So we’re going to have a life of ease, living at peace. Isn’t that what today’s readings promise?
Well if they do, why would you believe them. It clearly hasn’t and doesn’t work out that way. So either we ignore them or we figure out what they are telling us.
This situation isn’t unfamiliar to us. Sometimes we find that the words we hear don’t mean what we first thought. In this case however the challenge may go deeper than the meaning of particular words.
Taking our first reading (Zechariah 9:9-10) – “the warrior’s bow shall be banished, and he [our king] shall proclaim peace to the nations”. Clearly this king has not brought peace between nations – not in the time of Zephaniah or at any time since. So what is the prophecy trying to tell us?
We might like the idea of a God that will take control of the world and make it peaceful. But God doesn’t takes control, he never makes anyone do anything. The “just savior” that he is, he proclaims peace, but he doesn’t impose it. Peace cannot be imposed by some external force. Our relationships, whether they lead to peace or to conflict, are under our control and ours alone, each individual one of us.
Zephaniah is telling us what God is like – just and desiring peace. He is telling us what potential we have, what we can be, but he’s not telling us about something that will be done to us.
What about Jesus then, telling us his burden is light? (Matthew 11:25-30) Are we any less burdened because we are his followers. Was life suddenly easier for his disciples than before they met him? Are we expecting that our lives are going to be easy? If we are then I’d suggest we are doomed to disappointment.
We’re not being told about how our world is going to be different. We’re being told how God is different, different from what we may think. God is not a controlling force that is going to impose on us. He will proclaim peace, because that’s what he wants for us, and wants for us to believe it is possible – but it’s down to us to work for it. He wants us to find rest. He’s not putting anything on us. And Jesus tells us how to find rest – by following his example of being meek and humble.
We instinctively want to find peace and rest by controlling what’s around us, and we’d really like it if God would take on that responsibility and make it happen. But that’s not the way it works. Finding rest and peace comes by giving up control, by giving up even the desire for control, going as far as giving up our desire to live. When we lose our life we find it, when we accept our lack of control then we are free.