3/25/18 “The Parish Donkey” by Nancy Petty
Text: Mark 11:1-11
Several years ago Karla and I traveled to Canada for vacation. We flew into Montreal where we spent a couple of days before driving northeast making our way to Quebec City. Along the way we had a number of adventures, but mostly we enjoyed the landscape of the county whose motto is “From sea to sea.” One of the things Karla and I had noted was that we were really enjoying the anonymity of being in a different country. That was, until we reached Quebec City. There in the middle of the town square could be heard a boisterous voice saying, “Hey Reverend Petty.” At which point I turned to see my rabbi colleague, Rabbi Fred Guttman, from Burlington walking toward me with arms outstretched. (Maybe there is truth to the saying, “You can run but you can’t hide.”)
After chatting with the rabbi for a few minutes, we returned to our Sunday morning exploration of Quebec City. Hearing church bells ringing we decided to make our way to the church located in the center of the town and join the locals for worship. Just several months ago, I ran across the green leaflet that I had taken notes on about the sermon and liturgy of that day. As we exited the church, right there in the courtyard of the church was a woman walking around with a donkey. Karla, in all her excitement, approached the woman and the donkey and asked if she could pet the donkey (which she still has a picture of on her phone). Of course, the woman replied, “This is the parish donkey.” I was stunned. I thought to myself, “the parish donkey.” What parish has a donkey? Well, obviously a parish in Quebec City does.
I thought of that donkey this week as I was preparing for Palm Sunday and the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on one like it. While one doesn’t think of a donkey being common place in the 21st century, especially in the middle of Quebec City, donkeys were common place in the first century. They were work animals and a very common method of transportation. However, donkeys were not the choice of mounts for Kings and royalty. No, for those representing the empire horses and chariots were their mode of transportation—a symbol of their strength and grandeur. Not a donkey.
In the biblical narrative, donkeys figure prominently. Unlike cats that are only mentioned twice in the biblical text (which may have something to do with the fact that Egyptians worshiped cats—sorry cat lovers) and dogs that get mentioned 40 times, donkey’s are mentioned 444 times in the Bible. You may remember that the most famous biblical donkey talked. And as one theologian noted: “…not just a talking donkey who can say, ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ and ‘fetch me a carrot’ but an educated ass well versed in religious debate.” (Father Seán Ólaoire) Yes, I’m referring to Balaam’s ass. If you have some free time this week, you should go back and read that story in the Book of Numbers. It is a reminder of how this faith of ours can bring unexpected moments. And then there is that disturbing story of Abraham setting out on a three-day journey to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and taking with him a donkey to carry the firewood for the altar. And in our text for today, we read of another prominent—the donkey “that has never been ridden”. That is until Jesus chose to ride it to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The stage for Jesus to make his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey had been set back in Zechariah in the Jewish Bible. Zechariah 9:9 to be exact. “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.” New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan writes: “The rest of the Zechariah passage details what kind of king he will be: ‘He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations’ (9:10). This king, riding on a donkey, will banish war from the land—no more chariots, war-horses, or bows. Commanding peace to the nations, he will be a king of peace.” And then Crossan concludes: Jesus, this king, rode “the most unthreatening, most un-military mount imaginable: a female nursing donkey with her little colt trotting along beside her.”
Now some scholars have suggested that Jesus riding on his donkey was poking fun at the procession that was taking place on the other side of town—Pilate’s military procession—staged with imperial cavalry and soldiers. Marcus Borg and John Crossan write of this procession, too. They write:
Pilate’s military procession was a demonstration of both Roman imperial power and Roman imperial theology. Though unfamiliar to most people today, the imperial procession was well known in the Jewish homeland in the first century. Mark and the community for which he wrote would have known about it, for it was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble. There often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire.
Borg and Crossan remind us that Pilate had to have his grand horses and chariots and military equipment present to keep the people in line—to remind them who was in charge of the empire. But you see, liberated people can’t be controlled. Liberated people don’t live in fear. Liberated people mount donkeys and head straight toward the cavalry. They throw down their cloaks and wave their palms and they make a path for justice and for love. Insecure despots may call for their military parades but they cannot stop hundreds of thousands of students and parents and activists from marching in the streets all across a nation calling for liberation from gun violence. Still today, over 2,000 years later, young prophets are carrying on their backs all that Jesus represented—resistance, non-violence, and peace in the nations. They are speaking truth to power. They are calling for justice. They are challenging the empire. They are being donkeys.
Palm Sunday serves to ask us the question, “Are we willing to be donkeys for Jesus?” Are we willing to be the carrier of Christ into the world today?
Consider these people in history who were willing to be donkeys:
• The Hebrew midwives Shiprah and Puah who ignored Pharaoh’s command to kill all male Hebrews at birth
• Harriet Tubman who risk her own life in 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people
• Sojourner Truth who stood before power and spoke her truth in her famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman?”
• Martin Luther King, Jr. who taught resistance through non-violence and began a revolution
But it’s not just people who have been willing to be donkeys. It’s movements and even institutions.
• The Civil Rights Movement
• This church in the 60’s as it was known as a safe sanctuary for African Americans and then again in 1992 when it opened its doors wide open to the LGBT community—you were being donkeys then
But what about today? Who are the donkeys today? Who is carrying Christ into the world today? We saw an answer to this yesterday.
• Students all across this nation who are a part of the March for Our Lives movement demanding change for gun laws are carrying Christ’s message of resistance and non-violence into the world
In recent months we have seen movements of people willing to be donkey:
• The Black Lives Matter movement is carrying Christ into the world on its back confronting our nations white privilege
• The Me Too Movement is carrying Christ into the world on its back exposing the gender injustices
• The White Hats: volunteer rescue workers who put their lives on the line to save civilians amidst the turmoil and violence in Syria and Turkey are carrying Christ’s compassion into the world on their backs
• People like Malkhaz Songulushvili, who puts his life on the line every day in his country to fight for the rights of the LGBT community and to take in Muslim refugees who have fled to the Republic of Georgia to escape violence and seek safety, is carrying Christ into the world on his back
• And once again this church, opening its heart to be a place of sanctuary for a sister or brother who needs protection
Being willing to be a donkey is risky business. There are those like Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, St. Francis of Assisi, Clarence Jordan, and Dorothy Day who were willing to carry Christ into the world on their backs who died of old age. But there are also those like Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi who were killed when they risked carrying Christ into the world on their backs. Yes, being a donkey is risky business.
Jesus and the donkey were no strangers to each other. As a newborn, riding on a donkey, he was being hurried into exile by his terrified parents seeking to escape an earlier, politically-planned child sacrifice. Again, thirty years later, his last journey would be on donkey-back. The difference between the two donkey rides is that in the intervening thirty something years, Jesus was liberated by a justice love. A love that freed him. You see, liberated people don’t live in fear. Liberated people mount donkeys and head straight toward the cavalry. Donkey riding people follow the power of love not the love of power. So, as Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador once said, “Let us not tire of preaching love, it is the force that will overcome the world.” To preach and live this love, we will need to bear Christ on our backs and carry his message of justice love into our world. That’s the message of Palm Sunday.
I’ve been thinking about that parish donkey I met in Quebec City. And I’ve concluded that parishes/congregations/churches don’t need just one parish donkey. They need a church full of donkeys. This world needs people who are willing to carry all that Jesus represented on their backs and into the world: resistance, non-violence, compassion, equality (economic, gender, gender-identity, race equality), hope, and a justice love that transcends and transforms. Palm Sunday asks: Are you, are we willing to be donkeys for Jesus?
