Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Matthew 21.1-11
Palm Sunday, 2 April 2022, Eldroth, Keasden
Jesus took a donkey - and stole the people’s hearts.
Why did the crowds love Jesus so much?
Was it because they liked the way he always did things differently; paying little regard to the powers-that-be; often with a nod and a wink and a smile in the direction of the crowds?
After all, this was a man who told his followers to go and steal a donkey which he could ride into the city.
Well, maybe steal is a little too strong a word. But ‘take without asking’ seems fair.
‘Take the first donkey you see,’ Jesus tells his incredulous friends. ‘If there’s a colt there with it, take that too. And if anyone says anything to you, just say, “The Lord needs them.” They’ll let you do it.’
How very wonderfully presumptuous of him, you might think. Some in the crowd might have been thrilled by the dangerousness of this - Jesus’ friends risking getting a thumping from the donkey’s owner if they weren’t on board with the Lord’s demands.
Jesus seemed to like living on the edge, and nudging his friends and followers in that direction too. Is that why the crowds loved Jesus so much? Because they liked the way he was always pushing boundaries; with a nod and a wink and a smile?
The crowds had seen Jesus healing people on the Sabbath. They’d seen the pious authorities reprimanding him for doing work he shouldn’t be doing. And they’d seen him leave them speechless with the question: “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” Nod; wink; smile.
In the same way on another Sabbath, the crowds had seen Jesus tell his friends to pick grain to eat. ‘After all’, he’d silenced his critics, saying, ‘didn’t King David do the same?’
And now the crowds are delighted to welcome Jesus through Jerusalem’s back gate making an ass of himself, because they know that he’s doing so with with a nod and a wink and a smile in their direction, deliberately mimicking Pontius Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem that same day, in full military regalia, on a powerful horse, flanked by his army, flags flying, swords and armour shining. Astride a donkey, Jesus is taunting the Roman governor, and the people love it. [1]
The crowds throwing coats and palm branches at his feet appreciate that Jesus is what happens when the way of love challenges the way of Empire. These crowds appreciated that Jesus stood with those who resisted the impulse to conform, to acquiesce, to stay put. They recognised in Jesus one who refused to exist within borders of control, or to submit to a status quo that benefitted only some, only the privileged ones. [2]
Jesus took a donkey - and stole the people’s hearts.
Many in the crowd that day would have loved him even more for going straight into the temple courts and driving out all the traders who made their money by exploiting the masses, overturning the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. With a nod towards the prophets of old Jesus said, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” When the blind people then came to him at the temple, with a wink he healed them; when the lame people came, with a smile he did the same.
And when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did, and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked Jesus. “Yes,” he replied, with a nod and a wink and a smile towards the watching crowds, “Yes, have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?”
Reflecting on the influence of his elders in his early years, the late Paul O’Grady once said, ‘Comedy, your funny bone, is formed in childhood’. [3] Was the nod of Jesus formed at home, as he soaked in the gallows humour of his working family struggling to afford food? Was the wink of Jesus formed in the temple, where in his youth he sat among the teachers and learned that God had little time for those who wielded worldly power at the expense of the poor? Is that where he came to see that the way of love involved challenging those powers-that-be, not by force, but with a smile?
Crowds can be turned, by the powers-that-be, as we well know, as we’ve all been among them when that’s happened. And as we well know, the powers-that-be turned the crowds against Jesus. Funny, peculiar, that when it came to overturning the powers, the people turned to the powers for help. The consequence: a crucifixion. The world’s cycle of violence kept spinning.
But at the end of it all, wasn’t it Jesus who had the last laugh?
Yes: with a nod to the Pharisees who, for all their faults, had held fast to a belief in the resurrection of the dead; with a wink towards the Roman soldier at the foot of the cross who realised who was the mightiest one after all; and with a smile for Mary Magdalene by the empty tomb, as he called her by her name: on the morning of the third day Jesus broke the world’s cycle of violence and let love in. For ever.
The donkey thief - who stole the people’s hearts.
Notes
[1] See The donkey-king is coming! Jesus' crowd is a Flash Mob, my 2019 Palm Sunday sermon, for more on this, based on the writings of Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, p.2-5.
[2] Paraphrase of Revd David Ulloa Chavez, Reflection on the Third Station. Episcopal Migration Ministries, Holy Week 2020.
[3] Patrick Barkham, Savage grace. Guardian, 3 Oct 2008. Paul O’Grady (formerly the drag queen Lily Savage) died on Tuesday 28 March.
Comments