"Fetching Donkeys" Mark 11:1-11

17 April 2011 Fetching Donkeys Mark 11:1-11

We never raised donkeys on the farm at Greenvine. I don’t know why, we raised just about everything else. Maybe it was because of my friend Johnnie. Johnnie raised horses and when we ran on Saturday mornings it was one complaint after another about those horses; they ate too much, they cost too much, they were too much trouble. Then one kicked him in the face. He was lucky it didn’t kill him. I know horses and donkey’s aren’t exactly the same, but Johnnies stories probably had a lot to do with our not having donkeys.

I do have a favorite book about a donkey though. It is called “Platero and I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez. Listen to how the man who loves Platero describes him ( pg.3).

Today’s scripture doesn’t tell us much about the donkey. I say donkey because the Greek will allow a translation of both “the foal of a donkey” and “the foal of a horse.” For me, donkey it is.

We do not know how this particular donkey was chosen over the others. Jesus apparently knew him and the roll he would play and Jesus likely loved him. We do know he was in the village, we know he had never been ridden; he was tied up there near a door, outside in the street.

When this donkey was brought to Jesus his disciples threw their cloaks on him and Jesus sat on him. It appears the donkey never objected to any of this. Though never ridden, he had never met someone like Jesus before. When he did, apparently all went well. All went well with this little donkey who was the chosen one. He was the one chosen from all the rest by Jesus to bear him to Jerusalem.

As the story of that journey is told we can easily imagine those who spread their cloaks on the road, those who spread leafy branches, those who went ahead and those who followed. They might have seen the procession that day and said, as was said of Platero, “Look, He is like steel”.

I wonder, would they have said this about the little donkey or about Jesus?
Clearly, Mark’s gospel reading this morning is of Jesus’ final journey, one that would take him from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem and to the cross. As Jesus and his apostles were approaching Jerusalem Jesus sends two of his disciples ahead into town. Not to scout things out, not to find lodging, not to set up a meeting between Jesus and those who were out to take his life. No, they are sent on a mission to fetch a donkey.

No other place in scripture has Jesus sending his disciples on what appears to be such a minor assignment. I can only imagine their disappointment. They were with Jesus after all, he had become famous among the people, and they were recognized as his disciples, an important position. It would not be surprising for the people to look at them with the same awe and respect they had for Jesus. They were his crew after all, his advance men, part of his inner-circle, very important people!

They knew Jerusalem was to be a special stop for Jesus. I imagine they were looking forward to a far grander and more noble assignment on this day than that of fetching a donkey. To add to their dismay, they may have felt this particular assignment eliminated all hope of their being known as the greatest disciple. All of the disciples had been jockeying for advantage, angling for glory, arguing about being the greatest. They had asked Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
Yet here were these two, not at all in glory, but mucking around a stable, probably feeling like horse thieves, all they while trying to wrestle an untamed and no doubt balky animal toward the olive grove. They might have thought, “For this we left our families and our fishing nets!”

In the gospel of John, Jesus doesn’t send anyone looking for an un-ridden donkey. Jesus enters Jerusalem on foot. The donkey enters the story only after the crowd gets caught up in the excitement of the moment. And in John, Jesus finds the donkey, not his disciples.

This sort of makes Marks telling seem rather trivial doesn’t it? Finding the donkey seems more like a designated chore – sort of like making sure the bathrooms don’t run out of hand soap, or watering the new flower bed or one of a multitude of routine and mundane details of church work that are necessary but may not help us feel like we are being involved in the really important work.

The presiding officer at the ordination of an Elder, a Deacon or a Minister of Word and Sacrament will ask the candidate, “Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors and work for the reconciliation of the world?...Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love?” These words stay with us our entire ordained lives.

At first such language may give us the impression that the nature of any calling to follow God, is a brave, exciting, fast paced, rock star like existence. Calling us into the fore front of life’s experience, working for the reconciliation of the world, where we are the key to helping people regain their lost dignity or something grand like that, lifting folks through their pain filled life experiences and bringing them cheerfully to the promised land, to a life of prosperity where only the best reign with God. Really important work for really important people.

While this rock star picture sounds promising, we all know that’s not how being a disciple really works. Glamour and glitz are not part of our calling. Never once is it mentioned that serving people with energy, imagination and love often boils down to ordinary stuff like ordering bulletin covers, changing light bulbs in the restroom, visiting people in nursing homes who aren’t quite sure who you are, running around town looking for lilies when the florist looses our order, being called at the last minute to set-up fellowship hall for a luncheon and everyone else is out of town or not answering the phone because they have caller ID and they just know you are going to ask them to do something at the last minute. Again!

