Fries Memorial Moravian Church

Zechariah 9:9/Luke 18:1-12

There is a familiar passage in Zechariah chapter 9 verse 9:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.

There is a familiar passage in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that goes like this:

This above all: to thine own Self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Jesus of Nazareth was the Servant of all, but he was true to himself, and true to the vocation that God had given him.  Nowhere is this better seen than in the story of his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on the back of a colt, the foal of an ass.  As the typical traveler approached Jerusalem, he would dismount, and lead his beast into the city, so that no one in Jerusalem would suppose that he was bold enough or foolish enough to enter Jerusalem the manner that Zechariah prophesied for the coming of the Great King. Jesus did just the opposite.  He sent his disciples to find an animal just like the one described by Zechariah.  And, then, placing himself upon it, he entered the city in the manner that Zechariah had prophesied. And his disciples went before him, strewing his path with their garments. Then as Jesus drew near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples remembered all the might works they had seen him do, and they began to cry out saying,“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.”  Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”  “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”

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James S. Stewart taught Preaching at Edinburg University in Edinburg, Scotland and often lectured at Yale Divinity School, here in America.  Stewart was one of the best known preachers of the 20th century. He was born in 1896. In 1980, when he was 84 years old, I wrote him to thank him for a book that he wrote about the life and theology of St. Paul, entitled, “A Man in Christ”, more than 20 years before. Much to my surprise, Stewart wrote me back, saying that my letter, coming in as it did, when he was more than a decade deep in retirement, was like “a bright light in the gloaming to a weary traveler nearing home.” I treasured those words, and for the next 38 years, I kept that letter on display in my study. I treasure something Stewart said in one of his Yale Lectures on Preaching even more.  In his lecture, “A Faith to Proclaim,” Stewart wrote:

The central business of preaching today is to tell men and women (and boys and girls) that the same power that took Jesus Christ out of the grave is available to them right now, not just in the hour of death, but in the midst of life.

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