Some of you heard my story about the husband and the wife who had quarreled. It had been a high-pitch quarrel, each digging their heels in to preserve the position they had vehemently taken. Emotions ran high. Both were nursing their hurt feelings in defensive silence. As they were driving to attend a family wedding in a distant city — it was an uneasy and quiet trip, both of them starring straight ahead or out the window as the miles went by in icy silence. The angry tension between them was so thick you could cut it with a knife. But, then the silence was broken. Pointing to a donkey standing in a pasture out beside the road, the husband sarcastically asked, “Relative of yours?”
The wife quickly replied, “By marriage!”
The ass, the braying donkey, is an ugly sight, an object of amused contempt. When a person plays the fool, brings himself to the point of embarrassment, we say, “He made an ass of himself.” In modern communication, the ass is a symbol for awkwardness, dumbness, blundering ineptness, non-sophistication.
Yet, an ass plays a key role in the drama of Palm Sunday at which we’re looking today. So the sermon title is a question: “A king on an ass?” To pursue the question, let’s focus at three points. One, at the lowly creature, the ass, Jesus Himself, and three, at the crowd.
I
First, let’s look at the that carried Jesus into Jerusalem.
Jesus isn’t breaking new ground here; He is following in a prophetic line.
“The prophets of Israel had always had a very distinctive method of getting their message across. When words had failed to move people they did something dramatic, as if to say, “If you will not hear, you must be compelled to see.” (cp. specially I Kings I 30—32). These dramatic actions were what we might call acted warnings or dramatic sermons. That is what Jesus was doing here. Jesus’ action was a deliberate dramatic claim to be Messiah. But we must be careful to note what He was doing. There was a saying of the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 9: 9), (‘Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion. Shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, thy king cometh unto thee. He is just and having salvation, lowly, and riding upon an on a horse, when he came in peace he rode on an ass.” (Ibid., p. 274-275)
So here was a king making his way into Jerusalem but what kind of king? That’s the question.
The picture is one of blatant contradiction. The people were looking for a Messiah who would be emperor-like. Can this be the one a king on an ass?
So we see here the nature of the kingdom Jesus brings: the peaceable kingdom, where as Isaiah described it (Isaiah 11: 6 and 9: “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. They shall not hurt or destroy in my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters that cover the sea.”
And that radical image of the peaceable kingdom in Isaiah 65, where love reigns and where compassion flavors all action. Listen to it:
“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, (get this image now) or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
When you think of the Messiah and the Kingdom Jesus came to bring, remember the donkey. Test your actions and relationships, your political theories, your feelings about war and welfare and hungry people, and folks living in shacks - test all these feelings against Jesus’ acted out announcement of the Kingdom. Don’t forget the donkey.
II
Let’s look now specifically at Jesus. Look at verse 3. Jesus has instructed the disciples to go bring the donkey to him, and he adds, “If any one says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘The Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately.” (Mark 11:3)
That is boldly underlined in the assertion of Jesus’ authority. “Say to them, ‘The Lord has need of it.” Mark it down friends: It is a strong word about how we must see ourselves and every thing we have in relation to the Lord. What the Lord requires, He has a right to take.
If he needs our donkey, it’s His. If He needs our talent for speaking, our capacity to listen and love, our house for entertainment, our cars to transport needy folks, our ability to teach, our capacity to earn money, if He needs our money itself — it’s His. What the Lord requires, He has a right to take
Does that rest heavily on you? Of course it does. It’s the call to discipleship put in a way we’re not used to.
But what else did Jesus mean when He said, “If any person would come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow.”
The Lord has need of it.
Lift up your head, peasant owner of an ass - he Lord has need of you.
Lift up your head, Christians of varying gifts and talents, Christians with little and Christians with much, Christians who are strong and Christians who are weak, Christians who are in America and Christians who are in Russia. Christians who are wise and Christians who are simple – lift up your head, every Christian, the Lord has need of you.
Pay attention to all of that verse.
“Do you not think the owner of the patient beast on which Christ rode into Jerusalem would be proud all his days of the use to which his animal had been put, would he not count it as a treasure for the rest of his life?
If you and I yield our gifts to Him, and lay them upon his alter, be sure of this, will sanctify all that is laid upon his altar. All that we have rendered to Him gains fragrance from His touch comes back to us ten-fold more precious because Jesus has condescended to use it.”
I believe this friends. I believe it with all of my heart. The Lord has need of us, and will bless and return what we give Him. That’s the reason Jerry and I are totally committed to the “Because We Care” program of our church.
You heard John announce those goals earlier $3 million, $4 million, $6 million sequential goals. You’ve caught the heartbeat of what this is all about. It’s about caring. It’s about building, not for the sake of building but building for little children and young people to be nurtured in the love and care of building for the fellow ship life of people to4 order that they will be strengthened to serve in the name of Jesus; building so that this congregation can continue to grow by reaching out to this city, offering Christ to the up- and-out and the down-and out — to all those who would hear and respond to the glorious good news of Him who invites us into his kingdom.
This kind of ministry is not going to happen through this church without you and me realizing that Christ has need of us. And what He is calling for now is some of our financial resources.