Or even as two of Jesus’ disciples found out, by finding a suitable donkey at the last minute.

This gospel of Mark sets a tone from the very beginning that is different from the other gospels. Matthew begins with a genealogy, Luke begins with an historical account of the development of the mission of the church as the instrument of God’s purpose in history. And John takes us back to the beginning, the creation, and theological reflection.

Marks’ gospel begins instead with a call to “prepare the way of the Lord.” The beauty of Mark’s message is found in the way we are to go about preparing that way. Not, surprisingly, as grand, powerful, and all knowing defenders of the faith, which is perhaps a blessing in disguise.

No, we are to prepare the way of the Lord just as we are, just as we live, just as we go to work, to school, to church, on vacation, to the store, even as we pay our taxes. It is that time of the year again isn’t it!

We are called this morning to prepare the way of the Lord as we go about living our ordinary lives, staying humble, being obedient, to the point of embracing our routine daily tasks as exactly what God expects of us as we become defenders of the faith.

We see this in the gospel message as a whole, Jesus never asks the disciples to join in the typical power structures of their day in order to have a representative voice in the running of things. No, that is not Jesus’ style. Instead the apostles do ordinary things, they get a boat ready for Jesus, they find out how much food is on hand for the multitude, they find a room and prepare the table for the Last Supper and, of course, they chase down a donkey for the Lord and his entry into Jerusalem.

This call to discipleship ministry is our call to full Christian participation in the gritty details of everyday life; humbly, obediently, with love and genuine caring for God and for one another in our hearts. It is a sign of our mature faith when we embrace these gritty details in the midst of the ordinary and are thankful this is who God has really called us to be. For we are far from being rock stars.

While these words may speak the truth about where we are in our personal walk with the Lord, we know words alone will not save us. Joel Marcus, a Markan scholar, believes Mark understands, “the preparation of the Lord’s way in a rather prosaic manner as the arrangements people make for the ministry of Jesus.”

Perhaps we haven’t understood the Christian life this way, this notion that we are to make “arrangements” in our lives for the ministry of Jesus. It reminds us that we are called to give up control of our lives, to turn our lives over to God and then, the most radical of things, to listen for God to tell us what “arrangements” we are to make to prepare the Lord’s way.

On the one hand, each of us is called by God to help prepare the way for the good news of Jesus’ ministry. God knows us and the roll we will play and God loves us. We are called to be apostles no less than the original apostles, going out to teach the world who Jesus is and to make disciples, to introduce people to the truth that just as the rising sun chases away the night, so God has scattered the power of death in the rising of Jesus Christ! That is what we are to do, live the truth.

But let us be cautious.

Clearly, it is Jesus’ ministry that the world depends upon, not ours, our role is to prepare the way. We are the ones who fetch the donkeys!

Yet our task in crucial, as ones who fetch the donkeys for Jesus, as ones who are called to live through our routine life, the often exhausting and terrifying and mundane life, these very details of our service to the Lord are how we help prepare the way for the Lord. Our faithful service is gathered into the larger truth of Jesus’ redemptive work in the world. Our faithful service is to mirror Jesus’ even as we make arrangements to walk with him to the cross.

Jesus tells his apostles, “Go into the city to a certain man.” First we make arrangements for a donkey, now for a man where we will have our last supper. Then we make arrangements to go with Jesus to that place called Gethsemane where Jesus will be arrested. Then the arrangements take us with Jesus to Pilate who after flogging Jesus, handed him over to be crucified there at Golgotha. Where Jesus cried out with a loud voice and breathed his last. Yet, not finished was he and not finished are we.

We are to make arrangements to prepare the way of the Lord. What our preparation of the Lords way looks like is often a matter of speaking a quiet word in a committee meeting, spending time with someone who is incoherent and coming apart at the seams, giving a ride to church, emptying a bedpan for someone we love or scratching a few halting words on a note to someone suffering, in pain, confused, lost, or failing to heal.

In Marks’ world, “preparing the way of the Lord’ usually looks like standing hip-deep in the mire of some stable trying to corral a donkey for Jesus. All the while shouting, “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Additional sources:
“Christian Century”, April 4, 2006, pg. 18.