DEVOTION//Our Palm Sunday king

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zechariah 9:9).

The Savior’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was no spontaneous act of Jesus’ loyalists (The accounts of Palm Sunday are recorded here: Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-38, Mark 11:1-11, John 12:12-19).

The day’s cheers of “hosannas,” “blessed is the king,” “peace in heaven and glory in the highest” were promised to happen 500 years before they did. The words of Zechariah offer us another guarantee that Jesus is who he claimed to be: the eternal God and king who came to earth in order to give us his holiness and heaven.

Martin Luther says this about Zachariah’s prophesy:

This is, as I have said, the second part of this chapter, in which he describes the very rich comfort and broad propagation of the kingdom of Christ throughout the world among all nations. This passage is quite familiar. The evangelists have cited it (Matthew 21:15; John 12:15), and we have treated it in detail in the Postil.

He comes to you a just Savior. This is quite a wonderful description of this king. Just as he is very different from all the kings of the world, so also his area of responsibility and his royal apparatus are clearly different from those which fit a king of this world. Here there is no violence, no armor, no power, no anger, no wrath.

All these, you see, are proper for kings of this world. Here there are only kindness, justice, salvation, mercy, and every good thing. In short, he dispenses the sweetness and the mercy of God. He is just, because he justifies. He is Savior, because he saves.

These are qualities which no king could ever bring to his throne. They are qualities far greater than those which befit a man. Moreover, all of these properties are spiritual and depict a spiritual kingdom, which the coming and accession of this just king reveal. For he comes in humility, riding on an ass.

Then, too, he is not surrounded by the powers of his subjects. The powers of the people lie in their king rather than the reverse, which is true in the case of worldly kings.

Here the entire passage agrees with the antithesis. For if that king of ours is just and does come to save, then we are clearly wicked and condemned sinners. Otherwise, he would come with a vain intent to make us righteous and to save us.

Source: Martin Luther — Luther's works, vol. 20: Minor Prophets III: Zechariah (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.) (Zec 9:9–10). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.