The Donkey Matters

I've been working for the past few days on my message for Palm Sunday morning. Two things confuse me about Mark's telling of the day Jesus rode in to Jerusalem. The first is the donkey. Mark's story occupies 14 lines of text. Of those 14 lines, the donkey gets 8, the actual entrance into the city gets 4 and everything else that happens that day gets just two. 

So, why is it "all about that donkey?"

Please don't tell me it's about Jesus' magic "donkey sensing" powers. This is not about omniscience (of which Paul seems to believe Jesus had "emptied himself" at any rate.)  At this point in Mark's story there's no need or room for one more miraculous sign proving Jesus' divinity.  It seems to me it's more likely about the simple fact that Jesus knew people and people knew Jesus. Jesus trusted people and people trusted Jesus. So, when Jesus needed a colt that hadn't been ridden, he knew a guy who had one. And the guy who had one trusted Jesus enough to let him use it. If there's a preaching point here, and there might not be, it would be to simply ask if we're living our lives in such a way that we can borrow someone's donkey when we need one. 

Of course this still doesn't answer the big question. Why does the donkey get more lines in the story than Jesus?

The second thing that confuses me about the Palm Sunday story is why we treat Palm Sunday like it's the beginning of a party.  If we step back and look at the whole week it is anything but a party. Palm Sunday is the first day in a week filled with conflict, conspiracy, denial and betrayal, and it's certainly not going to end well for anyone. 

The church that I grew up in was a wonderful church. Most of the churches I've attended have been wonderful churches. But all those churches had the habit of wanting to jump directly from waving palm branches to looking for colored eggs in the church lawn without even thinking about the week between. Fortunately many of our churches are doing better these days in helping our people walk through the darkness between the shouts of Palm Sunday and the blinding Light of Easter.

But I digress. The point here is to figure out what the Palm Sunday story is really all about.

And it turns out it really is "all about that donkey."

John's gospel doesn't tell us how Jesus found the donkey. John just says he "sat on it." And then John inserts this line from Zechariah 9:9. "“Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!" If you don't "get it," don't fret, neither did the disciples. As it turns out the light of the resurrection makes lots of things more clear.

What's going on here is really pretty simple. There were a couple of ways for a King to enter a city. If he wanted to "kick butt" or make sure the peasants knew he could, he'd come in atop a white horse. If he came into a city at peace with a message of peace he's ride a colt. A colt is not going to threaten anyone. 

Jesus comes in peace. But Jerusalem is not a city at peace. Jerusalem is a city under foreign occupation. And here, it seems to me, is the point of the story, and the reason the donkey matters. 

We live in a nation obsessed by violence. And many who want to call themselves "Christian" share this obsession. We are committed to self protection. We are prepared to, as one Christian recently said in a "facebook" response, “do whatever it takes to defend my standard of living.”  In this context where we think self-defense is a Christian virtue we must not forget that Jesus comes into a kingdom of conflict with a message of peace.  

And for the Christian, Peace is NOT the goal we pursue, it is the way we pursue every goal worth achieving.