Luke 19:28-40
I first heard the story of Jesus riding a donkey as a child in Sunday School, back when I thought that the point of a Bible story was just that – to learn a story from the Bible and be able to recite it back. At five years of age, I felt little need to dig deeply for theological insight. The teacher would tell us the story for the week, maybe using that advanced technology of the day known as the flannelgraph, and then she (always a she) would ask us questions to see whether we followed the story.
“What animal did Jesus ride into town, boys and girls? Was it a giraffe?” And we would all laugh and shout, “No!” And the teacher would ask, “Was it a bear?” “Noooo!” we would shout. “It was a DONKEYYY!” And I thought that was the point. I knew the story.
But later on, it seemed strange to me that Jesus would voluntarily draw attention to himself as he does in this story. Most of the time, Jesus heals people and then sternly commands them not to tell anybody. There’s even a term for this: scholars call it “the Messianic secret” – Jesus often seems to go out of his way to stay under the radar, as we would say today.
And yet here, Jesus takes the opposite tack. He sends a couple of the disciples ahead with cryptic instructions: “Go ahead into the town. You’ll find a young donkey, a colt, tied up. Untie it and bring it to me. And if anyone challenges you, just tell them that the Lord needs it.”
The disciples do as they’re told, but they have to wonder. How does Jesus know about the colt? And why does he need it? He’s been walking all over the countryside his whole life. He all of a sudden needs a ride?
Nevertheless, the disciples follow instructions and lead the colt back to Jesus. Jesus then rides the colt across the valley and up into Jerusalem. Crowds gather and celebrate, waving palm branches in the air and laying their cloaks along the road, which was something they did for popular leaders and visiting heroes, sort of like putting out the red carpet for movie stars today. They shout:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
The crowd that forms around Jesus really annoys some of the Pharisees. They’ve been arguing with Jesus for three years, trying their best to discredit him in the public’s mind. But now the crowd is giving Jesus a spontaneous parade! These leaders can’t stand it. To be fair, they’ve also got to be worried about antagonizing the Romans, who were always on the watch for Jewish uprisings. Mobs of people shouting about welcoming a new king? That’s the sort of thing that makes Roman governors and soldiers sit up and pay attention.
The Pharisees demand that Jesus tell the crowds to be quiet. But Jesus tells them that if the people are quiet, the stones on the ground will shout out! And the mob marches merrily along, praising Jesus to the skies.
What’s going on here? Why all of a sudden is Jesus making himself the center of attention? I think the clue lies in the gospel writers’ tendency to show how they saw Jesus as fulfilling scripture. For example, Luke quotes from the prophet Isaiah to explain the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.
In this case, take a look at Zechariah 9:
9:9 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.
9:10 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…
I think Jesus was going out of his way to use this prophecy to get his message across. That’s why he rode into Jerusalem on a humble young donkey rather than an impressive war horse. He wasn’t trying to position himself as a conquering king. He was emphasizing in very visual form the peaceful nature of his kingdom.
Humble, on the colt of a donkey, commanding peace to all nations. If Jesus is a king, then what does his reign do? Zechariah says that it destroys the instruments of war: chariots, war horses, bows and arrows, all the technology of Jesus’ day – it all had to go.
And this is the kind of kingdom that will take over the world. Not the violent kind. We do not ever create authentic peace by destroying our enemies. Violence against an enemy only creates a resentful new set of enemies. If you doubt that, imagine how the people of Ukraine feel these days about their neighbor to the north.
We can only begin to create peace by allowing God to create peaceful places in our hearts. Here’s an assertion of faith for us: Those peaceful places are powerful places. That is an assertion of faith: peace equals power. Do we really believe Jesus? Do we really believe that a peaceful kingdom can take over the world? A lot of people might say that’s naïve.
I think this is where our faith is called on in an important way. Do we really believe in God’s peace? Do we really believe in the power of that peace? Or do we believe that peace can only be attained by overcoming and destroying our enemies, and then we can have peace?
When Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy, he was sending a strong visual message that his kingdom is a kingdom of serious peace. It’s easy to take sides against other people. It’s what everyone else does. It’s what our egos want to do. It’s easy to feel that our righteous fury is justified when we’ve been hurt.
But God’s kingdom is more challenging than that. God’s kingdom is not a kingdom that takes sides against others. There’s a place for every one of God’s children, even the ones who have hurt us.
No matter how justified our anger feels, violence is never the place from which we can create peace. That includes violence of words as well as violence of action. If we’re serious when we say that we follow the Prince of Peace, we have to be equally serious about the work of our spiritual lives. We have to ask God for the gift of humility, the gift that allows us to still the angry voices of our old selves and respond peacefully. We have to be transformed into champions of peace in our everyday lives and our everyday relationships.
That means, when people insult us, we don’t have to answer back out of our anger. We might well feel angry and hurt, but we don’t have to give as good as we get.
Living a life of peace means we’re not out to show people who’s boss. In the first half of life, most of us feel we have to prove and defend ourselves. We think we can’t afford to let anyone put us down, because we’re preoccupied with building ourselves up.
Some people never mature out of that first half of life, even if they live past a hundred. But with spiritual maturity, we can begin finding our way to the second half of life. We can begin learning to let go of the need to dominate others, to be always right or to win at all costs.
One of Jesus’ lessons in riding that donkey was that being humble does not make us weak. On the contrary: it takes great strength to react in peace rather than anger, even when we have to take a stand and say ‘no.’
Mohandas Gandhi was a case in point. Though he never stopped being a Hindu, Gandhi was a great admirer of Jesus. Though he had very few possessions, he kept a painting of Jesus in his home as an inspiration. Gandhi was able to change the course of India’s history using two things: a nonviolent approach, and the power of the word “no.”
Gandhi wrote that “It is as necessary to reject untruth as it is to accept truth.” He said that the word “no” is a very powerful word. I believe that, while we are called to say “yes” to God’s children, we as Christians also have to use the word “no” quite often today:
- No, we will not bow down to any system, political or religious, that favors some people and neglects others.
- No, we will not water down the gospel of Jesus Christ with the inadequate standards of our consumerist culture.
- No, we will not define people’s worth by their capacity to buy stuff.
We will define everyone’s worth, including our own, by the worthiness of God and the image of our Creator, present in each of us when we’re born. Our sinful actions may mask that image, but God’s image within each of us can never be destroyed.
Our spiritual journeys are about learning to live out of God’s image within us instead of living out of our own egos. Paul taught that our egos, our “old selves,” are to be “buried with Christ” so that we can be raised to new life by God.
This is the kingdom that Jesus rode on a donkey to proclaim. He rode into a city full of people he knew would kill him, and he loved them anyway. It’s a kingdom of peace where all that’s destroyed is our own passion for destruction. That in itself is a powerful goal, one worthy of our time and focus, so let’s pray for that now.
We are your temple, Lord, not made with hands. We are your body. If every wall should crumble and every sanctuary decay, we are your habitation. We bless you for this place, but take us outside the camp, Lord, outside the places where everyone professes holiness, out to where soldiers gamble with your clothes and thieves curse at your message of love, and nations clash at the cross-roads of the world. Make us instruments of thy peace.
In the name of the One who rode a donkey to teach us, we pray. Amen.
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