After Pentecost Devotional - Day 38

“Announce to the people of Jerusalem: 'Your king is coming to you! He is humble and rides on a donkey. He comes on the colt of a donkey.'” Matthew 21:5

There goes Jesus being humble again. If his comments a chapter before about being a servant instead of the master of slaves were not clear, the picture we are given here is one more attempt to press forward this agenda of an alternate paradigm of leadership. He is a king. He is Messiah, but he is not Messiah and King according to our paradigms of power.

We like strong, autocratic, military leaders after a fashion. That is, we want autocratic leaders who espouse our pet agendas. We feel comfortable with leaders who display that they are in control of the situation. We like them to exude an aura of success, power, and confidence. We want them to be sure of themselves. We project their confidence and presence as lending security to our own lives and circumstances.

Jesus exuded presence and power but in a very different sense. His voice and message were authoritative, but not in the sense of dictating the actions of others and imposing his will by force, fiat, and fear. He did not rally the crowds to emotional abandon. He called them to a wholly different kind of thoughtfulness, introspection, responsibility, and view of how to relate to God and one another.

Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was a symbol of peace. It was very different from the picture of riding in on a horse of war. Donkeys were not ridden into battle. They neither obey sufficiently well, nor are they aggressive enough for battle. In this case, Jesus rides the colt of a donkey, further emphasizing the peaceable nature of his position as Messiah.

As a Messiah of peace, however, Jesus throws a monkey-wrench into most of our concepts of leadership. He did not come as a take-charge leader who would impose his will upon the populace. He did not come to eliminate his opposition. He did not come to relegate others to some secondary plane of importance. He did not come to wage a battle of wits or policies or agendas that would create winners and losers. He did not come to press the advantage of some over others.

Entering Jerusalem on that colt, he defined that he had not come to battle. Before beginning, he was already done with war, battle, fighting, and enmity. The colt symbolized that there was no enmity before him or in him. It was a sign that security had already been accomplished, already fulfilled. It was not that he had no opposition, but that he was not coming to oppose. He was unwilling to lower himself to the politics of infighting and jostling for power.

Jesus would lead not in relation to opposition, but in relation to administering God's blessings. He did not come prepared to war but to serve. He did not come to fight, but to love. He came to lavish God's grace and mercy and justice and gift of reconciliation for one and all. In so doing, he came to place himself not above, but on a par with us, leading by living alongside and serving in humility.

Do my attitudes display my readiness to lay enmity aside for humility?

"Lord, fashion my warring nature into the humility of service after your example."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon