For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 5 – Zechariah 9:9-12 (Related)

In my final job before retirement one of my roles was to help local churches to write ‘vision statements’ in order to plan for the future. We thought about visionaries as being those who were able to see what could be rather than merely what is, and we talked about ‘writing your history in advance’. Most of the time parish visions were either too small, merely more of the same, or too vague, as in rapid and dynamic growth without the first idea of how they were to achieve it, and, if it was that easy, why they weren’t already doing it. Vision can be powerful, but it also has to be realistic. The next job for me was to help parishes write action plans to help them toward achieving their vision.

Like the book of Isaiah, Zechariah appears to be the product of different historical settings. Just as Isaiah falls into three sections, Zechariah is a game of two halves. Chapters 1-8 seem to have a very clear historical setting, in spite of some of the visions being a bit obscure. But as we move to chapters 9-14 the feel changes. The language is more general; the historical data more vague, and the whole thing seems much harder to pin down to a particular historical setting. The first half is clearly a warning about what God intends to do to send his wayward people into exile, but the second seems more like a vague ‘vision statement’. Sometimes God uses his prophets to tell people in great details what he is about to do, but at others we get a much more vague account of his general intentions, rather than a detailed timetable and action plan.

As such our passage for today can tell us more about God than about the history of the nation. We get an insight into the nature and character of God from his intentions for his people. As a father I always wanted my kids to grow up healthy and happy, to form positive relationships and to become useful and godly citizens. The way they were to work all that out was more their issue than mine! So we might read this passage as a list of things God wished, and wishes, for his people.

1)         Relationship

Here as elsewhere in the OT, Jerusalem or Zion is personified as a daughter, thus casting God in the role of father. The wishes of a father for his daughter are obvious, and no doubt we get our instincts from the Father in whose image we are created. God wants to treat us, his people, as the best possible father would want to treat his beloved kids.

2)         Peace

The next image is of rest from enemies, a particularly poignant motif in the light of Israel’s recent (and in fact less recent) history of warfare, defeat, exile and slavery. God does not mean his people to be an oppressed minority, any more than he wants his Church to be. He certainly does not want us to be oppressed by others who hate us, but rather that through us others should be blessed and find peace themselves.

3)         Freedom

Israel, like many nations throughout history, knew only too well what it meant to be enslaved, often in lands far from their home, and to be treated with cruelty. God’s son was born into an occupied nation who were often treated cruelly and taxed heavily. Zechariah reminds us that this is not part of God’s long-term plan for his people.

4)         Stability

Those who have led nomadic lives will know how important ‘home’ is, and how unsettling it can feel either to be far from home, or not even to know where home is. I have found paradoxically that having retired to Sheffield, with no intention of ever moving away, Essex, which I left in 1979, and where we have very few remaining friends or family, has become increasingly important to me. God knows that we need somewhere to call home, and that wherever we hang out hats doesn’t quite hack it. So just as Abraham and Moses set out towards the place which God had promised for them, so the people are to begin to journey home once again, just as we are all journeying towards our eternal home.

5)         Victory

The paradox at the end of this passage is that the gentle and humble King, whom Jesus knew himself to be, so acting out this passage in his final entry into Jerusalem, is still a warrior. This reminds us, perhaps, that our humble King is not as ‘nice’ as we’d sometimes like to think, and that evil will be finally defeated, and destruction destroyed from the new heavens and earth.

Like all expressions of general hope, this passage begs many questions, including questions about why life is so different from the wonderful world described here. It also makes us want to cry out, as God’s people always have done ‘How long, O Lord?’ When are you going to make all this happen? On this God is infuriatingly vague. Our job is simply to be assured that this is his vision for his people, to hold steadfastly onto it, and to live in that direction.