Day 3318 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Matthew 21:5 NIV

Lowly

Such is the term used some 500+ years prior by the prophet Zechariah to describe, define this King he mentioned in this quote found in Matthew. Lowly. Plain. Simple. Common. Ordinary. Obscure. Ignoble, which is to say humble rather than someone claiming to be of high origin or social status. No, humble, the entire antithesis to our hypocrisy. It’s as if He truly did come to lead the way we’d never known, the way we’d otherwise never go, into a mindset with which we still seem to struggle, into a tomb from which we still seek to run.

Our King comes to us, gently upon this beast of burden so as to bear our burden and bury our beast.

For that is why He came. It’s why He came in the manner and mannerisms in which we read of Him. Not to pomp and parade as if royalty returning from some victory. Not to the roar of crowds eager to catch a glimpse of this almost god-like political powerhouse. Not to the tune of triumphant procession progressing proudly home away from being away. No, that He came here was His leaving His home behind for the mere miracle of making it known that such a hope was open unto all who’d long lived lives unworthy of that welcome.

Like us. All of us. Each and every single one of us who’ve so well known a life spent seeking everything He didn’t seek or assume or otherwise insist. Each of us who have maintained this mindset manifesting our own destiny as if we’re divine enough to define enough the outcome we feel we deserve, designing desires demanding devotion devoid of direction. Yes, we’ve been and become all that He wasn’t, isn’t, doesn’t ever intend to be.

Because He had a direction, one so straight and true that it’s become the Truth that is the Way that is the Life that leads us into the death He desired to show wasn’t the end we so definitely deserve for our direct defiance of all He’s due. Indeed, upon that foal, that colt of a work animal He rode to the culmination of every reason for which He’d come.

Healing. Hope. Purpose. Peace. Meaning. Majesty. Violence but yet victory. Persecution and its pain purchasing a place which has become a promise. Torment and torture turning a tune of triumph and testimonies left to testify to the truth of His toppling all we’ve done in and with and of our time and all of it that we’ve lost to the wrong side of His right to have never endured all He did on the behalf of a people who had, who have, who are but half alive at best.

No, I think that’s one of those sad underscores of this story that so often gets lost behind bright colors and Easter bunnies. It’s that we seek still a life of gain whereas what we see in Him and how He came to accomplish what He came to achieve isn’t aimed at gain but rather giving. He came not to get glory but rather to give a glimpse of the majority of our story that we’ve never allowed ourselves to see, to read, to remember.

Yes, He came to remind us of the simple necessity of humility and the nearly impossible outcomes such lowliness can accomplish in us.

Because all our lives we’ve lived seeking otherwise. We’re a people who live by pride, pursue power, purchase possessions that come to turn on us and possess rather us, public about our politics pretending a popularity we both can’t and shouldn’t prioritize. Yes, we’re vain and violent about it. We demand attention, crave acceptance, insist upon applause and refuse to admit the towers we’ve built beneath us.

We know nothing of donkeys. Nothing of lowliness. Nothing of ignobility. No, rather we live as if each one a noble, a royal, some regal reward God gave to mankind as if we’re something this world can’t do without.

And yet He is what this world can’t do without. He’s what we can’t do without.

But alas, for us to see such an honesty demands the humility He’s displayed from the very beginning. Not just of His ride into Jerusalem, the scene celebrated this Palm Sunday. He wasn’t only lowly at the very end, agreeing finally to the beating and berating and belittling began by mankind long before He came to call us away from who we’ve become. He didn’t ever pretend something He wasn’t, even often times refused to speak of Himself as who He knew himself to be.

No, rather He allowed humanity to testify both of His identity and thus our ignobility.

I doubt it’ll ever lose its novelty, all the many ways in which His Word remains alive and active and able to flip our script and leave us the counter to our considerations. All we’ve ever known or assumed we could know is all He turns on its head as He calls us now to leave for dead the ways in which we’ve lived as such ways are not His ways but rather only aimed always away from His way, and thus always away from the truth, unable then to find or feel or know the life.

Indeed, we know nothing of life. That gravity hit me quite early this morning. Yet another sleepless night unable to sleep off the fear of what I’d done, where I’ve been, who I’ve become. That without Christ at the center of everything, I am nothing. Without His leading, I’m only lost and losing. Without His mercy I’ve absolutely no meaning. Indeed, without the lowliness aching to see what’s under the lack humility as seen upon the surface of my life lived superficially, I’d never know what hope could be.

Because hope doesn’t exist in things we can do on our own. Hope isn’t a byproduct of things we can afford to buy. Happiness isn’t held inside things we can hold. Satisfaction and success aren’t sold in stores. Peace isn’t produced by products or possessions. Meaning isn’t meant to be made of mammon or material. Life doesn’t consist of lists, all the things we want and want to avoid. Purpose isn’t the prize of pride or popularity, politics proves none powerful but rather all otherwise only preoccupied.

No, our worth isn’t won in what we win nor is our fate found in feelings and fighting to keep them feeling safe.

And yet such are all things we’ve gotten wrong. We’ve lived this life upside down, seeking what’s down here rather than what might be elsewhere. Yes, we’ve tried to become our own, a creation of our own creation, a people lost inside themselves and the arrogance which makes such the normality it’s become.

That’s why He came. To ride lowly into our lives and lead us into a share of such submission as finally seeing that we are in fact subordinate to our Savior. See, that’s the difficulty for us to accept from up here on these thrones we’ve painted gold and tried to pretend were real. It’s that we’re not kings, for many reasons, but most of all because we’ve instead lived like we were. That’s the definition of our demise. That we’ve long pretended ourselves something we simply cannot be.