Jerry and I talked and prayed a long time about this. We struggled alone and we struggled together in making our decision about how we would respond to Jesus’ particular call through this “Because We Care” program. I even thought about inviting her to stand with me as I share now, but I knew it be hard enough for me — holding on to the pulpit and speaking it wouldn’t be fair for her simply to stand here doing nothing. But I want you to know this is our witness. And the burden of it will probably be greater for her than for me.
I believe this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done as a preacher —— to share in the precise manner in what I am about to share. I do it with fear and trembling. This violates some of my convictions about giving —and about giving in secret. But there is scriptural evidence to support such a witness, and I believe you as a congregation need to know where as your leader where I am in relation to this Capital Stewardship Program.
First of all you need to know that Jerry and I are tithers. Jerry was a tither before I married her.
We began our marriage tithing together giving 10% of everything we earned to Christ and his Church. So, that’s where I begin our witness.
As Jerry and I prayed and struggled with the great need of this church to move ahead in its ministry to the community and the world, we thought about the amount our pledge - what would it be. We knew we could not transfer any of our present giving to this to this special cause. This had to be above and beyond our regular giving.
Well, as we thought about it, we thought we might divert some of our special giving, apart from our 10% giving to the church. We support a number of special causes that are close to our hearts: a little boy in India through the Christian Children’s Fund; we tithe our house payment and our house payment is a lot — in fact it’s a $1,000 a month we tithe that to Habitat for Humanity. We support some men and women through two theological schools as they prepare for ministry in the church. One of the exciting things that we have lust taken on as an extra step of faith is the support of a young couple, the Alvin Hoovers, who are training to be Wycliffe Bible translators. I baptized Alvin when he was a baby in a congregation I organized when I was a student at Candler School of Theology, Emory University. We’re providing a little bit of support for them as they have given up everything they have, the security of their future, to serve the Lord in a very special way.
Jerry and I thought at first that we could divert these funds and put them all into our building program. That would have amounted to a pretty good pledge but as we thought and prayed about it, we decided against that. We decided that that would not be a sacrifice, and we had to come up with some way to make our commitment known and to live out our commitment, even if it took sacrifice.
So, what will be done, and where will the money come from? Again, I hope you will accept how difficult it is for me to share in such a personal way, but this is the only way I know to let you know what our commitment is. Jerry and I have $12,000 in a savings account. This is our emergency fund. Well, we haven’t had a big emergency in a long time, so we decided we would take $6,000 of that and give it to the building fund. We could pledge $6,000. But as we thought about it, that would not be much of a sacrifice. So we struggled and prayed more.
This year, 1987, we had worked our finances in such a way that we were going to try to save $1,000 a month for retirement. I am 13 years away from retirement. Preachers’ salaries aren’t the greatest in the world, certainly our retirement program is meager, and Social Security isn’t the greatest. But we’re especially blessed right now, and we felt that we were going to try to save $12,000 a year as long as we could, and that we would strive to put aside $1,000 each month for our retirement.
We thought about that in relation to our need for $6 million to build for ministry here, and how the whole theme of this program is for people not to make equal gifts but to make equal sacrifices. So we’ve decided to take $500 each month of what we were going to save for retirement, and we’re adding that to our pledge. Over 3 years that will amount to $18,000. Added to the other $6,000 we had decided upon, our pledge now stood at $211,000.
But the more we thought about it, the more we were convicted that what we were doing really may affect our future, but it didn’t affect our day—today living. So we finally decided to take a further leap of faith. We’re going to give $200 each month out of our living budget. We don’t know where that’s going to come from. Maybe less dinners out, less entertainment, maybe not helping the children come home or going to them as often. We don’t know where it will come from, but we’ve been led to do it. So that $200 per month for three years will amount to $7,200. Add to the other, then, Jerry and I are pledging $31,200 to the “Because We Care” program.
And you know - we feel good about it. We feel good because we believe the Lord has need of it, and what He requires, He can have. He gives it all to us anyway, and what we need, He’ll return.
III
We’ve looked at the donkey, and at Jesus. Let’s take just a fleeting at the crowd. One word describes them - fickle. They cried hosanna one day, and crucify Him the next. Their performance didn’t match their profession. They couldn’t or didn’t stick to their commitment.
And what about us? We cry our hosannas in worship — what do we do in our work? In our profession we proclaim “Jesus is Lord.” What do we do in our performance? Oh, I know we didn’t cry “Crucify Him” – but is the end any different? Studdert Kennedy has put. it in a challenging way:
When Jesus came to Golgotha
They hanged him on a tree.
They drove great nails through hands and feet
And made a Calvary;
They crowned him with a crown of thorns,
Red were his wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to
They simply passed him by
They never hurt a hair of him,
They only let him die;
For men had grown more tender,
They would not give him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried,
Forgive them for they know not what they do,
And still it rained the wintry rain
That drenched him through and through.
The crowds went home
And left the streets
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against the wall
And cried for Calvary.
(G. A. Studdert Kennedy, The Unutterable Beauty Harper & Brothers, p. 2k)
What about it? In relation to you – in relation to you now, does Jesus feel totally loved? Does He feel your loyalty is complete? In relation to you, does he feel you will stay with your commitment to him – that you will be faithful to the end?
Let this be the question of each of us during this Holy week. What des Jesus feel about my relationship to Him.