Palm Sunday B
Text: Mark 11:1-9
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
March 28, 2021
Burro Boys
In the last few years I’ve become a member of an exclusive club. This happened because my wife Deb became interested and then became very good in the sport of triathlon: swim, bike, run. The exclusive club into which that puts me is Triathlon Support Crew, a select society of dedicated, hand-picked, elite people whose job on race day is, to carry all the stuff. Wetsuit. And then, after the swim leg, a wet wetsuit. Bike helmet. Three pairs of different shoes. Sweaty towels. Just call me Burro Boy, I tell her.
In the triathlon world I serve as a servant. Nobody looks for me, and nobody is really interested in me. What they’re really interested in, is how did your wife do?
This came to my mind because this year for Palm Sunday we get the story from the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s version of things is always striking for its brevity, and for Palm Sunday, sure enough, the whole story of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem is told in only 11 verses. But Mark’s version is also striking to me because of those 11 verses, the first 7 of them are about, of all things, how they got the bloomin’ donkey. Where to find it, what kind to look for, what to do, what to say. In Mark we get more of how they ran the errand for the donkey, than we get of the hosanna parade through the streets! Those two disciples who ran and got it? Just call them the Burro Boys.
The Gospel does not name for us which of the disciples those two were, but I’m saying they were James and John. You know why? Because it was just in the previous chapter of Mark that those two guys pitched Jesus: “Hey, grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
So the irony here is both delicious and certainly must be intentional, that on this very public and glorious day of Jesus’ ministry, a day when he would be welcomed into Jerusalem with joyous hosannas, the closest followers of Jesus find themselves engaged in a remarkably unromantic form of ministry, mucking around a stable, looking suspiciously like horse thieves, and trying to wrestle a donkey, that notoriously balky of animals, toward the olive grove where Jesus waits. It was when James got kicked by the donkey one more time that he turned to John and said, “Can you remind me, when it was that we signed up for this? I signed up for ‘The Kingdom of heaven has come near.’ I didn’t sign up for ‘Go get me a donkey.’”
In the ordination service of the Lutheran church candidates are asked: “Will you lead God’s people by your own example in faithful service, holy living and the reconciliation of the world? Will you serve God’s people with energy, intelligence, and imagination, that God’s love may be known in all that you do?” I hear those words regularly when I attend ordination services, and I remember when similar words were said over me, and every time I hear those bracing words I have to square my shoulders into the wind of the Holy Spirit that positively blows back my hair as those words wash over me. That’s what I signed up for, the kind of ministry that is a brave white-water adventure run over the worldly cultural rapids toward global transformation in the name of Christ!
Nobody tells you, when you are ordained, that serving God’s people with energy, imagination, and love will often enough boil down to vacuuming the glitter from the children’s Christmas Eve service, so the place looks presentable for the 10 o’clock. Nobody tells you you’ll be bringing Holy Communion to people in nursing homes who aren’t quite sure who you are. Nobody mentions that Saturday afternoon emergency trip to the florist, because somebody forgot to order altar flowers, and you know the people who asked for them will be disappointed if they’re not there. It’s not in the ordination service that if there’s a pandemic then energy, imagination, and love will mean learning to Zoom and video worship and becoming an amateur epidemiologist. Sometimes, it all comes down to carrying the sweaty towels, or finding the right donkey.
But don’t feel sorry for two disciples, or for ordained pastors, because the hosanna-glory of your own call to follow Jesus and the mundane-worldly way in which your service to Jesus takes shape is just as much a part of your life as it is of theirs, or mine. And it’s right at that point that this weird donkey-errand emphasis in the Gospel of Mark imparts some of its best theological wisdom. With the original calling of the disciples there was that exhilarating trumpet call to “prepare the way of the Lord,” but the Gospel makes clear by what is required of us disciples through the rest of the story that the way you do that is not with some crusading Knights Templar defense of Christendom, but rather by performing the most humble, mundane, and routine of tasks. It’s the cross; in the end, it’s always the cross. The disciples in Mark get a boat ready for Jesus, they find out how much food is on hand for the multitude – “You feed them!” – they are the ones who book the banquet room and do the altar guild work for the Last Supper, and, of course, they chase down that blasted donkey the Lord needs to enter Jerusalem. Whatever glorious words were said over you in your Baptism, and whatever you may have heard when Jesus beckoned to you, “Follow me!,” it has led you into a ministry of handling all the gritty details of everyday life. Think of learning how to do remote school with your kids; of every strange arrangement you’ve had to make these days. You can resent it if you must, but you have to recognize it, too, as exactly the donkey-ministry to which Jesus has called you; nothing less.
The Bible scholar Joel Marcus speaks of the donkey business and calls it a picture of “the prosaic arrangements people make for the ministry of Jesus.” I submit to you that is a pretty apt description of what disciples like us are called to do; that is the very definition of our ministry, and our life! The prosaic arrangements we make for the ministry of Jesus. This cuts two ways. On the one hand, we are called to prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry, and it’s his ministry, not ours, that ultimately counts. Nobody’s interested in my service at the triathlon, I said; they wanna know how did your wife do? If they ask about the donkey you say, “The Lord has need of it.” In all we do, we are always pointing to him.
But on the other hand because we are – in ways not always obvious – preparing the way of the Lord, the routine, often exhausting, seemingly mundane donkey-fetching details of our service are gathered into the great arc of Jesus’ redemptive work in the world. That goes for every bit of all those things you gotta do. Never forget that. They are the very stuff of Jesus’ redemptive work in the world.
The call to this ministry is glorious. Jesus says you are sent to proclaim the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick, and exercise authority; nothing less! But this Gospel wants you to know that this sometimes looks like nothing more than speaking a word of justice and healing in an office meeting. Like spending time with someone who is incoherent and coming apart at the seams. Like changing a diaper or scratching a few, halting words in a condolence note. In the world of the Gospel, “preparing the way of the Lord” all too often looks like standing hip-deep in the mire of some stable, trying to corral a donkey for Jesus. In the end, we who follow Him, we are all going to the cross. In the end, we are all Burro Boys.