We can't forget the Donkey on Palm Sunday

                                                                  photo by Vicki DeLoach / flikr

It’s Palm Sunday. Our second Anniversary of trying to be jubilant with all that stuff out there that keeps intruding…intruding. So churches everywhere will haul out the Palms and give one to everyone. One of my members back there once said: “What am I supposed to do with this branch thing?” Good question really. The Organ will pull out all the stops. Children will come in waving their Palm Branches and we all might stand and sing:” “All glory laud and honor, To thee Redeemer King.” And on and on it will go as the cute kids wave their branches and we hope nobody gets an eye put out.

I don’t want to sound too heretical, well maybe I do. But this Palm Sunday thing has always struck me as being a little odd. Dr. Fosdick preached  a sermon once  called: “The sin of Palm Sunday.” And in that sermon he asked how the crowd could possibly sing alleluia on Palm Sunday and just a few days later nail that same Jesus to the cross. Let’s face it folks. Those palm branches wither much to soon.

Lord knows we need some Alleluias. That’s why Leonard Cohen’s “Alleluia” struck a chord. And the book says the crowds did line the streets as he came toward Jerusalem on a donkey. Oh, I know what Zechariah prophesied about palms and donkeys. But most of the crowd that day must have wondered. “A donkey. The king is riding in a donkey?” It really was a clue to the kind of King he was. Never mind. They still stood there shouting. Nevermind the donkey--he was coming and he would bring in the Kingdom.

He came into Jerusalem people still shouting and all hell broke loose. He entered the Temple and it was a mess. People selling all kinds of trinkets. Maybe animals too. And the drove them out and this was a mistake as far as the Reverends and the Priests were concerned. With that single act he touched their pocketbooks and that was the beginning of his long sad week. They plotted his demise but they kept it to themselves because they remembered that crowd and those palm branches. 

“They all were looking for a king 

to slay their foes and lift them high,

There cams't a tiny baby thing 

that made a woman cry.”

So he never was the King they wanted but more. A King they needed. Read the story that follows that jubilant morning. He healed the blind and the lame. He cursed a fig tree. He told them parable after parable which most of the officials did not quite get but wondered if he was speaking about them. Not knowing that he was speaking about us, too. The Lord took on the established Temple. And this infuriated them even more. He stood on the brow of his beloved Jerusalem and wept and wept because, like us too, they did not know he wanted to take them like a hen that gathers her little ones—he wanted to take them all in his arms. For they did not know the things that make for real peace. And Jesus told them, as us too. That donkey should have been a clue. He said their task and ours was to feed the hungry…to give the thirsty something to drink…to welcome the stranger—even the illegals—to clothe the naked…to care for the sick..and touch even the prisoners. And he then said the strangest thing: “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these…you do it to me.”

This was not the end of the story. But that donkey should have been a clue. He called the strangest and the weird. The Judases and the Simons with big mouths and clay feet…and all the dear Johns…and Jameses…and later the woman with all those husbands...and all those Marys and Mary Magdalenes…and the Marys and the Marthas…all those other women in the story. Strange King he washed his disciples' feet. And when people heard about what he did they kept shaking their heads and muttering: "Jesus washed their feet!"

The story was not over and never would be as long as there was hurt and need and hate. The manger maybe should have been a clue and his parents whom nobody knew and all those unlikely ones like tax collectors and the Zebedees and all the dispossessed.  Then and now. 

So at worship today even with my mask I will welcome the palm branches and maybe sing alleluia too. But i hope like you I do not forget the donkey because he may be the clue for us all.

                                                                      photo by Bill Smith / flikr

                                                      --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com