“Bring Many Names:
God as Messiah”

There’s this great story that was famous in the world of Jesus, when he was a boy.  It was about Alexander the Great, son of King Philip of Macedonia.  Plutarch wrote that when Alexander was a boy, a trader came to town to try to sell a great black horse to King Philip.  But the horse was so high-spirited, no one could mount it.  Philip ordered it away.  Young Alexander, however, saw right away the horse’s fear, so he asked for the chance to try to tame it. He dropped his cloak to the ground, spoke calmly to the horse and turned it towards the sun so that it would no longer be spooked by shadows, and the rest was history. Alexander named it Bucephalus, and it went on to carry him through enough battles that by the time Alexander was 30, he ruled the whole of the known world. Since Philip and Alexander were the most famous kings of the northern Greek province where Paul was writing his letter to the church at Philippi, the capitol named for King Philip, what must the people of that city (300 years later) have thought of Paul and his Good News of the coming of this meek Messiah, the divinely anointed King of the Jews? 

Most of us have heard the story before, so it doesn’t have the shock value for us that it would have had for Jews and Greeks of that day and time.  Jesus, the humble Christ (the Greek word “Christos” is the same as the Hebrew Messiah, “the anointed one” – no, “Christ” is not the last name of Jesus!), the humble Christ entered Jerusalem not as a conquering hero on a mighty war horse, as Alexander on Bucephalus would have done – and as Pontius Pilate had actually just done on his entry to Jerusalem with his troops from Rome that came as “peacekeepers” for the Passover.  Instead, Jesus rode down from the Mount of Olives on a donkey – the sign of God’s divine rule, the coming “Day of the Lord” that had been predicted hundreds of years before by the prophet Zechariah, and the day that Jesus had taught his disciples to pray for, “THY Kingdom come.”  That act of defiance had a meaning to the people of Jerusalem that is not as obvious to us today.

Before he could ride the colt, like Alexander the Great, Jesus also had to tame an animal never before ridden.  Only this donkey’s colt was the humble beast of burden of peasant people, not the noble mount of mighty kings.  Knowing all this, the story unfolds like an act of prophetic performance art.  As we discussed during our sermon series “Going to School with Jesus,” Jesus would have not only known about Alexander the Great, he knew his Hebrew Bible, and was well-aware how the prophets were called by God to call people to repentance and return them to obedience, restored into right relationship with the Most High.  What better way to do that than to remind them of their own sacred stories of sin and redemption, their call back into the yoke of holy covenant?

And so, the other story that the approach of Jesus to Jerusalem would have evoked for a Jewish crowd was the anointing of King Jehu, the one who was to rid Israel of the most evil and corrupt royal couple who ever ruled the land – the mighty sinners King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.  In Second Kings chapter 9, Jehu receives a kind of surprise anointing by a deputy prophet of the great Elisha.  It was such a risky and treasonous mission, Elisha sends his poor “student prophet” off to find General Jehu in the field.  Elisha tells him to get the great military commander off into a room by himself, then dump a whole flask of oil over his head and say, “Thus says the Lord: I anoint you king over Israel.” Then, Elisha says, “open the door and flee; do not linger.”  And this is exactly what the guy does – it’s a secret “hit and run” anointing.  But it’s the part that happens next that would have brought the shock of recognition to a Jewish crowd, especially the enemies of Jesus watching from the high ramparts of the Temple:  After Jehu was anointed, when he reveals his true identity to his followers, Second Kings says, “¹³Then hurriedly they all took their cloaks and spread them for him on the bare steps; and they blew the trumpet, and proclaimed, ‘Jehu is king.’”

Remember Jerusalem already had a king – King Herod – when Jesus was arriving that day, when the “multitudes of disciples” were cheering “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  What we remember on our Palm Sunday with our little Sunday School procession around the church does not begin to capture what it would have been for the people of Jesus’s day – a coup d’etat against a tyrant, a cruel and greedy regent of the Roman Empire.  The emphasis Luke gives to the people lining the road not with palms or leafy tree branches but with their cloaks – literally taking the coats off their backs – is deliberate.  Luke, as the Gospel of the poor, has to remind people of the death of evil Ahab, who was defeated by God’s newly anointed messiah Jehu.

 It’s also no coincidence that Jehu eventually killed greedy King Ahab on the land wrongfully stolen from the innocent Naboth.  Peasant lands were being taken away every day by Rome and their minions, King Herod and his tax collectors, the Herodian Jews and High Priests of Jerusalem.  Those disfranchised, outcast and homeless Jews who were cheering Jesus and laying their cloaks at his feet were offering him what may have very well been their most valuable personal possession – their only remaining shelter.  They were ready to lay down not just their cloaks but their lives for the Messiah. 

The thing was, Jesus was no armed general.  There was no battle plan.  As an intentionally nonviolent protest, the approach of Jesus on the colt of the donkey signaled the arrival not of a conquering hero but of the Prince of Peace.  That moment that the people shout "In heaven peace, and glory in the highest!" brings to fruition the Good News the angels proclaimed to the shepherds, “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” 

So what does it mean for us today to follow the Prince of Peace?  What are we ready to lay down for the Lord’s Messiah?  Must we really give him our full allegiance?

To find the answer, I think we have to look no farther than the story of taming of the donkey’s colt.  Luke says, “³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the colt?’ ³⁴They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ³⁵Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.” The disciples, like people who would break a horse today, laid cloths on the animal first, then gently set Jesus upon it.  This would have been an amazing act of peaceful transformation to the people gathered there – one that might have even reminded them of Alexander and Bucephalus.  And it would have reminded them of the sacrifice of obedience that was being asked of them, as followers of the new Christos, their Prince of Peace.

In the Greek, the word “Kyrios” is translated “Lord” but it is the same Greek word “kyrios” that translates as “owner,” or “master,” as in the owner or master of the colt.  It’s from that word that we get the English word “curator,” the one who cares for something very precious.  God as Messiah is our one true Lord and Master, curator of every precious soul – the one who can cast out the shadow of our fears, tame the unrest and hatred in our hearts, and keep our feet peacefully and confidently striding forward, on the right path.  God as Messiah is the one who calls us into peaceful protest against injustice and invites us to give ourselves in humble service to God’s Kingdom of love. 

We in the church confess “Jesus as Lord,” or Jesus as the “Christ,” our “master.”  But to follow God our Messiah in humility becomes a very an important thing to remember on many days – days when we are certain that we are right, when we engage in disputes at work, in our families or in the church – or God forbid, when we are tempted to take up arms and actually go to war.  At times when we are feeling the most oppressed or stressed it is the most important for us to remember the call to peace to which our Messiah calls us, and the spirit of love in which it comes.

As Paul’s letter to the Philippians puts it, “³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”  As we are called to radical obedience to Christ, we are called to radical vulnerability and humility, with the assurance that God’s love alone has the power to change the world.   May we walk peacefully in Christ’s way, and may our own troubled and frightened human spirits be tamed, so that, like the donkey’s colt, we can become Christ-bearers to the world.

Thanks be to God for this holy calling and for this Good News.  Amen.

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Philippians 2:1-11

¹If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, ²make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. ⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. ⁹Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Luke 19:28-40

²⁸ …[Jesus] went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. ²⁹When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, ³⁰saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” ³²So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. ³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” ³⁴They said, “The Lord needs it.” ³⁵Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. ³⁶As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. ³⁷As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, ³⁸saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” ³⁹Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” ⁴⁰He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”