The First Sunday in
Advent, December 1st, Year of Our + Lord 2013
Trinity and St. John
Lutheran Churches, Sidney and Fairview, Montana
Why the Donkey? Matthew 21:1-9
A conversation, on a particular Sunday
evening, during the spring of a particular year, in a village a short distance
outside Jerusalem.
“Say, Bartholomew,” Thomas asks as the
evening light fails, “Why did Jesus have us go get those donkeys for Him to
ride as He came into the city this morning?
I mean, I have some ideas, but I doubt I’m right. You always paid more attention in
Synagogue. Help me out here, would
you?”
Grinning in the
darkness, Bartholomew quips, “Well, I think the Master wanted the mama donkey
along so that the colt would be calm and let Him ride it. Nobody wants to get bucked off, you know… not
even the Son of Man.”
“Knock it off,
Bart,” Thomas snapped back, “I know
plenty about donkeys. And you know
that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m
trying to sort out what it all means. It
makes me think of a bunch of stories from the Book, like Zechariah’s promise of
Zion’s king coming to her on a colt of a donkey. And of course the people were shouting
Hosanna to the King of David, so they were thinking the same. But which of Zion’s stories apply to
today? The whole Scripture can’t all be
connected to this morning, can it?”
“Can’t it? Why not?” asks Bartholomew. “Come on Tom, you can’t always be doubting
God’s Word. If there’s one thing Jesus
has been teaching us for the last three years, it’s that all of it, Moses, the
Prophets, the Psalms, all of it is about Him.”
Matthew, drifting
off in the corner of the house in Bethany, tries to rouse himself from
sleep. “This should be interesting,” he
thinks. “I should take some notes, so I
have this stuff when I write my biography of Jesus. There could be some great details.” Matthew lifts himself up on one elbow to
listen.
“O.k., Tom,” says
Bartholomew, engaging his friend, “Let’s work through it. Which stories from Scripture are you thinking
of?”
“Well, there are lots of donkey stories, I guess the first
one is Abraham and Isaac heading up Mount Moriah, a donkey carrying the wood
for the sacrificial fire. But that
doesn’t seem to fit.”
James, John’s
brother, jumps into the conversation: “I hope it isn’t connected. This is going to be a bad week if Jesus is
fulfilling what almost happened then, the sacrifice of the only son, the son of
the promise. Of course, Mt. Moriah is where Jerusalem is built, and Jesus
did say that He is coming here to be arrested and killed. I was hoping He didn’t mean it. That can’t be what Abraham meant when he
said, ‘The Lord will provide the sacrifice,’ can it?”
James, the other
James, the son of Alphaeus, speaks up:
“Back to the whole donkey-colt thing.
I know the mother donkey’s presence would calm the colt, but did anyone
else expect that to go very badly? First
rider on its back, and the colt lets Him sit there, like he knew his
Rider. I guess Balaam’s donkey isn’t the
only donkey who’s smarter than he looks.
Still, I wish the colt could speak, to tell us what he was thinking, like
God let Balaam’s donkey do.”
“The animals recognize the presence of the
Lord and His angels better than we,” offers Bartholomew, “so why should we be
surprised that the One who can walk on water can also calm an unbroken
colt? And since the people today
recognized Jesus as the Son of David, we should remember how King David rode a
mule.”
“Say, Bart, I’m a
fisherman, I get confused with all this animal husbandry stuff. What’s the difference between a donkey and a
mule?” No one says it out loud, but
Peter’s bad jokes always make them wonder why Jesus singled him out as a leader
amongst them.
“Well, donkey or
mule,” Bartholomew continue, trying to ignore Peter, “the prophet Zechariah was
certainly referring back to Solomon, the son of King David, whom David put on
his own mule and had him ride into Jerusalem, to let everyone know who the true
king was. Certainly Jesus must have been
trying to make that point about Himself today.
That is at least what the crowds understood, when they hailed Him as the
Son of David.”
“Then the Master is
trying to get Himself killed,” says Thomas grimly. “The Romans are not going to like hearing
about all this, and you can be sure the priests will let them know…”
“Another
Scripture comes to mind,” adds Bartholomew.
“Did you notice that we entered the city from the east, from the Mount
of Olives? And then Jesus, making the
Pharisees crazy, allows the people to worship Him, acknowledging that the
proper place of worship is at His feet?”
