sermon excerpts: "A Donkey's Tale"

...Given the agricultural, nomadic history of the Israelites and what we know of society at the time, ownership of a donkey was a sign of wealth. Where common people walked everywhere, riding on a donkey was akin to a cruising in a luxury car, a sign of wealth and importance.

So maybe the disciples were lowjacking a limousine for the occasion of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. If not a limo, certainly a sports convertible. So it was not as backwards a procession as we tend to think that riding a donkey would be.

Sure, a conquering king would enter the city with a great display of power and might: trotting out impressive warhorses, Arabian stallions, chariots thundering, trumpets blaring and banners flying in a way that is expected of royalty. Jesus continues to turn the tables by resisting worldly glory and fame. His arrival is of a humble leader, very aware that he puts his sandals on, one foot at a time, like everyone else.
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Again, the donkey is an important part of the story, but is overlooked in the hubbub and commotion. It wasn’t the donkey’s idea of a typical afternoon. One minute maybe sunning herself, thinking about a snack, itching herself against a wall, or swishing flies; the next minute surrounded by a throng of deliriously crazed people waving palm branches in the air. Stepping on coats, navigating through a crowd that is shouting “Hosanna!” and singing praises to the man on the donkeys.

Donkeys don’t do this every day. Or do they? After all, she was a beast of burden, expected to do simple menial chores of transporting and hauling. She was a blue collar worker with a reputation for stubbornness. Donkey scientists think this is due to a highly-developed sense of self-preservation: you can’t force or frighten a donkey into doing something it sees as contrary to its best interest.

The Palm Sunday donkey does offer some valuable theological insight to our identity as people of faith. Here, we have the ordinary called to extraordinary things, but nothing required extreme effort or hardship. The donkey did something that ended up being wonderful and powerfully significant, but what she actually did in the moment was simple and unremarkable. She walked. And carried someone. That was it.

She didn’t known enough to put on airs, to pretend to be something other than what she was, a pack animal. She didn’t know what an important task she had, what effect her journey that day would have on a nation of people and a future of a faith. All she knew was, one foot in front of the other.

So maybe it’s worth remembering as a church community, as well as an individual person of faith, that we’re not being asked to be something we’re not. Despite all the calls to repentance and change and turning over a new leaf that the season of Lent tends to focus on, we are not called to abandon who we are and become someone totally different.

We are to be our best selves. To do what we do well, what comes naturally for us, in a way that carries Christ’s message with us. That is how we in our small, seemingly insignificant way will take the presence of Christ into the crowded world. We do not have to radically reinvent ourselves, to aspire to be a successful church or a legitimate Christian.

The donkey wasn’t asked to do anything beyond what she is called to do: to walk, to carry, to be herself. We are good enough as we are, simple hardworking donkeys: jacks and jennies, all of us. We can’t all be thoroughbred champions at the Kentucky Derby, nor should we try.

When the rush of the world overwhelms and we’re just trying to get through the clamour and crowd, doing what we do best isn’t a bad strategy. We’re never going to have the big picture make sense for us, all we have is our small snapshot of what is around us. All we can see is the needs and opportunities around us as well as the companions for the journey. We carry the glorious arrival of Christ, not as a burden, but as gift and grace, as a reminder that we are not alone.