Not a mighty conqueror, but a prince of peace. On Mount Calvary, he takes on the wickedness of the world. That's true. But not in the manner of the world. No, he's thrust through. Very interesting. A little bit later in Zechariah, you find exactly that prediction, that the Messiah, the king, will be pierced through. What do you mean pierced through? I thought he's the king. Yeah, but strangely, this king of peace and nonviolence, as he begins his reign, is pierced through. It happened. It happened in Jesus pierced through on the cross.

8:03 rising from the dead Jesus says to his disciples what? not revenge not I'm going to get you not how dare you what he says is shalom he utters a word of peace wielding none of the weapons of the world listen now he takes on the darkness of the world and then breathes forth his peace now now what was over his head as he hung upon the cross that sign that pontius pilate unwittingly the first evangelist put up jesus nazarenos rex yudaorum jesus of nazareth the king of the jews yes pilate meant it as a joke but the joke was on him because he was in fact precisely the king predicted by Zechariah.

9:06 That was over his head. What was on his head? And again, meant as mockery, a crown of thorns, a kingly crown. Jesus from the cross pierced through, uttering a word of forgiveness, wearing a crown of thorns with a sign announcing his kingship over his head is the fulfillment of this ancient prophecy. Now, take another step. His dominion, it began on that little squalid hill, Calvary, outside the walls of Jerusalem. It began in the most unlikely place, in the most unlikely way. But what did the first Christians do? Having come to understand this, they now announced, jesus kurios jesus kurios jesus is lord told you before saint paul's ministry is understandable only in light of this he's announcing now to everyone who will listen that jesus is lord paul ends up as peter does too in the great city of rome why'd they go to rome because they knew that from Rome, this word would go out to all the world as indeed it has.

10:28 where is the reign of the king predicted by Zechariah from sea to sea from the river to the ends of the earth yep it's called the church think of all the followers of Christ having heard this message about the king on the squalid hill of Calvary, but his reign through the church extends all over the world. See, everybody, how moving that is, how powerful it is, this strange text from the ancient world, fulfilled indeed in our hearing and in our sight. Now, just a word. So that's the Zechariah about kingship. But what does it mean now to be drawn under the dominion of a king?

11:27 See, we've lost a sense of this because we think of our political leaders. They're bureaucrats, they're managers, they're politicos, they're people that make things happen, you know, through legislation and so on. Okay. But for ancient peoples, that wasn't at all. The king was a mystical figure. The king was the one in whom a people found their identity. Kings were seen indeed as healers in the ancient world. It was in the king that people found their identity and their sense of purpose and all that. That's why, you know, look at the execution of Charles I in England, the execution of Louis XVI in France. Think even of Tsar Nicholas, you know, beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution. But why were those so unnerving? unnerving, because for the king to be destroyed, that was unnerving for the entire people. Well, see, Christ is king in that ancient sense.

12:27 His dominion comes as we are drawn into his power. Listen now, second reading, St. Paul to the Romans. If the spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, The one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit that dwells in you. The dominion of Christ is extended now to the whole world. How do we get into that or under that dominion? By becoming grafted onto him. Think now, everybody, of the sacramental life of the church. What is that? It's not just imitating the moral example of Jesus. I mean, sure, we do that. it's a much deeper stranger richer more organic idea of being incorporated into the life of the king the one predicted by Zechariah the king of peace and non-violence through the church we are now drawn into his power I don't know anything really more dramatic in the Christian life than this. Maybe take out your Bibles, look at that ancient text from the ninth chapter of Zechariah and realize it's fulfilled now in our hearing. And God bless you.