“Yes, just like
the blind men in Jericho.” “And the Canaanite woman.” “Don’t forget the Samaritan leper.” “Or Peter, in the boat, at the great catch of
fish.” Simon Peter has no joke to reply
to this memory.
“Well,” continues
Bartholomew, “I’m remembering how the prophet Ezekiel tells of the departure of
the Lord from the Temple, out the East gate, departing to the Mount of Olives. And then Ezekiel later promises that the
Glory of the Lord will return to the Temple, from the East, from the Mount of Olives. And after his donkey ride, entering Jerusalem
from the Mount of Olives, what did Jesus do?
He went straight to the Temple and cleansed it.”
“Again,” says
Thomas, “trying to get Himself killed.”
“I don’t know
about that,” said Bartholomew, finishing his thought, “but if Jesus is the Son
of God, like Peter said, didn’t He just fulfill this morning the prophecy of
Ezekiel, the Lord returning to His Temple from the east?”
“But if Jesus is
the new King David, why isn’t He gathering an army? Simon, the other Simon, the zealot, joins the
conversation. “Instead, He goes around
unarmed, unprotected, and taking such risks, always challenging the Pharisees,
and the Priests, giving them plenty of ammunition to accuse Him to the Romans.” Simon cannot put together the idea of a
kingdom and Jesus’ apparently deliberate attempts to anger the powers that be,
but without building an army. Neither
can any of the rest. Not yet.
The Church has
historically opened the season of Advent with the account of Jesus entering Jerusalem
on the Sunday before the Crucifixion. We
quite rightly think of Advent as the season leading up to Christmas, to our celebration
of Jesus’ coming into our world as the Babe of Bethlehem. So this fast-forward to Holy Week seems odd,
out of sequence, at least to our one-thing-after-the-next way of thinking and
living. But God is not bound by time,
and all of His comings have similarities, like the dread His holiness brings to
sinners, and the subsequent joy God’s coming brings to those who hear of and believe
in His forgiving love. The advents of
God throughout Scripture have similarities, like the interweaving of prophecy,
kingship and priestly sacrifice Jesus achieves in His Palm Sunday
entrance. Jesus is indeed the
fulfillment of all the Old Testament.
The Advents of
Christ, in the Old Testament, at His conception, at His birth, and His entrance
into ministry, all of these have similarities, like the call to repent and believe
that the Spirit of Christ is always making. In every Biblical account, the Spirit calls us
to repent of our sins, including our sinful way of thinking about how God
should come to us. The Spirit calls us to
repent of our sinful thoughts, words and deeds, repent, and believe, even
though we cannot fully understand, even though we can’t completely connect all
the dots.
We believe
because we know at the center of every Biblical story is a connection to the
Cross, from Mount Moriah where Abraham went to sacrifice his son, to the manger,
where the True Sacrifice lay; from Balaam’s donkey, who spoke the truth of God,
to the angels sent to the shepherds, bringing good news to all God’s
flock. We enter Advent anticipating the
celebration that the coming of Jesus brings, long ago in Bethlehem, and on Palm
Sunday, headed to be the Sacrifice, today as He comes in Word and Supper, and
someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a long time, but someday, when He will come fully revealed in glory, to
bring His faithful into His everlasting, perfect, joyful, glorious
kingdom.
I, of course,
have imagined this conversation of the Apostles that evening after the original
Palm Sunday. But the connections to
God’s Word are true, and they are only part of the story. This Advent and Christmas, God grant us to
grow more and more in our understanding of Jesus, of His Coming, of His
Purpose, and of His forgiving love. He
is our coming King, coming with healing, mercy, peace and joy, for you, and all
people, the true gifts of Christmas, yours already today.
“Say,” murmurs Thomas,
just as everyone is drifting off to sleep, “Do you suppose Mary, when she was
pregnant with Jesus, do you suppose she rode a donkey into Bethlehem, or when
they fled from Herod to Egypt? Somebody
should remember to ask her, and write it down.
That would be a pretty cool.” But
nobody heard Thomas, and so we are left to wonder whether Joseph really found a
donkey for her. Scripture doesn’t tell
us this detail, but we do know all the important parts of the story, and so we wait
with confidence and peace, knowing we can ask the Lord ourselves, someday, face
to face, when He comes again.
Come Lord Jesus, come, Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment