Sunday Sermon Manuscript, July 5

Knowing God

Zechariah 9:9-12

Introduction — The Baejae High School Story

1. Last week, a baseball game in Korea became national news. During a match between Baejae High School and Gwangju Il High School, a hateful remark crossed the line, sparking major controversy. The 5.18 Gwangju Democratization Movement still seems to sit like an open wound in Korean society.

2. In this year's World Cup, apparently even covering your mouth with your hand while speaking on the field results in an immediate ejection — a rule created because hate speech violates the spirit of sportsmanship. Here in the U.S. too, there have been real cases of high school teams being stripped of championship titles because of this kind of hate speech.

3. Baejae High School was founded by the Methodist missionary Henry Appenzeller. It's a school with a long history, deeply rooted in Methodist spirit, and one that produced many independence movement leaders. It broke my heart to see a school like this caught up in this kind of scandal. The alumni association issued an apology, the association responded, and on the surface it seemed to be resolved — but I found myself thinking that the students who were in that stadium, not just from one particular school but all of them, will likely carry this wound for a long time.

4. The last sentence of the Baejae alumni's apology letter stayed with me for a long time: "Whoever wants to be great must serve others." These are Jesus' words from Matthew 20, and they were also the very verse Missionary Appenzeller chose as the founding motto when he established Baejae Academy.

5. Watching this unfold, two questions rose up in me: What kind of God do we believe in? And what kind of life are we called to live in this world? It may seem like an odd connection, but if a school was founded in a distant land by a missionary from America, supported by the American church, for the sake of modern education, then surely there should be a clear, unmistakable color to the God we confess and expect. Why isn't that showing through?

6. And is this really only Baejae's problem? Out of that deeper question comes a more fundamental one. Today's passage, Zechariah 9:9-12, seems to invite us into a direct — and deeper — understanding of who God is, which is exactly what we need in order to answer both of these questions.

Hope for the Exiles — Background of the Text

7. When Zechariah was written, the political situation of the ancient Near East was in great upheaval. Babylon, which had long dominated the region, had fallen, and Persia had risen as the new power. Cyrus, king of Persia, issued a decree allowing the foreign peoples who had been taken captive to Babylon to return to their homelands. Through this decree, a path opened for the people of Israel to return to Jerusalem. (If you look at the screen, you can see the Cyrus Cylinder, on which this decree was inscribed.)

8. For the people of that time, this was likely a far greater event than we can imagine. For those who had been carried away as captives, returning home was not simply a matter of moving — it was proof that God had remembered His people once again. And in today's passage, nearly every verse is soaked with the hope and expectation of those who were returning.

9. The passage addresses Zion and Jerusalem — in the Korean New Revised Version, this is translated as "the city of Zion" and "the city of Jerusalem," but in the original text and in other translations, this phrase reads "Daughter Zion" and "Daughter Jerusalem." It's not common in Scripture for a city to be addressed in the feminine, and especially as a "daughter." I believe this expression portrays Zion and Israel as both beloved and vulnerable at once — not as a strong, majestic city, but as a fragile daughter in need of her Father's love.

10. This vulnerability, right from the start, can become the most basic confession we make about the God we believe in. Zechariah plants this foundational root and then raises the question: What kind of God is it who has now rescued us from captivity?

Verse 9 — Who Is God?

11. Zechariah 9:9 begins like this: "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter Zion! Shout, O Daughter 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)

12. In this one short verse, a whole confession about God is condensed. First, God is a righteous king. And He is a king who brings salvation. So far, this is the image of God we've long been familiar with — strong, righteous, saving.

13. But the passage doesn't stop there. This king is gentle. And that gentleness is expressed through a concrete image: a king riding on a donkey — not just any donkey, but a colt, the foal of a donkey. I believe this is the key verse of today's passage.

14. This confession is echoed later by the Gospel writers when they introduce Jesus. Jesus, too, is confessed as righteous and as the one who brings salvation. But beyond that, Jesus was gentle. And that gentleness was most clearly revealed at the cross. The image of the king riding on a donkey, the confession that he is gentle, seems to echo forward into the image of the one who gave himself up on the cross.

