Palm Sunday - The Donkey
During this Lent, we will be offering some homilies under the theme of ‘Instruments of resurrection’. We will discover that the most unlikely, commonplace, mundane things are instruments of resurrection. How clever that the master would use everyday, simple things to communicate and help us enter into the most profound mysteries.
Today it’s a donkey. … or rather The Donkey or That Donkey. That’s right… the one who carried the Messiah on his back into Jerusalem.
Why use a donkey? Because the Master really needed to get to Jerusalem, the holy city, to offer up his sacrifice, the new and everlasting sacrifice, and he needed to do it in such a way that would make us stop and think.
So, a few things about THE donkey.
Our Lord could have entered Jerusalem on any beast or any first class ticketed chariot he liked. When you’re the Messiah, you have choices, many choices and some of them are rather lush, salubrious, flashy and very much ‘Look at me’.
A big, black, shiny war horse, such as one might see on the racetrack on the first Tuesday of November, was also an option for the Messiah and friend, but it is not the one he chose.
I think he chose the donkey because it authentically symbolised his style of leadership. Humility. “I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls”. A big brute of a warhorse would come crashing into our world, an intrusion and an act of confrontation. This is not the Master’s style.
He always came as an unobtrusive invitation. There were some who accepted and followed. There were some who fell in love… for a little while, and there were some who saw and understood the price tag and decided that this little man wasn’t for them.
When I think… about it, a donkey was exactly the right beast to carry our Lord to a selfless crucifixion and thus resurrection.
If you’re anything like me, you have days when you try to do the right thing consistently over a period of time, and the road is long, hot, rocky and uncomfortable. Being only a lowly Donkey this animal could have no idea of who he was carrying or the importance of the trek. I’ll lay odds, pretty jolly good odds, that when we get to the other side of the grave, and we see things much more clearly than we do now, that these tiresome treks, those confusing conversations and the rubbish tasks were actually some of our finest and most important missions. They may not have been gratifying and to our liking, and we may have wanted nothing more than to shirk this responsibility, but carrying it through to its completion, without faltering or questioning, will be our reward when we are with Him.
Something else about that donkey. One author of disrepute postured the theory that the donkey heard the Hosannas and cheers and, for a few minutes, thought that the adoration was all for him. How easily we can be deceived. How easily we are flattered. Our palms that turn to crosses say it all. The way to love must include pitstops of vulnerability, disappointment and rejection; for the vocation of love and service must involve mistakes and failures.
A little anecdote to finish. One priest I knew, and I have known many, began our relationship with words like these.
Well, Fr. David. I’m a bit of a donkey. You will learn far more from mistakes and blunders, the things that I get stupidly, stubbornly wrong, than you will from the few things that I get right.
He spoke with great honesty and authenticity, and he was absolutely, categorically right. I did learn many things that should not be done. He may well have been a bit of a donkey. He may well have been seduced from time to time with the ‘hosannas’ that were offered to him on his better days and he would be first to say that sometimes he just didn’t get it.
But his greatest strength was just to stay the course. To simply persevere, be persistent and get on with it. Like the donkey, he never pretended to be anything else or anyone else than who he was. As such, like the donkey, he too was an instrument of resurrection.
Lord Jesus Christ, by the three days you lay in the tomb, you sanctified the grave to be a bed of hope of resurrection.
Grant that when we lie in our own grave, we may sleep in peace until that glorious day when you awaken us to your glory.
Then we shall see you face to face and in your light we shall see light and know your splendour, for you live forever and ever Amen.