This weekend, in this heat box, some are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. Two weeks ago we marked another (now) national holiday – Juneteenth. While both are purportedly celebrations of freedom, it sort of depends how we tell the story – and whose freedom we celebrate. While July 4 has long been called “Independence Day,” as people of faith we might better celebrate our “interdependence” with the diversity of this country and indeed with the earth.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, greatly. Behold thy king, cometh unto thee.

These verses from Zechariah, set to glorious (and ridiculously difficult) music by George Frederic Handel, depict the bubbling up of joy at seeing the king. The text and music are a proud declaration of the coming king, who sounds so very royal.

This week I watched a video of Trinidadian soprano, Jeanine De Bique, sing this solo at the BBC Proms. Her incredibly fast tempo and somewhat mischievous presentation pointed me toward the text again. Handel didn’t set all the words in the passage. The orchestral music is majestic, maybe even pompous, as it depicts a king. But the king Handel depicts and the one Zechariah says cometh unto thee, are quite different.

Zechariah’s king does not arrive in a motorcade, with sirens blaring, motorcycles and dark cars ahead and behind. This biblical king arrives on a donkey. It is from this humble mount that the king proclaims peace. What an interesting text for this 4th of July weekend when military jets fly overhead for hours, and fireworks are like bombs bursting in air. I can’t help but think that this king who arrives on a donkey is much preferable to the noisy, false shows of military masculinity on display.

Depending on how you understand the meaning and purpose of prophets, one might think this text from Zechariah is predicting the future – specifically how Jesus will enter Jerusalem. OR one might remember that Jesus and the gospel writers know their own Jewish tradition. They remember there is this nugget in the later prophet Zechariah about a strange kind of royalty that enters not with trumpets and fanfare but on a donkey. (In the gospels, Jesus takes the idea one step further and rides a borrowed donkey.) Did Zechariah see into the future? Or do Jesus and the gospel writers get their ideas for the strange Palm Sunday processional into Jerusalem from Zechariah?

Just as Marshall McLuhan said in 1964, “The medium is the message” so the messenger affects how we hear the message. I experienced that as I watched Jeanine De Bique sing Handel at break-neck speed with a twinkle in her eye. Seeing a black woman from Trinidad, a former British colony, sing this German – British composer’s aria about the arrival of a king, made me wonder what kind of king she hopes for, what she expects this peace to look like. The messenger, Jeanine De Bique, and her interpretation of the aria made me hope for a subversive, humble ruler as king.

I thought of the message and the messenger on Friday at the National Cathedral where I was privileged to be part of an interfaith service “celebrating 250 years of the American Spirit.”

Canon Rose Duncan planned a service of readings and music that helped to tell a story of this country that is different from the ones we often hear. It was a bit like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton in that way – but without the rapping.

A letter from Abigail Adams to her husband was read by CBS correspondent Nikole Killion, an African American woman.

An excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was read by Ahmad Hilal Abid, who is the founder of the House of Wisdom in Washington State.

Rabbi Susan Shankman read a prayer from the pulpit, usually occupied by Christians. The messengers, the words they spoke, the places they stood, gave familiar words new meaning.

Zechariah proclaims that a king, arriving on a donkey, will bring peace. It sounds impossible, what kind of messenger is this. They can’t be much of a threat to the powers that be. But this humble king, Zechariah says, will dispense with the military powers. And the peace that this ruler brings is larger than life. This ruler will somehow extend peace worldwide. What a vision. I want to believe that the peace this ruler brings is not a false peace, like the so-called ceasefire with Iran or Hamas. Could it be a lasting peace? Is there such a thing?

As a result of this peace, prisoners will be set free. The people will instead become prisoners of hope, getting back twice what was taken from them. As a result of their covenant with God the people will live in security and it is hope that will bind them, not chains. (In case you decide to read this for yourself, the subsequent verses return to descriptions of violence that are hard to square with this peaceful king. Someone else is going to have to unpack those verses.)

I am struck by this phrase “prisoners of hope.” It is such a poetic turn of phrase; each translation I checked use the same words, “prisoners of hope.” Must one know despair in order to experience the reversal? Must one first be a prisoner in shackles in order to become a prisoner of hope? Do the shackles actually fall away or is this all metaphor?

I have talked before about my relative, who went to prison a few years ago. They were released to a halfway house and are now home with family. If ever there was a prisoner of hope, while at the same time being a prisoner behind razor wire, it is this person. The over 500 books read, the meditation and yoga practiced and taught, the welding class taken, the golf lessons given, all of this was done in hope, hope that it would make a difference upon release, hope that it could help get out. Was my relative a prisoner of hope?

At the Cathedral service we heard a reading from Frederick Douglas’s famous speech, “What, to the slave, is the 4th of July?” Given in 1852, a decade before Lincoln declared slavery illegal, Douglas said this:

…notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.

            This is to be a prisoner of hope, to hold onto what is right and true, to know that the road is long – and we will get there someday. WE will get there though perhaps I will not. Is this what it is to be a prisoner of hope, hoping for what you may not see yourself but what you wish and hope – for the next generations?

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he describes the way he is a prisoner of his own struggles – and in a strange way also a prisoner of hope. He wants to do what is right, he knows what is right but he keeps doing what he knows is wrong. He can’t seem to help himself. He calls this thing he struggles with “sin.” Paul isn’t explicit about what this sin is but he goes round and round about it.

Paul’s internal struggle makes me think of the disturbing videos I watched last night.

Yesterday hundreds of masked men came to DC for the July 4 holiday. These members of the white supremacist group, Patriot Front, dress in dark shirts and khaki pants and cover their faces with a white gator. This is all topped with a hat and sunglasses.

Yesterday the Patriot Front traveled in a pack. Riding the metro they took over whole cars. They paraded at Union Station, and eventually rode metro back to New Carrollton to their vehicles. In some of the videos, they look like men getting used to their own skin. I wonder, why they must cover themselves in order to be together in public? They must know that what they are doing is wrong or they wouldn’t need to cover their faces. What is their internal struggle with sin?

These Patriot Front members, in their uniforms and masks, are not prisoners of hope but prisoners of fear. What kind of despair and loneliness leads young men to believe that this makes them matter? What kind of internal turmoil drives them to join a group designed to create fear? Is this faux show of power an attempt to show that they matter?

My fervent hope is that these men are having an internal dialogue with themselves like the apostle Paul. I pray that, like Paul, they will someday delight in the law of God in their inmost self, for surely they are looking to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to know who they are; they want to know they matter. They want to be part of something beyond themselves. The irony is that they disguise themselves and blend in with a faceless group to find themselves. I wonder what Jesus would say or do if he saw this group?

If ever we needed this vision from Zechariah, it is now. This humble ruler, arriving not amidst a powerful motorcade but on… a delivery scooter. A militarized country being interrupted by… the World Cup, people from all over the world coming in peace to watch a ball being kicked on grass.

If ever we needed to remember this ongoing struggle with sin that Paul has, it is now. We will never get it quite right, the battle with sin will always continue. And God knows us for who we are; we are beloved anyway.

On this weekend of loud and boastful shows of power, amidst displays of military might, we remember that true peace arrives quietly, humbly, over and over again. Let us be prisoners of that hope.