Donkey Sense and the Pope

Pope Francis’ spectacularly inauspicious beginning is full of encouraging signs of the man’s humility.

He instills a hope that change is in the wind, not only in the Roman Catholic Church but among persons of faith and good will around the world.

The Vatican has a reputation for secrecy and self-protection. The clergy child abuse scandal, the secret report on curia corruption that was promptly locked in Pope Benedict's safe, claims of money laundering in the Vatican Bank, all these concerns and more have been swept under the potifical rug.

Church leaders say secrecy is necessary to protect the faithful, whose faith might be jeopardized by evidence of human failings in Holy Mother Church. Perhaps they miss the irony that they have the chutzpah to call themselves the Holy See. It’s also a strange way to serve Jesus, who despite the dangers and controversies swirling around him, set the highest standards of openness and transparency.

Jesus had a special knack for symbolic gestures of humility that preached louder than words.

Pope Francis seems to have a similar knack. And as the western Christian world approaches Holy Week, all eyes are on him.

The Holy See is the last unconditional monarchy on earth. The pontiff has unqualified authority over the minions and the mighty of the church. Pope Francis’ predecessors wore gold crosses, ermine lined silk brocade, jeweled crowns and red shoes, and they lived in palatial luxury.

Yet Francis, who lived in a tiny apartment in Buenos Aires and took the bus to work, wears a simple iron cross, scuffed black leather shoes, and an unadorned white cassock.

He expresses his love for the powerless, whom he identifies using Jesus’ words, as the poor, the captive, the oppressed, the sick and disabled, and the financially strapped.

On Tuesday he urged the world’s politicians to protect the earth’s ecology.

And during his mass of installation Tuesday, this inheritor of monarchial authority defined leadership and power as “really about service,” and declared that even the pope should be “lowly, concrete, and faithful.”

It seems, well, Christ-like.

Whatever happens now – and perhaps it is too much to hope that this elderly, gentle Jesuit might have the time or the resolve to throw open the heavy windows of the church as did John XXIII to let the polluted air escape – Francis is off to a good start.

Among the hopeful signs this week is that the pope has shown he understands the power of symbolism, evidenced by the simplicity of his dress and out-stretched arms to the poor and powerless. These gestures are more eloquent than any homily he could give.

And how fitting it is – perhaps even providential – that he has begun his ministry a few days before the holiest week of the Christian year, beginning this Sunday when the master of all used symbolism and imagery to transform the world forever.

This Sunday is Palm Sunday in western Christian traditions.  (Orthodox Christians, who began the observance of Great Lent on Monday, will celebrate Palm Sunday on April 28, followed by Pascha – Easter – on May 5.)

But despite allegiances to different calendars, all Christians know Palm Sunday is the day Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem while the crowds shouted, “Hosanna!”

In all of the Baptist Sunday school classes I’ve attended on Palm Sunday, two questions are inevitably asked, each of them related to the issue of symbolism.

One, the most common, is, why didn’t Jesus walk?

Most Sunday school teachers (including me on occasion) don't know the answer to this question. I tended to skirt the issue by raising my finger in the air while proclaiming, “Tradition!”

Not many seventh grade Sunday school students are satisfied with that answer.

Probably a better answer is that God wanted it that way, and, sure enough, God seems to been on lookout duty when Jesus sent his disciples to commit grand theft-donkey. (Luke19:30-31).

Other sources soften the legal implications of donkey snatching by reporting “Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it.” (John 12:14)

Years later, gospel writers continued their efforts to sanitize the story by quoting ancient scripture references that suggest God had the donkey in mind all along:

“Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zechariah 9:9)

Whatever the reason, Jesus – who heard the roar of the crowd but sniffed the fickleness that would lead to his crucifixion in five days – chose to ride on a donkey rather than walk.

Perhaps Jesus chose not to walk because that would have placed him on the same level as everyone else. He would have been just another perambulator in the crowd, virtually invisible unless he was taller than everyone else.

If the Messiah required a triumphant entry into Jerusalem, he had to ride in on some conveyance that set him apart from the crowd. Strolling wouldn't do it. A cart ride would have been silly. A chariot would have been out of the question.

The second question that comes up in Sunday school is, why didn’t he ride a horse?

This is a less common query because people have a hard time imagining Jesus on Trigger.

But why not a horse?

Horses don’t make a lot of appearances in the bible, except as visions, such as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

In mundane reality, though, horses must have been common enough in Jerusalem to compete with sheep and goats in the excremental sweepstakes.

Riders of the Roman Equites Legionis were used as scouts, messengers, and defensive screens when testosteronal Goths or other scary enemies surrounded foot soldiers. Roman officers, most of who were petite by our standards (judging from forensic evidence left behind in burial grounds) hoped they looked more imposing on a horse.

Horses were beasts of war. Any king who rode a horse through the streets of an ancient city had either already conquered the city or was signaling his intention to take the city by force of arms.

Obviously that is not a suitable image for the Prince of Peace, no matter how gentle the horse.

In ancient times, the donkey was a working class favorite often regarded as an animal of peace. If a celebrity or monarch were to part the teeming crowds while perched on a donkey, his common touch and pacifist intentions would have been instantly perceived.

So it was on the first Palm Sunday.

The donkey offered another advantage for Jesus, in addition to its peaceful symbolism. A person straddling a donkey may attract more attention than someone merely walking, but that person is not lifted above the crowd as much as a daunting equestrian.

Seated on a donkey, Jesus was accessible to the masses. People could grasp his hands or touch his shoulder as he passed. The donkey permitted him to pass among the people as one of them, not as a king on a horse whose prancing angular hooves would frighten them out of the way.

It’s obvious that Jesus had given careful thought to the sermon he wanted to preach by riding on the donkey.

Although we remain uncertain about the identity of his co-conspirators in donkey nabbing, it’s clear Jesus knew a donkey had been arranged for him in a suburb of Jerusalem before they entered the city.

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone said to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” (Mark 11:1-3)

It’s reassuring that Jesus planned all along to return the donkey, and we may even surmise that new donkeys do not depreciate in value during a test-drive.

We may also surmise that Jesus knew exactly how the sermon on the donkey would be remembered through the millennia. Neither a horse nor a stroll on foot would say it as clearly: here, on a humble ass, is the monarch of the universe, who was in the beginning with God, who took on human flesh to experience all the joys, pains and travails of humanity, who was one of us, who came to rescue us from sin, who came in peace to reconcile us with the God we had rejected.

It’s impossible to envision Jesus on the donkey and mistake him for a shock-and-awe conqueror. He rode on the ass through the streets of Jerusalem to say, my time is near. Raise your palms and spread your cloaks before me as signs you know who I am. Then depart in peace and ponder this revelation in your hearts. Leave the violence and flogging and crucifying to others.

Five days later, we know, the palm wavers joined the vicious crowds who called for a brutal end to the sermon. They stood outside Pilate’s palace shaking their fists and chanting, “Crucify him.”

It’s an excruciating story to hear every Passion Week, all the more so because it set a pattern of church brutality and carnage that has lasted to the present day. Even the peaceful donkey ride through Jerusalem was re-invented by the church as an opportunity for mayhem. According to an online source:

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the burning of Jack-o-Lent figures marked Palm Sunday. This was a straw effigy that would be stoned and abused. Its burning on Palm Sunday was often supposed to be a kind of revenge on Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Christ.

What a travesty of the sermon Jesus was preaching by riding on the donkey.

And how agonizing it is as we begin Holy Week to reflect on other bloody events in Christian history that mock the peaceful entry into Jerusalem: the Crusades, stake burnings, beheadings, disembowelments, and hideous tortures of Christians who didn’t believe what the Christians in power believed.

In our Anabaptist traditions, the Martyrs’ Mirror records countless examples of Christian-on-Christian cruelty.

For example, a Mennonite named Dirk Willems who was jailed for heresy by his Dutch Lutheran neighbors in 1569, and sentenced to die. Willems escaped from jail and was hotly pursued by angry Lutherans, one of whom fell through thin ice and was about to drown. Willems, a true Christian to the end, stopped running and pulled the man to safety. It was just enough time for the crowd to catch up with him. They arrested Willems and burned him at the stake.

No wonder we cannot repeat Tertullian’s Apology without snickering: “‘Look,’ they say, ‘how the Christians love one another, and how they are ready to die for each other.’” The quote is from an essay written in 200 A.D. And looking back, one wonders if it was ever true.

As we begin the last week of Lent, Passion Week, we are called to ponder these matters.

Lent is a time of reflection and repentance.

Lent is a time to remind ourselves of the reasons Jesus came to us.

Lent is a time to recommit to the commandments Jesus said were the essential ingredients for human behavior: to love God with our heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

In his homily Tuesday, Pope Francis described how this love should be carried out:

Jesus’ three questions to Peter about love are followed by three commands: feed my lambs, feed my sheep. Let us never forget that authentic power is service, and that the Pope too, when exercising power, must enter ever more fully into that service which has its radiant culmination on the Cross. He must be inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which marked Saint Joseph and, like him, he must open his arms to protect all of God’s people and embrace with tender affection the whole of humanity, especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison (cf. Mt 25:31-46). Only those who serve with love are able to protect!

Jesus expressed all of this in the simple symbolism of riding a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem.

And as we watch him in our minds eye, making that astounding passage one more time, may we remember the message he intended.

And may we join the cheering crowds in that cleansing refrain:

Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!