I used to love watching ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, especially the eternal playoff between Sir Humphrey and the Prime Minister. It usually ended with Sir Humphrey getting exactly what he wanted and making the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, think he had got what he wanted. It was a complex interplay, with many people on the side of Jim or the side of Sir Humphrey pulling them in different directions. I found myself in the Mayors Parlour last Sunday before walking out to lead the Armed Forces Day service and the Mayor was having a picture taken of himself next to someone and he asked, with his tongue in his cheek, ‘did I look taller than him’ which he plainly did not, so I just sad ‘yes, Mister Mayor’ with my tongue firmly in my cheek as well. It is certainly the case that most of us prefer to surround ourselves with people who agree with us and who tell us that what we’re doing is right and good. We know really that it would be better for us to have around us someone who would tell the truth about us, challenge us, help us to face our faults and mistakes, but most of us are not brave enough for that, which is why so many people do not read the Bible, or believe it to be some kind of buffet.
And it was ever thus. The rulers of the Jewish people preferred the false prophets, who told them what they wanted to hear, to the true prophets who told them what was uncomfortable and disturbing and, unfortunately for them, true. They preferred flattery to the ruth, and, again, it was and is ever thus.
We have little idea what the false prophets ever said, nobody appears to have recorded it, while the true prophets were often persecuted, at least until people realised they were telling the truth. I assume the reason the true prophets’ writings ended up being preserved was because events proved them true.
Today’s first reading from the prophecy of Zechariah, though, is not so much bad news as strange news. It might, indeed, look like good news to us with the gift of hindsight, but not at all the sort of good news that would make any ruler feel comfortable. Earthly rulers, with a few notable exceptions, believe in symbols of power. Ballrooms, cloaks, palaces, torture chambers, armies and secret services. They might expect a king who is victorious, triumphant, to enter on a war horse, with a great retinue. The king in the prophecy of Zechariah today comes riding on a donkey, which is not the same as a Lear Jet at all.
Most earthly rulers trust for their security in strength of arms, armies, nuclear weapons, misinformation and so on. The king in the prophecy banishes chariots from Ephraim, horses from Jerusalem, banishes the bow of war and speaks the truth to power so insistently that, as we know, He is killed for it.
Why did people preserve such a prophecy? Certainly not because they could understand how such a world could come about, it seems as impossible as he thought of love conquering death, of a God who takes the form of a servant, of us still hearing this thousands of years later. Truth has an uncanny ability to be heard and to remain, and amid the mire of disinformation around us, we would do well to hold on to the uncomfortable truth that the King did indeed arrive on a donkey, and that He will indeed come to judge the living and the dead at the end of time.
And for us it is not possible humanly to see how this prophecy could begin to come true and more than the people could hear Zechariah and believe that. They would have been silenced, ridiculed, and sidelined, but they know that their God would come and we know He will come again.
The experience of the people of those times came with a belief that safety came from swords, walls, defined borders, wealth and armies, but Zechariah came to tell Israel that real strength came not from this, but from the plan and will of God and the keeping of His commandments. So it was then, so it is now. The King on the Donkey came, and people began to believe again, and the King will come again and it will be too late, which is why the Church of God preaches repentance, hope and salvation in season and out of season, and we need more people to do just that, to join with us, to grow the Kingdom with us. Our strength though is not in numbers, but in faith.
Today’s Gospel is no different. Jesus brings freedom. We might expect that will involve that he will ‘break every yoke’, as God tells us through Isaiah to do. Human wisdom tells us that freedom is a solitary thing, me against the world, refusing to submit to those who would control me. As in so many things, it takes the foolishness of God to teach us that true freedom is to be had through being yoked to Christ, of being part of His Holy Church, His Holy Family here on earth and those who wait for us in the Kingdom yet to come.