PINNING THE TALE ON THE DONKEY
Palm Sunday, April 9, 2006

TEXT: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!

Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.

This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the LORD’S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Save us, we beseech you, O LORD! LORD, we beseech you, give us success!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.
We bless you from the house of the LORD. The LORD is God, and he has given us light.

Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you.

O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Philippians 2:5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Mark 11:1-11
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Today is Palm Sunday. The more I study the background of this celebration, the more incongruous it appears. The details just don’t seem to make any sense. For one thing, Mark doesn’t mention anything about palms. The people either threw their clothes on the ground or cut some leafy branches. John is the only one of the gospels that refers to palm branches, but palm trees are not common on the central ridge where Jerusalem is located; they had to be brought from the Jordan valley around Jericho, about fifteen miles away. In addition, palm branches were usually associated with the harvest festival of Succoth, rather than with the spring Passover.

We seem to have a greater problem with the donkey. Some wag pointed out that Jesus’ choice of animal to ride into Jerusalem proved that he must have been a Democrat. Of course, they didn’t have elephants in the Holy Land at that time. Mark says that Jesus commanded his disciples to go to Bethany and bring back a colt that had never been ridden. Apparently this was pre-arranged with the owner of the animal who ran a kind of Budget Rent-a-Mule.

However, Matthew, in his gospel, says that Jesus sent two disciples to bring back an ass and a colt, in order to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy:
“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Is Matthew suggesting that Jesus came into the city straddling both a colt and a donkey? Well, No. He is just using a figure of speech called synonymous parallelism, in which the second line repeats the thought of the first line, but in different words. Luke clears it up by referring to one animal which they brought to Jesus and then threw some garments on the donkey and then spread garments on the road. There’s no reference here to either leafy branches or palm leaves. They were just carrying out an ancient custom of throwing down their coat before royalty. Sir Walter Raleigh made some points with Queen Elizabeth for doing the same thing.

A few people have speculated as to whether or not the donkey had anything to say about all this commotion. While talking animals are quite common throughout folklore, such as the Chronicles of Narnia and Shrek, there are only two cases in the Bible: the serpent in Eden who beguiles the woman, and the talking donkey in the Book of Numbers who rebuked his master Balaam for striking him.
G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem in which Jesus’ donkey speaks:
When fishes flew and forests walk’d
And figs grew upon thorn
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings
The Devil’s walking parody
On all four-footed things
The tatter’d outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will
Starve, scourge, deride me, I am dumb
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour
One far fierce hour and sweet
There was a shout about my ears
And palms beneath my feet.

The donkey’s tale is that of an eyewitness to an extraordinary event in which he shared the spotlight with the one who comes in the name of the Lord. According to Chesterton, the donkey is one of God’s unusual creatures, possessing a “monstrous head and sickening cry” and yet the donkey is chosen to carry a king to his moment of glory.

In a way, the donkey is Jesus’ ISP. He is not the message, but the carrier of the message. Marshall McLuhan once said that “the medium is the message.” In other words, how the word is delivered becomes the message itself. We have focused so much on the medium that we have lost the message. The donkey’s tale is “Don’t look at me; look at who I am carrying.”

This past Friday I had the opportunity to hear Bishop John Shelby Spong lecture at Lancaster Seminary. Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark and the author of more than fifteen books. His latest book, The Sins of Scripture, is an analysis of how some Christians have taken the Biblical texts to advance a doctrine of hate, exclusion, discrimination, and oppression. Like the donkey, the Bible is the bearer of the Christ, but it is not the Christ. The medium is not the message.

The interpretation of the Genesis story of creation in which woman is the source of evil is not the true gospel and should not be the basis of any church’s restriction of women serving at the altar of God.
The reading of Leviticus in which God directs that disobedient children shall be put to death is not a license to violence and certainly not the true gospel of love and forgiveness.

The reading of the passion narratives, especially as interpreted by Mel Gibson, is no excuse for anti-Semitism, for then one is forced to condemn Jesus and all the disciples because they were all Jews.
The Holiness Code of Leviticus and the homophobia of Paul is ripping the text from the context and giving a modern interpretation to what was intended to be an ancient tribal solution to the need to increase the population of Israel. It is interesting that we profess to be followers of Jesus for whom homosexuality was never an issue.

The Bible is dangerous in the hands of those who quote selected verses, thereby distorting the message of the whole. The message of God’s love transcends any vessel that carries that message. Good Friday is the recognition that God becomes as we are to bear the burden of humanity, but it is not the final word. Easter puts Good Friday in its proper context.

If you are going to be a Christian, then follow Christ, not a narrow legalistic interpretation of scripture that leads to hatred and violence. Pay attention to the message and less to the container of the message. The donkey’s tale is a celebration of that which he carries. Martin Luther said that the Bible is the cradle of Christ, but we worship the Christ and not the cradle.

We must be very discerning about the reading of ancient texts. This evening, National Geographic is doing a special on the “Gospel of Judas” which dates from the second century. There are literally hundreds of ancient documents from this time period that never made it into the New Testament canon, including thirty-four gospels. The Gospel of Judas is only one of many texts discovered in the last 65 years, including the gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Philip, believed to be written by Gnostics, as well as the gospels of Thaddeus, Bartholomew, and others.

The Gnostics' beliefs were often viewed by bishops and early church leaders as unorthodox, and they were frequently denounced as heretics. The discoveries of Gnostic texts have shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus.

As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out. That is why we must be careful about deciding which text we are going to listen to, and which we are going to ignore.

The time has come for a new expression of Christianity that is authentic to the teachings of Jesus and an expression of God’s love for all humanity. It is time to be advocates of a religion of blessing and not of cursing. It is time for the dawning of a new age in which harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abound. The donkey’s tale is that Christ has come, Christ is coming, Christ is with us now, and the seeds of possibility are already within us. Let us live in the reality of that message.


Harry Serio