Why Jesus Wept: Advent Week 3

So it's a little late . . . I'm very pregnant with a toddler at home. :-) Thanks for your patience. Without further ado, here is my Advent Devotional for week 3.

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There is no shortage of end-time prophets. Since the beginning of the world, people have been proclaiming the end of it. The Bible is no exception. Zechariah 9 almost sounds like it belongs in Revelation. It talks about the Lord coming in power to redeem his people and they “will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown” (9:16). But at the very beginning of the chapter, Zechariah wrote something peculiar, something very strange. He wrote

“See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey . . . He will proclaim peace to the nations.” (Zch. 9:9-10)

That doesn’t seem to match up too well with the war-like wording of the rest of the chapter. How can the King come riding on a donkey (of all the ridiculous things!) and proclaiming peace, if the Lord will come roaring in later, overcoming all his enemies and setting up his people like jewels?

The key to making this passage one cohesive whole is to understand its duality. The first part is talking about the Messiah proclaiming a gospel of peace and salvation. In verse 14, it says, “Then the Lord will appear over them; his arrow will flash like lightning.” The first part talks about the first coming of Christ, and the last part talks about the second coming of Christ.

The first coming is shown in Luke 19. In what is commonly known as the “Triumphal Entry”, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a colt that no one has ridden. To a people steeped in tradition, they knew exactly what it (according to Zechariah) meant – the King had come! He was going to set up his kingdom of peace! Death to the Roman Empire! Is it any wonder that Jesus wept? You can hear the pain in his voice when he said in verse 42: “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.”

The sheer pain of that statement nearly brings me to tears. Even you, even God’s own children, missed the point. Even we miss the point still. Yes, God will come in power and glory, riding on the clouds with a flaming sword in one hand, as so many scriptures tell us. Yes, the Lord will come and rescue his people from tyranny. Yes, it will come suddenly, like a thief in the night, when we least expect it.

But the irony that they failed to see in Luke 19, and that we often fail to understand today, is that the Kingdom of God is here. It’s now. It’s me and you and these lives that we are given. Right before the triumphal entry, Jesus told a parable about the man of noble birth who went to a distant country to have himself appointed King, and then return. He put his servants in charge of ten minas. He went away, was crowned, and returned to see what his servants had made of the money he left entrusted to them. One was a good steward of that trust and made returns on the money. That servant was rewarded. Another servant earned less, but still made a return. He too was rewarded accordingly. But the servant who hid his mina away, not for safekeeping, but because of cowardice and evil desires, the King took his mina away and gave to the faithful servant.

This is the peace that Jesus brought. This is what they did not understand and what made the Messiah weep. The Kingdom of God is now, and we are the servants who have been entrusted with the good news of salvation. Last week we went over what we are to proclaim, so there is no excuse to not proclaim it. This week, we learned what can happen when the Lord returns and finds out that we have not proclaimed the news. And it is certainly not pretty.

So, for this third week in Advent, let’s meditate on what the Lord entrusted to us. Let’s stop for a moment and think honestly about how we’ve treated our good news. Have we made returns? Have we hidden it away for any reason? The Bible is very clear that the Lord will return suddenly. When that happens, there will be no time for us to gather last minute returns: We will be judged on what we’ve done to that moment. What will your moment be like?