Riding on a Donkey (Luke 19:28-40)

Sermon as preached at Lambs UMC 3/24/13

 When I was younger I had the great opportunity to go to Lexington and Concord, the site of a famous battle at the beginning of the Revolutionary war, in fact it was where legend has it that Paul Revere made his ride warning that “British are Coming” While I at the time may have been a little too young to fully understand the significance of the history of the place I was visiting, one story told by our tour guide has stuck with me ever since that trip. It is the story of a famous song, “Yankee Doodle went to town riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.” I remember the story because it taught me the meaning and the history of a song that I had been singing ever since I was little. The song was not originally a patriotic song like we know it today, it was in fact a song by the British making fun of Americans. Yankee of course refers to Americans and Doodle is a term that was believed to me something like fool. So the line starts out American fool. And then it goes on to say riding on a pony. This is of course a joke too, because a real solider would not ride on a pony, it would ride on a stallion or some sort of war horse. Finally the line ends with “stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.” Now when I was little I always thought it was weird to compare a feather to a noodle, but of course I found out this is not what macaroni meant. Macaroni was the decorative dress that many of the noble soldiers in the British army were wearing. You’ve seen the pictures of the British soldiers and the fancy hats and feathers and all that; well that’s macaroni. So this song was a song making fun of the Americans because they saw the American soldiers and said to themselves, “this is not what a real soldier looks like.” The irony in the song of course is these American soldiers won, and as a way of celebrating their victory Yankee Doodle was allegedly sung to the British at their defeat in Yorktown. This song about the sad and pitiful shape of an American soldier has now become one of our most patriotic tunes.

            In much of the same way that Yankee Doodle has become an iconic tune for our nation, our scripture for today has become an iconic scripture for Christianity. Palm Sunday as it is known has become a well-known and well-practiced Liturgical Sunday. Even many churches who do not follow the liturgical calendar as closely, it is known that Palm Sunday will be observed the Sunday before Easter. It is in essence the kick off for holy week. It is a scripture that many of us love; love to hear, love to read, and even love to reenact. It is common for churches to have Palms that they themselves waive as the words of praise are lifted up, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!" Those who study the Bible hear these words and tie them back to the psalm that it is echoing. We hear about the colt or the donkey that is taken for him to ride into Jerusalem on and we love the imagery of Jesus riding into town with the streets lined with people cheering. It is a triumphal entry into the holy city, it is a king’s entry. And yet with all of this going on, with all of this being said, we so often fail to notice that this story is a story of great irony.

            I think that we must have become so used to this story that we tend to forget how ridiculous of an image it really is. In this story we have the word made flesh, the king of kings, King of the Jews, making his triumphant entry into the holiest of holy cities, on a donkey… a donkey! How have we managed to overlook such great irony. Like Yankee Doodle riding into town on a pony, Jesus riding into town on a donkey is something that just doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the occasion. I can even imagine that some of the opponents of Jesus saw the whole scene as a joke, as a bunch of nut jobs waiving palm branches and praising a man riding on a donkey.

            A month or so ago there was a sketch on the show Saturday Night Live called Djesus Uncrossed. The sketch was a fake movie trailer advertising for this fake movie move Djesus Uncrossed. The premise of the movie is that Jesus comes back from the cross on Easter and exacts revenge on those who were against him. It was making fun of some of the newer movies that had come out that were over the top violent and filled with action and special effects. In the skit, Jesus comes back and kills a bunch of the romans that executed with Samurai like sword skills. St. Peter, enlists the disciples to go out and hunt down 100 romans a piece. Jesus goes out and finds Judas, and as Judas is begging for forgiveness, Jesus kills him using a shotgun. The sketch received a lot of criticism, people were outraged by how far the show was allowed to go.

            At the time that the show aired, my colleague and friend Alan Combs down at Lane Memorial wrote a wonderful article about the skit on Lane Memorial’s webpage. He doesn’t try to tackle the debate about whether the skit went over the top or not, but he does mention that, “The humor comes from the fact that the actions of Jesus and his disciples are so out of character for them” This is not the Jesus that we know and love. We know Jesus as one who taught love and forgiveness not revenge and hate. The fact that Saturday night live went so over the top with the violence was for the reason that Rev. Combs mentioned,  that this is obviously a ridiculous depiction of how Jesus and his disciples lived and acted.

