How many of you have ridden horseback? Do you remember the first time you got on one? Most people feel either terrified or omnipotent - but both have to do with how far off the ground you are and how much power you are sitting on top of. Horses are big. And no matter how you feel, the person on the ground is at a definite disadvantage. A cavalry charge will beat infantry every time ...
That’s why conquerors typically used to enter captured cities on horseback. It made them look and feel stronger, and it also reminded people who was in charge.
But a donkey... A donkey is another matter altogether. Kids look really cute on donkeys. There are pictures in my family album of my sister and me riding burros in Mexico when we were 5 or 6. They were just the right size for us, and the donkeys were so precious, with their long ears and big, dark eyes. But grownups just look silly. Even if your legs don’t quite drag on the ground, the proportions are all wrong. But that’s how Jesus came into Jerusalem. John doesn’t say much about it, but the other evangelists do. This is how Mark describes the scene:
"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! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!'” [Mk 11:8-10]
Luke adds to the account. “'As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen ... Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, 'Teacher, order your disciples to stop.' He answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.'” [Lk 19:37,38-40]
The Pharisees know exactly what was going on. They’ve been worried about just this sort of thing happening. The crowds are shouting out a verse from Psalm 118, a standard welcome for the pilgrims coming up to worship. But they add a bit to it. Instead of just shouting out a welcome to all those who come in the name of YHWH, they shout a pointed welcome to this rabble-rousing Galilean, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”
Jesus’ reputation has preceded him, with all the reports of miracles and healings and so on, and now he has had the nerve to stir up the crowds by pressing another prophetic button! Because four hundred years ago the prophet Zechariah told them that when the promised savior-king came, he would be “riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” [Zech 9:9] The crowds had been remembering all the promises, no doubt counting up all the ways in which Jesus’ words and actions matched up with the prophecies. The ones they all remembered, of course, were the ones that spoke of victory. After all, the first part of the verse read, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he." It’s the beginning of the Passover week, too, the most holy time of the year, and pilgrims from all over the world are arriving in Jerusalem. This must have been another sign that the promised redemption was at hand. Zechariah had also said,
"Though I scattered them among the nations, yet in far countries they shall remember me, and they shall rear their children and return. I will bring them home from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria; I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon, until there is no room for them." [Zech 10:9-10]
Neither the Pharisees nor the crowds wanted to worry about what the donkey meant. They didn’t want to remember the part about humility, or the fact that the donkey is a symbol of peace. They didn’t want to understand that Jesus’ riding on a donkey was an acted parable, a way of showing them something about what kind of king he was, and what kind of response he expected from his subjects.
In just a few days, when the people saw their hopes weren’t going to be fulfilled, they turned against the very one for whom they had been shouting. And Jesus knew, of course, what would happen. He didn’t expect them to understand, they never had before, why should now be any different? And so, Luke tells us, "When [Jesus] drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, ‘O that you knew today the terms of peace! But now they are hid from your eyes.'" [Lk 19:41-42]
Why did Jerusalem not understand the message of the donkey? Author and preacher John Piper points out the clue Luke gives us. There is one other place in Luke where this term translated “things that make for peace” occurs:
"What king going to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace.” [Luke 14:31,32]
“Terms of peace” is the same as “things that make for peace” in Luke 19:42. And so the picture we should have in our minds as Jesus approaches Jerusalem for the last time is very different from how the welcoming crowd thinks of themselves. They see themselves as innocent victims of the nasty Romans, and Jesus as their hero, their champion, the one who will beat up the bad guys. The mood of the people is more, “What took you so long!” than “What should we do?” But Jesus instead shows us a picture of a king coming to a rebellious city, a hotbed of resistance against His rightful authority. The king is willing to make peace, on certain conditions, and he is showing them what they have to do to meet his terms.
Now, when Jesus says that Jerusalem doesn’t know what the terms of peace are, he doesn’t mean he never told them. Jesus had already cried out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings but you would not!” [Luke 13:34] The terms of peace had been spelled out again and again, as patiently and relentlessly as a hen chases after her unruly chicks. Jerusalem knew the terms of peace but rejected them. And they rejected the terms because they are very, very hard.
We, too, know the terms of our peace with God and with one another. The terms are humility and obedience, the very same humility and obedience that Jesus displayed in his entry into Jerusalem. And they are very, very hard.
It takes a humble man to ride a donkey through shouting crowds. And part of what God calls us to is a willingness to look ridiculous when necessary. Or at least a willingness to look unimportant. Or unfashionable. Or vulnerable. And it takes real discipline to obey even at a fraction of the level of the obedience Jesus displayed in going willingly to his death.
And somehow, it seems that humility and obedience are exceptionally difficult to package together. Because humility requires us to set aside whatever power we have, power of status or wealth or knowledge or sheet force of personality - for the sake of another. But obedience requires the exercise of strength, a determination to set a course and to see it through to the end.
And the person who has the discipline to be obedient has trouble bending the knee to serve their weaker sister or brother, while the person who willingly embraces humility is often unable to carry out a difficult task in the face of inconvenience or opposition. Obedience is the weakness, the occasion for sin, of the Pharisee, the legalist. And humility is the temptation, the occasion for sin, of the tolerant, those who endlessly and indiscriminately affirm all behaviors and beliefs. And, too, humility often leads us to believe that whether or not we are obedient won’t matter very much, because after all we’re not very important, are we? And that is a very big mistake.
Humility alone is not enough, and obedience alone is not enough.
Where do you struggle?
The model Jesus gives us, the acted parable of the entry into Jerusalem, illustrates the words of Philippians 2:
“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.” [Ph2:5-8]
The humility God requires of us is never pointless. We are not called to mortify the flesh as some early monks did, with fasting and scourging and wearing hair shirts. Jesus did not ride the donkey around in circles, showing the crowd how humble he was.
Jesus rode into town on a donkey in order to fulfill prophecy, in order to signal a different kind of kingship. And Jesus went obediently to the cross in order to set us free. If he had ridden in on a horse, he would never have gotten where he was going. And if he had ridden the donkey in the other direction, he wouldn’t have gotten there, either.
Jesus came down to our level with a purpose. His comedown was to lift us up, not to beat others up. His comedown was for our salvation. In the same way, everything that God asks us to do also has a purpose. Coming down to others’ level, in humility, is not an end by itself. The purpose of humility is reconciliation, is active peacemaking, encouraging one another to grow closer to one another and to God. That donkey was going somewhere. Are you?
