Daily Prophets
Day 195
“Rejoice, daughter of Zion, shout out, daughter of Jerusalem, your king is coming to you, righteous and victorious, humble, riding on an ass. You, for your part, have been released, your prisoners from the dry pit for the sake of your covenant. And God will manifest Godself to them. God will make them prosper on that day. (Zechariah9:9,11,14,16).
Again, we have good news from the prophet! Earlier in this chapter he is letting the enemies of Judah and God know that their time to rule is going to end. Yet, the survivors will be saved as they belong to God also. This is an interesting philosophical conundrum for many people. How can God not accept everyone back when they return as God is God of all people? The prophets tell us, of course God takes everyone back when they turn/return to God and God’s ways. So, what makes the Jews so special? We are the first to turn to God through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Israelites who left Egypt, etc and our mission is to spread not just the words of God to everyone, to spread the ways and the application of these ways to everyone. It is not “specialness” as much as our task that we get to do because we are able to do it.
In the first verse above, God is reminding us that we are all children of Zion, children of Jerusalem, we have a place that we come from, we are not orphans, we are not abandoned to the wind/four corners of the earth. We have exiled ourselves from our proper place as noted by earlier prophecies and we remain children of Zion, Jerusalem, and God. We will be helped along by the new king, is this a subtle hint to make God our King, possibly, and it is also a shot of hope to a people who are afraid and beaten down. The prophet realizes that the people don’t believe in their own strength and need a leader to infuse them with the will to take back their land, to return to their home and to follow God’s will. Are we willing to return to our proper places and make God our higher power rather than using our power to make ourselves God?
Yet, the king is not to be another haughty self-centered, power-hungry leader who is only interested in using the people for his own gains. This king is going to be a warrior and a person of justice and righteousness. This person is a winner and knows that it is with God’s help he is victorious. This person has the humility to know that he gets to serve God, the people of Judah and this knowledge informs all decisions he makes, unlike the earlier kings who made decisions solely for their own good. He is a trusted servant who knows who he serves and is grateful for the opportunity to serve God and the people. This type of leadership is the model for us today as well as for Judah in 516BCE. Yet, our leaders are still engaged in trying to deceive us to believe they are when they are lining their own pockets, just ask Rand Paul who votes his wife’s stock market purchases, not what is best to stop the pandemic. Ask any of the leaders of either party who stay quiet when the ones being persecuted are the Jews, the Blacks, the Latinos, the Muslims, etc-anyone who isn’t them. This is not the leadership Zechariah is telling us will save us-when will we demand an end to the disruption and death of our democracy? Hopefully before it is too late.
In recovery, we experience the last two verses each and every day. We know we have been released from the prison of denial, addiction, hatred, self-loathing, our self-imposed exile from God, etc. We are so acutely aware of our new found freedom and the fragility of same. Our release from our individual prisons and finding a community of fellow freedom seekers lead us to be grateful, committed and joyous. We are continuing to be aware of how God manifests Godself to us daily and we engage in cleaning out the ‘shmutz’ that blinds us to God’s manifestations and clogs up our spiritual arteries so we can’t experience the connection to God and to another human being. We know that each day we are connected to God, each day we realize God’s manifestations in our lives and in the world, each day we tend to God’s garden that we are responsible for, each day we honor and grow our freedom and spirituality, each day that we rejoice in our portion for that day-we are living in prosperity. We are living in abundance each day we realize how much we have, rather than what we don’t have. We are prospering each and every day we want what we have, we cherish our relationships, we honor our commitments, we stay loyal to the people who have stood with us and we remember and grow our covenant with God.
I wake up each morning grateful to be alive. I understand the terror of waking up in exile and, today, I realize that God as Sovereign means I am never in exile from the people I love, from God and from my authentic self. While some people may exile me/us from certain places, they can’t take away our connection with God and our people unless we allow it. I see where I have, over the years, given too much power to the people who exile me, made them the deciders of my inner well-being even though I knew/know better. Today’s reading reminds me that knowing one’s place and living it is what God desires and demands. There is no exile when I/we are doing this. To those who want to exert their ‘power’, God Bless, I throw off the yoke of your exile and your inability to have a conversation to connect and make plans with another(s) to move forward. Needing a ‘whipping boy’ is a sign of weakness, being the ‘whipping boy’ and complaining is a sign of exile from God. Today, we can throw off the yokes of weakness an exile. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark