Church of the Holy City

It Didn’t Happen

It Didn’t Happen
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
Palm Sunday
April 5, 2009

Zechariah 9:9-17 Matthew 21:1-11

Many of the Jews in Jesus’ time did not accept Him as the Messiah. And many today, in fact most Jews don’t see Him as the Messiah. Why is this? The reason is, Jesus did not come as the Messiah that they were expecting. I’d like to take you back about 2,000 years and talk about the expectations that were in the air at the coming of Christ.
The coming of the Messiah was going to be a cosmic event. It was going to be a judgment on the whole earth. At Christmas we listen to the prophesies in Isaiah about the mountains being leveled, and the valleys raised up, and the rough places made smooth. This was taken literally as what would happen to planet earth when the Messiah came. There were also prophesies about the Day of the LORD. On this dreadful day the whole earth would be judged. Yahweh Himself would come down to earth and set things straight. The Dead Sea Scrolls talk about a cosmic battle. In it, angels of light would fight against angels of darkness. The residents of the Qumran were waiting for this battle to take place. They observed celibacy according to the Biblical prescriptions about holy war. They were literally going to fight with swords on the side of the angels of light.
Then there is the issue of the Messiah Himself. The Hebrew word “Messiah” literally means “anointed.” It refers to the anointing of a king when he assumed office. So the Messiah that the Jews were expecting was to be an earthly king. But this was to be no ordinary king. The Messiah was to be from King David’s lineage. A promise was made to King David that one of his descendants would rule Israel forever. In 2 Samuel 7:16 God says to King David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” But this is not what happened. First Babylon conquered Judah, deposed its king and took the Israelites into captivity. They were restored under the Persian King Cyrus, but they were not allowed to have their own king, as Cyrus was the king. Then Alexander the Great came and conquered Judah and imposed Greek ways. Then Rome conquered Israel and it was under Roman rule that Jesus came. What does all this have to do with the Messiah? Well, there was no king from David’s lineage as promised by God, none since Babylon conquered Israel in 597 BC. But the prophets prophesied that a descendant of David would come and conquer the foreign rulers and sit on the throne in Jerusalem. This coming of the king would usher in a period of world peace. We heard one of these prophesies in Zechariah today. The passage reads:
See, your king comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gently and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim
And the war-horses from Jerusalem,
And the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations.
His rule will extend from sea to sea
And from the River [the Euphrates] to the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:9-10).
The king would rule from sea to sea and he would bring peace to all the nations. This is what the Jews expected Jesus to do. But it didn’t happen.
We who grow up Christian hear the Isaiah prophesies and we immediately apply them to Jesus. We don’t associate the cosmic battle with Jesus’ first coming, nor do we think about a king from David’s lineage ruling from sea to sea. We think of Jesus and we see His kingdom as a spiritual kingdom—“the kingdom is within.” So it is hard for us to imagine what was going on in the minds of the first-century Jews, or of Jews today, for that matter. It is hard for us to imagine why they don’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.
But are Christians so different from the Jews in Jesus’ time? Many Christians today are expecting just the same thing that the Jews of the first-century were expecting. Most Christians today are expecting a great cosmic event to take place on the material earth. They are expecting Jesus to appear in the clouds and to execute judgment on the whole earth. There will be plagues and earthquakes and a final war called Armageddon to take place right down here in this material world on this physical earth. And in this both Christians and Jews are in agreement. Both faiths are expecting this great Day of Judgment enacted right here on this physical earth. As a witty rabbi once told my class, when the Messiah comes, all we need to do is ask him, “Have you been here before?” The answer would tell us of it was the second coming or the first coming of the Messiah.
But what about Jesus’ words in Luke 17:20-21, “The Kingdom of God does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Or what of Jesus’ response to Pilate’s questions, when Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). If Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, and if Jesus’ kingdom is within you and me, why are Christians expecting some kind of great battle on planet earth outside you and me? It seems to me that Christians today are missing the point in the same way that Jews in Jesus day missed the point. And I’m here to tell you that just as the first coming of the Messiah didn’t result in a global conflagration, neither will the second coming.
The cosmic battle spoken of in the Prophets, the Gospels, and the book of Revelation takes place within you and me. Jesus’ kingdom is within you and me, and that is where the battle takes place. Here on earth we live in a middle world. Angels of light and angels of darkness are fighting within our souls every moment of every day. Sometimes we may be aware of this inner conflict; at other times, our absorption with work and mundane affairs dull the sensitivity of our spirit. The great Day of Judgment occurs every time we make a choice for good or evil. Ultimately, we will have formed a character that is in harmony with God and heaven, or a character that is separated from God and heaven. The final judgment will occur in the next plane of existence when we are free to follow our heart’s desire. We will then either find a place in heaven or in hell. But the judgment will be self-judgment. The spiritual community we find a place in will be the spiritual community in which we have placed our souls in this life. If our souls are filled with God’s love and wisdom, we will be free to grow and expand in love and wisdom to eternity. But if we have deliberately and consciously rejected God and love; if we have deliberately and consciously chosen hate, selfishness, and ego, we will have our heart’s desire in a kingdom separate from God and love.
The coming of the Messiah didn’t happen the way the Jews expected it to happen. And the second coming of the Messiah won’t happen the way traditional Christians are expecting it to come. My message today is to recognize that the Day of Judgment is something that we experience in each choice we make in this world. And the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Jesus Christ is when we admit the Christ light into our hearts. Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world. . . . The kingdom of God is within you” (John 18:36, Luke 17:21). When Jesus comes to you in the midst of your day-to-day affairs, will you recognize Him? Or will you be expecting some other Christ, some other time, some other place?