The King Who Rides a Donkey

15. In that era, it wasn't unusual for kings to ride donkeys. In fact, the donkey was an animal kings commonly rode. That said, kings didn't ride only donkeys — they rode horses as well. So the specific choice to portray this king as one who rides a donkey carries particular meaning.

16. The horse is an animal of war. Chariots and war-horses were symbols of conquest and domination. The donkey, by contrast, is an animal of peace. To come riding a donkey means coming not to conquer, but to establish peace.

17. This is why I understand why God, and later Jesus, needed to come riding a donkey — and specifically a young donkey. It was a way of showing, in the flesh, that this was not a king who rules by force, but a king who lowers himself to serve. That the one who is righteous and brings salvation is, at the same time, gentle — this is the very character of the God we believe in.

A Story from Gwangju

18. When I was pastoring in Fresno, I remember it happened to be a Sunday on May 18th. After worship, we sat down together at the same table for a meal, and as it happened, three people who had been in Gwangju in May of 1980 were sitting right there together.

19. One of them said that her cousin went missing that day, and to this day, she still doesn't know what happened to him. Another had been living in downtown Gwangju at the time and is now a doctor. He told us about the scene of his older brother being carried in on someone's back, covered in blood. And the third was a military officer who had actually taken part in the suppression operation at the time.

20. Listening indirectly to the stories of these three people — who had experienced the same historical moment from entirely different places at the same table — I felt something deeply. Pain and wounds are not as easily comforted as we might think. Time passing does not automatically heal them. Each of them was still carrying that pain, in their own place, in their own way.

21. And yet, somehow, there are people in Korea who have turned this event into something to mock. I don't know exactly what their intentions were, but the result was that students used this history as a taunt against their opponents at a baseball game. Watching a painful history — one that real people are still living inside of, still carrying — being consumed as someone's punchline, I felt again that the Baejae incident I mentioned at the start was not just a simple, isolated happening.

Once More: What Kind of Life Shall We Live?

22. Let's return once more to that final sentence in the Baejae alumni association's apology letter: "Whoever wants to be great must serve others." This is the word from Matthew 20, and at the same time, it was the very direction of education that Missionary Appenzeller held onto when he founded Baejae Academy.

23. I believe this sentence connects directly to today's passage. The God we believe in is not a king who conquers by force, but a king who came riding a donkey, humbling himself. If that is true, then our lives, as followers of that king, must be the same. If we want to be great, we must become servants. We are called to face the world not by flaunting our strength, but with gentleness.

A Story about My Dog — A Lost Routine

24. During the pandemic, we adopted a dog into our home. When we first brought her home, walking with her every day became a pattern in my life. I'd go out at a set time each day, and that time became a settled routine in my day.

25. But when the church relocated and construction began, that routine broke down completely. These days, my dog coughs all day long. Worried, I've been trying to bring back that old walking routine, but it's not going the way I imagined. I've come to realize, in a very real way, that rebuilding a broken routine is actually harder than building one from scratch.

26. We think we always live remembering who God is, but when the busyness and hardships of life come, we forget before we know it. No matter how good our education, no matter how many experiences we've had, no matter that we once burned with a living confession of faith in God — as we go on living, we forget that confession. This is, honestly, who we are.

Conclusion — Restoring Our First Love

27. Perhaps what we need right now is to restore the routines of our faith. This isn't a season, like before, when many new believers are walking through our doors for the first time. Most of us gathered here today have walked with faith for a long time. That's exactly why I hope that today can be a time for us to restore our first love once again.

28. The God we believe in is a righteous king. A king who brings salvation. And at the same time, a king so gentle that He came riding on a donkey. As we engrave these three confessions in our hearts once more, I pray we would move forward into a place where our faith is renewed.

29. And I pray that you would restore the routines of faith that you've lost. It's hard to do alone — isn't that exactly why we gather here together? I pray that you and I would recover that time of drawing as close as possible to the Lord, encouraging one another, sharing our hearts, and sharing our lives.