More important than a king
Marion D. Hanks
Oh, I love the words wholesome, hallowed, gracious. Among the many wonderful things I would like to remind you about, I love and will conclude with a brief statement from a great book written long ago. It is about a slave who lived in Christ’s time and watched him on a certain special Sunday in the midst of a multitude.
Suddenly, for no reason at all that Demetrius could observe, there was a wave of excitement. It swept down over the sluggish swollen stream of zealots like a sharp breeze. Men all about him were breaking loose from their families, tossing their packs into the arms of their overburdened children, and racing forward toward some urgent attraction. Far up ahead the shouts were increasing in volume, spontaneously organizing into a concerted reiterated cry; a single, magic word that drove the multitude into a frenzy.
“Do you know what is going on?” said Demetrius. [He was talking to another slave.]
“They’re yelling something about a king. That’s all I can make of it.”
“You think they’ve got somebody up front who wants to be their king? Is that it?”
“Looks like it. They keep howling another word that I don’t know—Messiah. The man’s name, maybe.”
Standing on tiptoe for an instant in the swaying crowd, Demetrius caught a fleeting glimpse of the obvious center of interest, a brown-haired, bareheaded, well-favored Jew. A tight little circle had been left open for the slow advance of the shaggy white donkey on which he rode. . . . There had been no effort to bedeck the pretender with any royal regalia. He was clad in a simple brown mantle with no decorations of any kind, and the handful of men—his intimate friends, no doubt—who tried to shield him from the pressure of the throng, wore the commonest sort of country garb.
It was quite clear now to Demetrius that the incident was accidental. . . . Whoever had started this wild pandemonium, it was apparent that it lacked the hero’s approbation.
The face of the enigmatic Jew seemed weighted with an almost insupportable burden of anxiety. The eyes, narrowed as if in resigned acceptance of some inevitable catastrophe, stared straight ahead toward Jerusalem.
Gradually the brooding eyes moved over the crowd until they came to rest on the strained, bewildered face of Demetrius. Perhaps, he wondered, the man’s gaze halted there because he alone—in all this welter of hysteria—refrained from shouting. His silence singled him out. The eyes calmly appraised Demetrius. They neither widened nor smiled; but, in some indefinable manner, they held Demetrius in a grip so firm it was almost a physical compulsion. The message they communicated was something other than sympathy, something more vital than friendly concern; a sort of stabilizing power that swept away all such negations as slavery, poverty, or any other afflicting circumstance. Demetrius was suffused with the glow of this curious kinship. Blind with sudden tears, he elbowed through the throng and reached the roadside. The uncouth Athenian, bursting with curiosity, inopportunely accosted him.
“See him—close up?” he asked.
Demetrius nodded.
“Crazy?” persisted the Athenian.
“No.”
“King?”
“No,” muttered Demetrius, soberly—“not a king.”
“What is he, then?” demanded the Athenian.
“I don’t know,” mumbled Demetrius, in a puzzled voice, “but—he is something more important than a king.”
[Lloyd C. Douglas, The Robe, chapter 4]
I wish you a happy Christmas.
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
Let earth receive her King.
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing.
God bless us all that we, may have a wholesome, hallowed, gracious, special time. I bear witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he lives, that he governs, that he inspires and directs, that he will come again. God help us to worship in all the wonderful ways there are this season. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Marion D. Hanks was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this devotional address was given at Brigham Young University on 11 December 1973.
