JESUS, THE POOR KING by Adriel Sanchez for Core Christianity
In seminary, I worked for a small carpet cleaning business. It was just me and the owner of the company. We split the work up, driving throughout San Diego shampooing people’s carpets. I loved the job because it was a break from my studies, but when I’d show up to a house to clean the carpets I’d always get funny looks. Being a small business, we didn’t have the equipment of a Stanley Steamer-sized company. There was no truck-mounted van with a clean business logo on the side. I didn’t even have to wear a uniform. I’d show up in jeans and a T-shirt, and then begin unloading portable equipment from the back of my forest green ‘98 Honda CRV.
I remember showing up to homes and being asked questions like, “Are you going to clean the carpet?” And, “Does that thing work?” The answer was always yes—but I admit people had reason to ask. They were expecting a couple uniformed carpet technicians in a business van, and they got a 22-year-old guy in a Volcom shirt.
Sometimes the person coming to fix our problem just looks differently than we expect, I guess. At no point was this truer than with Jesus, the Messiah. The prophet Zechariah wrote,
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Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Zechariah addressed his prophecy to the post-exile community. He lamented the fact that despite everything God’s people had been through, they continued to make the same sinful decisions as their ancestors. Here he gives a ray of hope: A king was coming to end war and rescue the people once and for all. Zechariah called God’s people to rejoice, and then he painted an unlikely picture of what this king would be like, “humble and mounted on a donkey.”
In his book Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund notes that the only time Jesus described his own heart in the Gospels, he referred to it as gentle and lowly (Mt. 11:29). It’s the same word used in Zechariah 9 describing the humble king. In the Hebrew Bible, this word humble is often used to describe material poverty. Picture it, the prophet is calling the nation to rejoice, and to set their hopes on a king who is coming, but the king looks destitute. He doesn’t show up on a mighty steed, but a humble donkey. Zechariah’s picture would have raised eyebrows, to say the least. “Is this the guy who’s going to get the deliverance job done?” It’s no surprise that people responded to Jesus how they did when he first came.
