The King is Truly Crowned

I’ve got a lot in my soul this morning. Forgive me if it comes out in a tumbling flood.

Today is Palm Sunday. Today Christ entered Jerusalem as her secular king. There is a kind of chiasmus of power in the Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem to great acclaim as her king, is successively betrayed and betrayed and beaten and tortured and killed, and then on Easter assumes total power as the king of all.

Conversely, there is a kind of inverse pattern of the trappings of power. He starts off with a pre-coronation triumphal entry, which then builds to where (at his actual nadir) he is presented to the people, crowned as a king, lifted up in sight of all with an inscription proclaiming him the king—but then when he has become actually king of all instead of ceremonies and acclamations he has small, quiet conversations with his friends. I don’t think there is anything per se wrong with the trappings of power. But I wonder how much unrighteous dominion comes from people wanting the trappings of power instead of actual lasting authority?

The Jewish people were generally thrilled when he came in as their king on Palm Sunday. This is why they hailed him. This was partly because they wanted a powerful, liberated ethnostate in secular terms. It was partly also because it would relieve the difficulty of having faith in him—instead of having to decide if he was the Christ, he would prove it—either he succeeded in miraculously creating a new Davidic kingdom or he wouldn’t—either way the uncertainty would be over.

Many turned on him when it became obvious that a new Middle Eastern empire ruled by the Jewish people was not what he was going to do. Partly this was because his vision was too small for them—where was the part where the Romans got beat up and thrown out? But also because his vision was too large. They could see themselves being the elite ethnicity in an empire, doing the same thing the Romans did but in reverse. They could be the Davidic people for a new Davidic king. They could not in honesty see themselves as the holy rulers of an eternal Messianic kingdom of justice and truth. They could not be divine. They had the same problem we had. In Missouri part of the trouble there was Saints who made boastful proclamations about how soon we were going to run everything. Trappings of power instead of power. President Nelson has said that the world is already wicked enough for the Second Coming, the problem is there is no people righteous enough to preside under him in millennial reign. I honestly think the average Relief Society would do a better job of running the local welfare system than the current bunch, and the average Elder’s Quorum could probably manage the roads and the parks pretty well. I do not think we are good enough, even a little bit good enough, to rule the earth. Same with the best of the Jews—they saw what Christ was offering and blanched.

By the way, we sometimes get the impression that there was a quiet few days between Palm Sunday and the events of the Upper Room, the Garden, the Cross, and the Tomb. Not so. Even his most refined spiritual teachings were proclamations of rule. Matthew 25:31-41 is the passage about the sheep and the goats that has the utterly tender verse “Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.” What is the context? Jesus is saying he is the king and judge of every human being. This tender verse is literally his announcement of the decree by which he says he will judge us.

The soul wants the king. There is this meditation or wisdom about It’s a Wonderful Life that has been on my mind lately.

George Bailey & the Miracle of Kingship

Potter is an agent of pure entropy, breaking down and extracting and consuming every competing node of power or value. The strippers and vagrants in Pottersville are not the product of any affirmative human vision: they show up for the same reason crabgrass shows up in a neglected garden box.

That’s why the people want George Bailey to decide who lives in Bedford Falls, and on what terms.

They want to be subject to a human judge and protector, executing a human vision, instead of the blind idiot god of entropy.

The desire to be subject to righteous human judgment — to kneel before a Good King — is not just the product of monkey instinct or propaganda. It solves all kinds of spiritual and practical problems.

Likewise, George doesn’t want power because he likes wielding it — power isn’t all that much fun unless you’re crooked.

George fights for his father’s throne because, if he doesn’t, the realm will come to ruin.

Holy Week and Easter are Christ’s announcement of what righteous dominion looks like. Righteous dominion is real power. It is true lasting power.  Nothing else is.  It is the kind of power that you want and should want. But it’s also a huge burden because the power comes from the common good and is tied up with the common good and has to be exercised for the common good and the only thing that makes the burden worthwhile is love.

The true model of all power and righteous dominion is fatherhood.  The burden and the glory are one.  The true crown is the crown of thorns.

The Father’s title is Father because that is the heart of who He is. As Mosiah tells us, in holy week the Son became the Father. The paradox of him becoming king higher than any other king ever will be by lowering himself lower than anyone has or ever will is no paradox. He assumed all power by assuming every burden. My soul trembles. Hail Christ. My God, my King.