December 5: The Coming King of Zion
♫ Music:
Day 3 - Tuesday, December 5
Title: The Coming King of Zion
Scripture: Zechariah 9:9-17
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.
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.
For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made Ephraim its arrow.
I will stir up your sons, O Zion,
against your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior's sword.
The Lord Will Save His People
Then the Lord will appear over them,
and his arrow will go forth like lightning;
the Lord God will sound the trumpet
and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.
The Lord of hosts will protect them,
and they shall devour, and tread down the sling stones,
and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine,
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.
On that day the Lord their God will save them,
as the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.
For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the young women.
Poetry:
Up-Hill
By Christina Rossetti
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
OUR TRUDGING IS A TRIUMPH
“Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?” asks the traveler in Rossetti’s poem.
It’s a question I can almost picture in the mouth of young pregnant Mary, as she walks in Joseph’s wake on the long road to Bethlehem, to be counted in a census they never asked for, under an oppressive government they never wanted.
A day’s journey always takes a day, of course, and a life’s journey always takes a whole life long. Which is at least part of Rossetti’s point: you don’t get to choose the length of the road, but you do get to choose to keep walking down it.
It’s what’s at the end of that road that matters. At the end of Mary’s journey to Bethlehem, she found her son. The best thing about giving birth is getting to meet the person who’s been living with you, unseen, all this time.
Unseen, and yet loved.
Bruegel's painting gives us a picture of a crowded, busy Bethlehem full of people who were there because they had to be.
Its workaday busyness is very different than the triumph of the passage from Zechariah, where there is another crowd: a shouting and joyful host, exulting with pleasure at the glory and might of their Lord, in whose triumph train they walk, treading down their enemies like workers at the harvest tread down the grapes.
The deep brass notes of “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland” go well with this passage, especially if you go and search out the lyrics, which run, in part:
“The hero out of Judah breaks forth to run His course with joy and to purchase us fallen ones. O brilliant radiance, O wonderful light of blessing!”
You can just hear the echo of Psalm 19’s “the sun…is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoices like a strong man to run its race…”
Of course, the psalmist immediately turns from that image of the triumphant, burning, purifying sun to a paean of praise to the Law—which burns and purifies and triumphs over the sins of our dark hearts. The Law, the psalmist says, is like the sun.
And the Lord Jesus is not just the fulfillment of the Law. He is the Word Himself.
He rejoices like a strong man to run his race, a race that began in an infinitely small place: as almost invisible, swiftly dividing cells in a young woman’s womb. In the dark, and the obscure.
Did the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end: Behold, Israel’s king rode to His death meek, and on a donkey. Surely there is no road harder to walk willingly than the one you know will lead to your death.
But He walked that way: to death.
And then through it.
And that is the reason we willingly walk after Him. Because our King has led the way—more than that, He has made the way. There was no way through death until He burst death open from the inside. Death swallowed Him, but it was like swallowing the sun: He was a burning light that could not stay obscured. Not even by the darkest thing we know.
And so we walk after Him. And though the road is uphill all the way—yes to the very end—our trudging is still a triumph. Though we cannot see the host of heaven that marches alongside us, though we cannot hear the trumpets during these dark and dreary days, we are still a part of the great and cheering and singing crowd that the prophet Zechariah saw: laughter on our tongues and a song in our hearts.
Because our King has gone before us, and He has made a way for us through death.
And He will meet us with a feast at the end.
Prayer:
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer)
Jessica Snell
Class of 2003
Editor of Let Us Keep the Feast: Living the Church Year at Home
About the Artwork:
The Census at Bethlehem (The Numbering at Bethlehem), 1566
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Oil paint on wood panel
115.5 x 164.5 cm
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Brussels, Belgium
The Census at Bethlehem (also known as The Numbering at Bethlehem) is by the Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting shows a Flemish village in winter at sundown. A group of people gathers at a building on the left while in the center foreground of the painting, a man is leading a donkey on which sits a woman who is draped in a blanket. They are moving towards the tax collectors, and are meant to represent Mary and Joseph. There appear to be soldiers nearby, perhaps ensuring order in the village while the taxes are collected. People are going about their daily business and children are playing with toys. By placing Mary and Joseph in this scene of ordinary “contemporary” life, the humility and reality of Jesus’ coming into the world are emphasized.
About the Artist:
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569) was one of the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. A painter and printmaker, he is primarily known for his landscapes, genre paintings and religious works. His detailed genre paintings reflect the activities and lifestyles of the Northern European peasant class and have aided historians in their understanding of what life was like in the sixteenth century. Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a formative influence on Dutch Golden Age painting, and the history of painting in general, because of his innovative choices of subject matter after religious imagery had ceased to be the primary subject matter of painting.
About the Music:
“Nun komm der Heiden Heiland” from the album Great Joy - Renaissance and Baroque Christmas Music for Brass
About the Composer:
Michael Praetorius (c. 1571–1621) was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age and was particularly significant in the development of Protestant hymns. Praetorius was a prolific composer; his compositions show the influence of Italian composers and of his younger contemporary Heinrich Schütz. His works include the nine-volume collection of more than twelve hundred chorale and song arrangements.
About the Performers:
The hymn “Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland” (“Now Come, Savior of the Nations”) has been used for centuries on the first Sunday of Advent. German theologian Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote a chorale text based on the second verse of “Intende qui regis Israel” (“Give Ear, O Ruler of Israel”), an Advent hymn of St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397). Luther set his chorale to a Gregorian chant melody traced to the twelfth century. Originally published in Wittenberg in 1524, Luther’s text and melody have subsequently been adapted and arranged by countless composers, most famously Johann Sebastian Bach for several of his Advent chorales and organ preludes. Here we have an older version of the chorale set by German organist, composer, and music theorist Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), well-known for his prolific settings of Protestant hymns. The chorale is a regal processional, especially performed here with grandeur by the Schwerin Blechbläser-Collegium, an innovative brass ensemble formed in 1975 and based in Northern Germany.
About the Poet:
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was a Victorian poet who is known for her simple, lyrical work. She published poems in the feminist periodicals The English Woman’s Journal and Victoria Magazine, and in various other anthologies. Today her poetry is regarded as some of the most beautiful and innovative of the period. Critical interest in Rossetti’s poetry was renewed in the last decades of the twentieth century; a resurgence largely generated by the emergence of feminist criticism. In Rossetti’s lifetime, opinion was divided over whether she or Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the greatest female poet of the era; in any case, after Browning’s death in 1861, readers and critics saw Rossetti as the older poet’s rightful successor.
About the Devotional Writer:
Jessica Snell is a writer who graduated from Biola University and the Torrey Honors Institute in 2003. She’s the editor of Let Us Keep the Feast, a book about celebrating the Christian church year at home. Her work has appeared in Touchstone Magazine, Christ in Pop Culture, Daily Science Fiction, and more. She and her husband live in sunny Southern California with their four children.