What's With That Donkey?

Mark 11:1-11

This is one of those Sundays when the scripture reading is essentially the same as it has always been every year. We are celebrating Palm Sunday, and whichever account of the Gospel is read, the lesson will be about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, with some variations among the gospel writers.

I read this familiar story several times over to see what in it would capture my attention, and each time I did, my mind was drawn to the donkey.

I know that the significance of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem goes way beyond him riding a donkey. Palm Sunday is not about a donkey in the same way that it is not about palms, yet my mind kept being drawn to that donkey, leading me to wonder “What’s with that donkey?”

A lot has been said about the symbolism of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Some point to it as a fulfillment of prophecy. Long before Jesus, the prophet Zechariah had written: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9) That is pretty much what happened as Jesus rode into Jerusalem.

Then it has been noted that Jesus riding a donkey points to his humility and his embrace of peace, rather than a resort to the use power and arms. Powerful kings going to war rode horses. Jesus chose to ride in peacefully on a donkey instead.

Also, it has been pointed out that the use of a donkey was Jesus’ way of connecting with the common people. Life was not easy for a Jew living under Roman rule in the time of Jesus – and it was less so for the poor. Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey - the poor man’s animal, was saying to the poor and oppressed that they are included in God’s salvation.

All those are important insights to that event, but there was something else - something more that caught my attention.

Donkeys were common means of transportation at that time, and if Jesus just wanted a donkey to ride on, he simply had to say his disciples “Go into the village ahead of you and bring me donkey”. That would have been easy enough, donkeys were commonplace. Instead he said to his disciples “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here.” (Luke 19: 30).

The thing that caught my attention was the particularity of Jesus’ request - its exactness. Jesus didn’t just want any donkey, he wanted a colt that has never been ridden.

What’s with that donkey?

I don’t know how many of you have had dealings with donkeys, but I have. Donkeys are cute animals. For the most part, they are not aggressive, even though they will sometimes kick if they feel threatened. Like horses they can be trained, but it requires a lot of patience. If you are around donkeys, you would soon come to find out about their legendary stubbornness. A donkey will not move one inch if it in anyway feels afraid, or for whatever reason decides not to. They have a mind of their own and often will refuse to cooperate when confronted with the unfamiliar. They do best with people and in situations with which they are familiar and comfortable.

So it leaves one to wonder why would Jesus chose an untrained donkey, one that has not been broken-in, for such an important and significance occasion, rather than one that was trained and much more likely to cooperate, as would be expected? Is there something that his choice is meant to convey?

Throughout the gospels, we are presented with stories of Jesus and stories told by Jesus in which just about everything happens in ways that one would not expect.

For example, the prodigal son, after wasting his father’s money, returns home to an extravagant welcome instead of a stern rebuke as one would expect. Then there’s the despised tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners who are welcomed at table, while the religious leaders are called out for their hypocrisy. Before he was crucified, we see Peter, Jesus’ close friend and trusted disciple, the one whom we would expect to be defending Jesus’ innocence instead denying him; while Pilate, whom we would expect to be eager to condemn Jesus as a threat to the empire, was the one proclaiming his innocence.

If we were to seriously consider what Jesus said and did, and all that happened to him and because of him, we would come to see how often God does the unexpected.

In Jesus, we see God acting more like a loving parent than an angry ruler – changing us through love instead of withholding that love until we have changed. We see God reaching out again and again with forgiveness and mercy rather than responding to us with condemnation and retribution.

Living in a world where the systems of power are often used to punish those who have offended the powerful, it is easy to see the cross as an instrument of punishment. But if we take what Jesus said and did seriously and we understand the unexpected ways in which God acts, we would come to see the cross as an expression of the deepest kind of sacrificial love, instead of an instrument of divine punishment. We would come to see in Jesus, God’s offer of renewal and reconciliation, rather than God’s voice of judgement and condemnation.

Jesus shows us a God who acts in unexpected ways, and he is also saying to us that if we are to walk faithfully with God, and to embrace what God offers, we too must be open to the unexpected things and ways of God. Quite often God leads us along paths that are untried, and calls us to experiences that are untested.

Like Jesus, we have to climb on to that donkey that one has ever ridden; set off on that path that we have never walked before; pursue that initiative that is untested, follow that urging of the Spirit that is untried; trusting God to take us through.

What’s with that donkey? It reminds us that our relationship with God is not experienced in some indistinct generalized way; there is a particularity to what God sets before us and calls us unto. It reminds us that the path we are called to travel may not be the well-worn or the tried and proven; it may involve the unknown. It may take us where we or others may expect, or want to go, but it is what will take us where we need to be.

When Jesus got on that donkey, he knew that it would take him, not to the place that the palm waving and cheering crowd had in mind, but to the place where God’s love would be put on display in a manner that none of them expected.

The means that God uses to get us to where we need to be, and the place to which God leads us, may not be what we expect. But when we trust God and set on the untried, the untested, the unknown, as the Spirit prompts us, however risky, or difficult or painful the journey me be, we will ultimately arrive at that place where love and that which leads to life prevails.

Thanks be to God.