For there is but one throne in Heaven, and despite the manmade and socially sought replicas seated or standing inside buildings made of earthen stone and wood, the fact is that no human is anything other than a child of God, all the same in His sight, the same sight which saw fit to sit on donkey and ride to His death.

I think it’s maybe supposed to be impossible for us to understand. I think the honesty and the humility of it all is supposed to remain almost elusive. I think that He chose the paths He walked and the ways in which He walked them so that we couldn’t understand it fully. And I know that might seem somewhat strange to say, because it is entirely simple. It’s easy to understand. There isn’t a single misconception allowed for within this most fundamental and foundational story of the Gospel.

But yet how else can we explain our still struggling to live like we get it?

If not simply because He remains everything we’re not, asking then of us continually to lower ourselves to learning that everything we’ve known of life and how to live it was wrong?

You see, we see kings as those with bodyguards. They’re driven around in armored cars, or at least really nice chariots, you know, back in the days before engines and whatnot. Kings are dudes with crowns so heavy and so shiny that they don’t wear them all that much as their necks would break and if they went outside people would be blinded by the glare of their glory. Kings live in castles, they wear really fancy clothes and eat food nobody else can afford. They have entire populations bow down to them, serve them, worship them.

Jesus picked a donkey.

A work animal used on farms to carry heavy loads. He wore simple clothes, a crown only of thorns, ate with sinners, lived in tents and knew more persecution than applause. His path wasn’t paved through a parade but rather proven by pain. He chose not to ascend some worldly throne but instead to be lifted high upon a cross. Yes, He chose a life of loss. Of lowliness. Of what most would consider lunacy.

Why?

Because He came to serve rather than be served, to show us the example we’d never seen nor cared to see, to leave with us undeniable understanding as to what life is and who we’re actually living for. Indeed, He came to lead us home, back to the God we’d left behind and forgotten and found every reason and every way and every wanting and wishing to leave us alone.

And He did it all in the most peculiar way possible. All because He’s just not the kind of King who would lead anyone where He himself wouldn’t go.

But that’s where this story now hits home. Because where did He go? Where are we to follow? What does this example we’ve been given show us about what to expect in life, what to seek from life, who to honor with life? What awaits at the end of this week? Loss.

You see, so much of our lives we’ve assumed life was all about winning. It’s supposed to be, supposedly, all about all that we want and wish for and race for. Yes, life is a race toward prizes and power and popularity and platforms from which we pretend ourselves preachers presenting promises we’ve assumed we’ve the power to provide. It’s a performance, some staged production pursuing always the pride that pretends we’re everything we cannot possibly be.

That’s why He didn’t.

He didn’t stay inside castles and only accept guests whenever He felt like having a little attention. He didn’t withhold His healing and hope from those who disagreed with Him. He didn’t waste His time arguing over why we’re wrong and how He’s right. He didn’t walk around in royal robes demanding the applause of crowds or crowns so heavy they can’t actually be worn.

No, instead He went the way we’re all going to go. Lowly and into suffering. He picked up that cross to show us it could be done. He died to this earth so that we too might leave behind all we’ve learned of life and how to live it within it. Because He knows what we never wanted to, that life isn’t meant to be a time spent seeking wealth or regality or whatever other vanity we’ve come to give more meaning than life itself.

Life is meant to be lost, so that life might then be found.

That’s something that’s been on my mind for days now. It’s what we’ve talked about for at least a couple of posts. That there is only life in the death of us as what we’ve made of us is simply upside down. And that’s what He came to help us see. That everything we’ve come to assume is simply wrong.

That kings don’t live in castles, people do. That royals aren’t the ones on the throne, they just sit on fancy chairs. That hope doesn’t need horses to carry it around, that donkeys will do just fine. That it doesn’t matter what we wear, who walks with us, where we go or even what we go through. No, that what matters is the depth of our focus on this faith in His faithfulness.

Because that’s exactly what we learn best from Christ. Faithfulness. Even unto death! Why? Because what is life if it’s greatest achievement is not losing it?

And how can any of us achieve even that considering the reality of our mortality?

See, we’ve gotten so many things so twisted around that we need to seek the lowliness He showed for us. Because until we do, we’ll be stuck inside this life of pretend only able to hope we can keep what we can’t.

Friends, today we celebrate the holiest week in history. The home stretch, if you will. It’s the grand finale of this most undeserved gift ever given. It’s the celebration of Christ’s last week on this earth, at least bound to it in bodily form. And no matter what we think, what we assume we know, however we might feel or whatever we may be going through, my prayer for all of us is that if we take anything away from this story, this celebration, it’s that it started with a donkey and ended with stone.

The donkey led Him in, but the stone had to let Him out.

Let us stop living so lost inside so many things that just don’t matter, that only keep us distracted, that can only ever prevent our sharing in such lowliness as to live a live that seeks to give rather than gain.

Because if we live this life only worried about us, we’ll be the only ones who benefit. But maybe if we do as He taught us to, well, maybe even our lives can end up meaning something to someone else. Maybe even we can do something worth doing. Maybe we can even get ourselves out of the way and let the Waymaker lead us home.

Yes, maybe we can even find the sort of humility that seeks a life lived in utter honesty even if such brings us toward plenty of hostility and what we’d probably consider an early exit. Because in Christ we see that life isn’t about the length in which we live but rather the depth of that for which we live.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold