Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a donkey there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, tell them that the Lord needs them…. (Matt. 21. 1-11)

This Palm Sunday text is celebrated in the church as the beginning of Holy Week. In it we find Jesus, his disciples, and large crowd. Across the Kidron Valley from where they are is Jerusalem.(Matthew 21.1f) Jesus says to two of his disciples, Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a donkey there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to Me. If anyone says anything to you, tell them that the Lord needs them… When the two get there it is just as He said it would be.

Now, the scriptures don’t tell us this time if they came back amazed. They give us a hint for scripture says they found it just as He had foretold. These are the same disciples who had been amazed at all manner of things that Jesus said and did.

Early in His ministry Jesus sent out his disciples with the power of authority to drive out demons and cure diseases. They by the power of His Word found they could do it, and they were amazed. (Luke 9.1 &10.1-22). They were amazed that He knew what they had been quietly speaking about, arguing about, among themselves on the road as to which of them would be greatest (in His kingdom). Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside Him. Then he said to them, ‘whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes Me ; and who ever welcomes Me welcomes the One who sent Me. (Luke 9. 46f) Knowing their thoughts. He knew the thoughts of the Pharisees who watching Him closely were looking for reason to accuse Him of working on the Sabbath by doing something as dastardly as healing someone the Sabbath. Knowing their hearts and minds Jesus said to the man with shriveled hand, …. stretch out your hand. He stretched it out, and his hand was completely cured. (Mark 3.1-6) He also knew the minds of the Pharisees that then went and began to plot how they might kill Jesus. (Interesting work on the Sabbath I might add.) Jesus being fully God (Col 2.8) knows things, all things, and He is the same, yesterday and forever. (Heb 13.8) The Psalmist writes it this way: O Lord, You have searched me and You know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely. (Ps 139.1-4)

Being God is there any thought we can hide from Him. I asked in Bible class if any of you has ever gone somewhere where we, knowing that Jesus is always with us, have in so many words asked Jesus to wait in the car or outside because He might not really enjoy what we are about to do, say, and the movie we are going to see? Lord, please forgive us for thinking and acting as if you don’t know all things, from what is about to happen, to our most private of thoughts.

The scriptures do tell us that the disciples found the donkey and its foal just as Jesus had told them it would happen: in Luke’s Gospel they were challenged by the owner (19.33) and in Mark’s Gospel they were challenged by some people standing there. (11.4-5) As I pondered this part of the story I thought of two things: first, in Bangladesh I observed that the neighbor’s know each other and it would not surprise me that if some stranger were messing with a neighbor’s donkey and colt, which would be like someone messing with my car, the neighbor’s might say something. This is not unlike it was in this country when neighbors all knew each other and watched out for each other. Yet, the words The Lord has need of them, is enough to satisfy the neighbors and owners. We don’t hear of them asking: what is in it for me? Who will return them to me? Or, will they even get them back?

How often are we asked to give to the Lord of our time, talent or treasure? Then, we hesitate, or give with conditions, or give if we can take it off our taxes? A few may be breathing easy saying to themselves, those private thoughts that no one can hear, “Well, no one ever asked so I’m safe on this one.” Well, how many times do we know the good we ought to do and yet we fail to do it or do it begrudgingly or do it half-heartedly? Lord, forgive us for thinking and living as though all good things that we have come from us and not Your gracious hand.

We don’t know if there were repercussions to the loaning of this foal of a donkey to Jesus. We do know that the Pharisees were watching for Jesus and they were breathing out threats against anyone that follows after Him. We see this as the Pharisees demand of Jesus, Rebuke your disciples (Luke 19.39) for these cries of Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of Lord! (Jn 12.13-14 & Ps 118,25,26) We see these threats played out against the man born blind whom Jesus had healed. To him and his parents, the Pharisees had decided, that anyone who acknowledges that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. (Jn 9.22) and the temple guards were under orders at an opportune time to arrest this Jesus. Did the owner’s of the donkey and its foal suffer any retribution? We don’t know. Did they have any second thoughts especially when this one heralded King of the Jews was five days later crucified? We don’t know. But have any of us ever had second thoughts about our Christianity? Oh, sure enough, we believe in Jesus here and when it is safe, but are there times or situations where we kept quiet when we should have spoken up or times when we wavered in our actions? Are there times when might have shared our faith and we didn’t or times when our silence might have been taken as approval for something we knew wasn’t quite right?

I came across a Peanuts cartoon in which illustrates these points: Charlie Brown is reading from the newspaper to Lucy, “It says here that young people of today don’t believe in causes.” Lucy responds frame after frame, “That’s not true at all! I believe in a cause… I believe in me! I’m my own cause! If I’m not a cause what is? I believe in the cause of good old me! That’s what I believe in! Sadly, Charlie walks away saying, “Good Grief!”

I fear that our attitudes towards God and our self-centeredness might give God pause to shake His head with grief. Forgive us Lord for thinking we can hide things from you, forgives us for withholding that which is really yours anyway, and forgive us for our often weak witness. Forgive us God does! that is what the next part of this sermon is about.

In Matthew’s Gospel (21. 5) we hear, See, your King comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt the foal of a donkey. These words are a fulfillment of what the prophet Zechariah had spoken five hundred years before Christ. Now we have a gentle picture because Jesus is not riding what we think of as a warhorse. How will this one overcome the enemy on foal of a donkey, but I submit to you that Jesus was riding a warhorse of sorts, and He was most definitely riding in to battle, but not one anyone expected even though He had told His disciples plainly, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day raised again to life. (Luke 9.21)

The battle he would fight on our behalf would be at the cross. I had read a book by the actor who played Jesus in movie, “Matthew”. In the filming of the scene as Jesus is approaching the cross this actor shared a tremendous insight: Jesus was fighting His way to the cross. If He were to die short of the cross then we’d all still be in our sins for scripture would not have been fulfilled. Jesus was fighting inch by inch for the high ground.

He was brutally wounded by rejection, fatigue and scourging and struggling under the load of our sin, our sins of selfishness and self-centeredness, our weak witness or second thoughts, our sins of thinking we can hide our sinful thoughts and behaviors from God. He was struggling under the weight of those sins and sins of the whole world. The One who fought for our righteousness was fighting to make it to the cross where He would die in our place.

Oh, to the world it looked as though sin had been victorious, but no (!) in His death was the ultimate victory. We hear it in the words, It is finished! (Jn 19.30) With those words the war is won. We are rescued from sin, death, and hell. The gulf that separated us from the Father is bridged. We are forgiven, and that forgiveness is there for all who would believe that Jesus is Christ, the one who came from heaven for us, lived to teach the things of God, died for us, and on the third day rose again for us. That forgiveness, our righteousness, He gives to us freely by and through His Word, at the font, in communion, and by and through His Words of absolution. Truly, truly this warrior on the foal of the donkey is our liberator. He has set us free. Let us rejoice!

I encourage you to spend time with the Liberator, Jesus. Get to know Him. Allow the Holy Spirit to remake your Lucy self-centered hearts and where your new heart is so will be everything else. Then you may find you want to tell others about this Palm Sunday Warrior riding in for the ultimate battle on of all things the foal of a donkey.

Amen