            He goes on in his article however to make a quite a profound argument, that for however ridiculous this sketch seems, that Jesus and his disciples would go around killing Romans and those who stood in their way, for how inconceivable that may be in our minds; it is most likely what most people were expecting and hoping for from the Messiah. If you read many of the prophets and the psalms when they talk about the Messiah or about God’s justice; it is far closer to this depiction of Djesus in Saturday Night Live than the way Jesus actually lived. If you don’t believe me, listen to the end of Psalm 137 for example, “happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”  This is but one short example of the type of “justice” that the Messiah would bring. The Messiah will come in like a mighty warrior and topple the mighty oppressors, the Messiah will exact revenge on those who tortured God’s people. One of the most influential theologians of our time Stanley Hauerwas points out however that instead of riding into Jerusalem on a war horse, he came in on a donkey.

            This is the great irony of our scripture for today. Jesus comes into to town and is hailed as the King of Kings, as the one who comes in the name of the Lord, and yet Jesus comes in on a donkey. The King of Kings does not come in on a war horse, the King of Kings is not the might warrior that so many expected. He did not exact revenge on his enemies, he did not violently overthrow the empire, in a world that so desperately wanted him to act in violence, he acted in humility, in peace, and of course he acted in love.

             Many of the Jewish people at the time did not get what they were expecting out of a Messiah. For many, the Messiah that they got was not even what they wanted. After being a people who had been oppressed for years and years, a people who throughout their history have been in and out of slavery and captivity, a people who just wanted to relive those short glory days when David was king and Israel was strong; it is not surprising and even understandable that they wanted a military or a king like David, who would topple over the Roman empire and restore Israel to glory. Many wanted bloodshed, violence, and justice with of course at the final outcome being the Messiah being the victor. They did not get what they wanted,  or at least they did not get what they expected. This great and powerful Messiah that they had been waiting for has been going around speaking messages of love and forgiveness? This powerful Messiah who was supposed to come to restore Israel back to its glory and to save the chosen people of God is now preaching that salvation not only belongs to the Jews but to Gentiles, in fact that all who believe in him shall have eternal life. Wait why do those who have oppressed us for so long, who have tortured us, who do not follow the laws and who do not share our same painful history, why do they get the opportunity for salvation as well?! This Messiah that we have been expecting is not coming into the holy city on a war horse to rescue it, but is coming in on a lowly donkey, a colt. How can this be?

             Throughout the centuries Holy Week has been a difficult time for many Jews, especially during the medieval times, because many Christians would listen to sermons about how Jewish leaders rejected Jesus, and then they would leave and seek retaliation on the Jews of that time. When we stop to think about the hopes and expectations of the Jews during Jesus’ time we can however begin to sympathize with the pain, the struggle and the disappointment that they felt. Having such a painful history, it is understandable that many would be disappointed that Jesus was not a violent avenger, or we can understand how many would not believe that this man was the Messiah, because it was not what they expected. In our society today we still face many of the same feeling and emotions. The United States is one of the few developed countries that still uses the death penalty, and our state of Virginia in particular high a death penalty conviction rate compared other states. For the most part, a lot of the same emotions are at play in these events. We witness or experience horrible and painful loss, we see unspeakable atrocities occur and we cry out for justice in the only way that we seem to know how, by seeking blood, violence, and retribution. We do not only do this in the political sphere, but we often do it within our own faith tradition. How often do you, or have you heard someone who has been seriously hurt, physically and emotionally, so much so that there is no way of explaining or justifying why or how someone could do such a thing, and you think to yourself at least they are going to get theirs when they die, God will take his wrath out on them. We are not so different from the Jewish people at the time of Jesus, when we are hurt, oppressed and scorned, we also often seek blood, violence with the goal of victory at the end.

            And this is exactly what we got through Jesus Christ; but not in the way we expected. Jesus did not come will a sword killing those who rejected him, he did not seek revenge on those who had oppressed his people. His ride into Jerusalem was not a military march, but was instead the march of a martyr. In Jesus’s arrival there was  blood, blood that ran down his face and from his hands and feet. And there was violence, as they stripped and beat him, and in that moment Jesus could have done everything that the people were expecting, he could have retaliated, he could have set himself free, but yet he does something greater than this, he shows  God’s love for his people, so much so that he is willing to die for them. Christ showed us that love conquers hate. The Messiah was victorious, love prevailed, and on Easter he rose to that death as well has been defeated. The triumphal march that we read about in our scripture for today is not military parade, and yet it is a victory march worth all of the excitement and praise, because the Messiah has come to Jerusalem to save his people.