Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 4, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

It is truly a bizarre scene. Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and he is hailed as a king. Jesus coming on a donkey is a royal procession. We know that because of how the crowd greets him, with “Hosanna!” and with branches to soften the step of his animal. We know that Mark intends the scene to be a royal procession, and we know that the animal that Mark calls only a colt is a donkey, because the picture he paints comes straight out of Zechariah 9:9, which has a king riding into the city on a donkey. And because Mark is so clearly echoing Zechariah we know that this royal procession is not just any entry of a king into his city. It is a victory parade. Zechariah says “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he.” A grand triumphal victory march with the victorious king riding on a donkey.

It makes no sense to us. There are two problems here. One is that mighty kings victorious in battle don’t ride humble donkeys. Donkeys may be very nice, and they can be very useful; but magnificent they aren’t. When we think of donkeys, most of us I suspect think of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Eeyore is droopy and rather depressed. He isn’t a proud, strutting steed. He mopes, he doesn’t prance. A donkey doesn’t evoke images of victory in battle. A donkey evokes images of rural life and even of rural poverty, what’s a king doing riding in triumph on a donkey? The other problem with it is that Jesus hasn’t just won a battle. He hasn’t been in a battle at all. At least, he hasn’t been engaged in any military battle, not the kind of battle from which a king returns in triumph. So what’s going on here? How can we make sense out of Jesus riding in military triumph on a donkey?

I’ve heard one explanation of the king riding on the donkey in Zechariah 9:9 that, if true, does in fact make some sense out of it. One scholar I’ve heard says that in ancient Israel kings returning from victory in battle rode on donkeys precisely because donkeys do not symbolize war and military pursuits. They symbolize peace and rural, agricultural pursuits. The symbolism of the victorious king on a donkey says: The war is over. We have won peace. Now we can return to our peacetime occupations, to agriculture and trade, to family life and the life of our community. That’s why the king in Zechariah who is mighty and victorious is not riding on a great war steed—well, actually, in those days no one rode on horses because stirrups hadn’t been invented yet. So more accurately that’s why the king in Zechariah who is mighty and victorious in battle isn’t standing in a chariot drawn by a great war steed. The donkey says the time for war has passed, the time for peace has come. The symbol of the king on a donkey is precisely a symbol of peace.

So when Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a donkey he is saying: I am your king who has won for you peace. In that sense it is an appropriate symbol for him, but there’s still that problem that Jesus hasn’t just defeated an enemy through military force. His symbolism says I have brought you peace; but because he hasn’t just won a war like the king in Zechariah, it has to be a different a different kind of peace than the kind of peace, always temporary and fleeting, that military conquest brings. What kind of peace might it be that this non-warrior king brings when he rides into town on a donkey?

Jesus hasn’t been engaged in a military battle, but he has been engaged in a metaphorical battle. He has been engaged in a spiritual battle. He has been engaged in a battle against despair. He has been engaged in a battle against false religion that says that some people are in with God and some are out. He has been engaged in a battle against false religion that says that what God wants from us is sacrifice and ritual purity. His riding into town on a donkey symbolizes that he has been victorious in those metaphorical, spiritual battles.

But has he? Despair is still very much with us. False religion that teaches all of the false understandings from Jesus’ day is still very much with us. There really isn’t any doubt about that. So in what sense can we say that Jesus has triumphed in his metaphorical battle against the spiritual ills of his day? I think we can say that he triumphed in the sense that by the time he made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem five days before his death he had taught people with his words and demonstrated to people with his life how we can overcome our own spiritual ills. He taught us that we need not despair because God is always with us. He would complete that lesson on the cross on the coming Friday. He had taught us that God with God everyone is in and no one is out because God loves and extends grace to everyone, especially to those whom the world considers unworthy of grace. He had taught us that what God really wants is not sacrifice but that that we live lives of compassion, justice, and mercy. It isn’t that he had made all the spiritual ills of the world go away. Obviously not. He had however given us the tools we need to overcome those spiritual ills in our own lives and to keep striving to overcome them in the life of the world.

And he did it peacefully. Jesus riding into the city in imitation of a king who had triumphed in battle when he hadn’t been engaged in a physical battle and had taught us against engaging in physical battles symbolizes the with God victory isn’t about fighting, it isn’t about winning wars. Quite the contrary. In imitating kings who were victorious in literal battle when he had rejected literal battle and all that it stands for Jesus is saying that with God victory is peace. Victory is won through peaceful methods, and peace itself is the victory. Jesus is the king, but he is not the king of battle. He is the king of peace. With Jesus peace is the way. It is the way to peace. It is the way to life. It is the way of the Christian. Thanks be to God. Amen.