A prayer when Jesus runs for president

You, Jesus, entered the race on a donkey not a war horse, yet we cannot purge from our minds the glamorous political processions so often accomplished that have marked and marred our world.

Our eyes are full to over-flowing of campaigns and promises and claims, everyone clamoring for their personal Messiah, their glorious leader who truly deserves to lead, and who will, they promise, save us.

Your entry was treasonous. It was a religious procession with blatant, obvious political ramifications, and you dispelled none of them when you claimed that if the palm waving populous were silent, the very rocks would cry out.

We are not ready for this. We are so distracted, compelled by all the campaigns, all the politicking, that we want you to be the escape, the sole One who steps outside the politics of this world and allows us a moment of escape into pure distraction.

But you will not. Your Father works in and through this world, all the way down, to the very dregs, the very votes, the very processions, the very posturing, in this weak and always hidden way.

So all we have is you, on that colt, our limp palms dangling from our hands, and your weak campaign promises, that when you are killed by the government for treason and the church for heresy, by us by our inaction, when you are lifted up, there and then you will be elected King.

We're watching for this kingdom, Jesus. Your coming kingdom. Please don't leave it at this, that if we hope for your kingdom, all you've got for us is, "Don't worry, you're going to love me. It's going to be great."

Or if you do, would you say it now? Show us now some semblance of your glory. We're still going to follow. Well, we'll try. Okay, we probably won't. No, in fact, we're tired of you. You don't have enough votes. We'll move on to the next candidate.

Then, there, that's when your kingdom begins. In a quiet upper room. In a protest against turning the church into a marketplace. In a treacherous equivocation concerning taxes. In tears over a torn apart and torn down city. In doubts about everything. In the power of a widow's tiny token. In a warning against rumors and in rumors. In lies and betrayals and power grabs and swords.

In spite of all the evidence, we'd still throw our vote away for you, Jesus. The pointless third party candidate who isn't even on the ballot, but whose name is written in the expanding universe, breathed over all.