Forgiven and Free :: Zechariah 9:9-12

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Because of the blood of your covenant, I will dismiss your captives from the waterless pit.

You DO NOT have the right to remain silent. Did you catch that? You do not! 

So please repeat loudly after me ...

Praise the Lord! Hallelu-Yah! Glory to God in the Highest! He is risen! Amen!


For many Christians, saying any of those short phrases of praise is awkward or embarrassing ... not only here in church but out in the real world. For more than 200 million believers around the world, it is downright dangerous. They are not free to worship without fear. They are not free to speak of Jesus. That’s 1 in 8 believers, worldwide, who live in real fear of persecution, violence, murder. They have real fear of not remaining silent. 


So given that the Fourth of July was yesterday ... today is a good day for us to pause, to ponder, and not to remain silent, praising Yah ... that is, YHWH ... as in Hallelujah ... for the immense divine blessings that he has bestowed and continues to bestow upon us, the blessings we so often overlook, the blessings we so often take for granted, the blessings we so often think will lose their specialness if we receive them too often, the blessings which demand that we not remain silent. 

As I have said many times already, and will remind you many more times in the weeks and years to come ... you can never receive the Gifts of God ... the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation ... too often. And for that, we ought to give our thanks and praise.


Today, the prophet Zechariah is reminding us of this very truth ... that the Righteous One has come, will come, and is coming again ... for his people ... coming to set us free from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil through the blood of his covenant for you.

In hearing Zechariah’s prophecy once again, we are reminded that Christ has brought true peace ... that is, God’s peace ... to all of the world. The Lord of the heavens and the earth has cut off the chariot and the warhorse and the battle bows. He is erasing injustice. He is delivering the blood of his covenant to you. So ... 

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! 

Behold, your king is coming to you ... righteous and having salvation! 

NOW, YOU ARE FORGIVEN! NOW, YOU ARE FREE! 

Can I get an Amen! 


The Book of Zechariah is one of the best examples of Law/Gospel proclamations in the entire Bible. It contains calls to repentance, prophecies of the Messiah, and promises of restoration. Today’s Old Testament reading ... which is just four verses long ... contains elements of all of these. This text, which I am sure is familiar to all of you because we hear it every year on Palm Sunday, is not just for passion week. Zechariah is a comfort for all seasons. 

To be sure, it has some obscurity with its visions of horsemen and horns, golden lampstands and flying scrolls ... but this prophet and priest presents some of the sweetest and most reassuring words of God. He pleads with his people to break their silence, to return to the Lord, and to finish rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem ... so they can celebrate the forgiveness and freedom given to them by God himself.

The people to whom he is writing had lost their way. After 70 years in exile, after being harassed by the people surrounding them, they had forgotten who God really was ... what God really would do for them. ... They had become prisoners to themselves ... captives of original sin ... captives of doubt ... captives of their own word ... captives without a voice ... captives in a waterless pit, so to speak. Captives in silence. 


So Zechariah cries out. 

Repent ... You do not have the right to remain silent. 


Why do we persist in keeping our silence about the great news God pours forth from the scriptures?

Well, for starters, for many people today, worship in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit truly is a matter of life and death. Between 2006 and 2011, Christian churches in 145 countries were harassed into silence. It’s hard to believe but in France, just last year ... there were more than 877 anti-Christian incidents recorded by the government in 2018. There were 228 “violent anti-Christian acts” in France in the first three months of 2019.

But as 2020 is proving, you know all too well that French Christians aren’t alone. You too are feeling pressured right here at home to be silent about who you are. If I say I am a Christian I will be accused of being a racist and a bigot and a homophobe. I will be condemned if I am silent, and condemned if I speak out. 

And no one here wants to experience that ... Do you? 

So all too often, we fall back into our silence ... becoming afraid to thank the Lord and sing his praise; tell everyone what he has done. As we become prisoners to our fear, we find it easier not to pray ... to say God isn’t listening to my prayer. We find it easier to silence God’s Word in our lives and to become distant from our own personal devotions and congregational Bible studies. 

As we push away God’s gifts of life and salvation, we find the chains of our own sinfulness become heavier, our flesh opposing every jot and tittle of Scripture. We find ourselves crying out with the Apostle Paul, that we don’t do what God wants us to do; no, instead we do the very thing we hate. 

We struggle to see our own racism ... let alone to root it out ... we struggle to acknowledge it as a real problem in our world. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” we like to tell ourselves. 


So Zechariah calls us to repent, acknowledging before God that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. To acknowledge that we are killing ourselves by ignoring the lack of justice and mercy in our country and our world. ... That we are killing ourselves by ignoring the adulteries of our eyes, our lusts for more, and our insistence to play a role in our own salvation.

O Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Hallelujah! And Amen! It is Jesus, our King! 


The Lord of all creation has humbled himself by taking on our flesh, becoming a man born to die quietly on a cross. Though he was rich, yet he became poor. He infiltrated our prison, making our flesh his very own. He let himself be afflicted, burdened with your sin. The all-knowing, the all-powerful, the all-present second person of the Trinity did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he made himself nothing. Jesus became your servant, humbling himself and riding a donkey ... showing the world that he is delivering peace.

Then Jesus dove into our waterless pit ... the pit of death ... a pit of unfruitfulness ... a pit filled with sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry ... a pit filled with riots and hate ... Jesus dove into our waterless pit, going silently to the cross, where he suffered and died for you. 


Then in the miracle of miracles, Jesus rose from the dead, delivering to you freedom from death, and making you a prisoner of hope, a hope of everlasting life. And at that news we must break our silence. Rejoice. ... Shout aloud. ... Behold

Here in his stronghold, His Holy Christian Church, Jesus washes your wounds and cleanses you in Baptism ... here in his stronghold, he feeds you with his victorious body and blood that give you life ... Here in his stronghold, he announces to you the forgiveness of your sins and he gives you his innocence and righteousness in exchange for your guilt and shame. He has removed your shackles of sin and death and restored to you the double comfort of forgiveness and freedom through the blood of the covenant. 


The blood of the covenant that he instituted for you on the night he was betrayed is for the benefit of you and the whole Christian Church on earth. Take and eat; it is his body. Take and drink; it is his blood shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. These words, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, show us that in the sacrament forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given to us. 

Now won't you break your silence and ... Thank the Lord and sing his praise..

What higher gift can we inherit than forgiveness and freedom? 

So embrace your freedom as often as you can. Receive the Lord’s supper with joy as often as you can. Return to your baptisms as often as you can. Devote yourself to his living Word, as often as you can. Lift your voices in freedom as often as you can ... telling the world what he has done, knowing that today he will restore double to you 

  • Freedom to forgive and be forgiven ... 

  • Freedom to worship without fear but with joy

  • Freedom to love your neighbor and our God.

  • Freedom to please God out of Thanksgiving instead of obligation. 

  • Freedom to love life from womb to tomb. 

  • Freedom to stand firm on God's created goodness. 

  • Freedom to live life with the hope of resurrection.

Brothers and sisters in Christ ..  break your silence and sing praise to the God of Israel, sing praise for his visitation

Hallelu-Yah! 

He is risen! 

Amen.

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