On
Passion Sunday, more years than not, I give a children’s sermon. At the
conclusion of the procession with palms and the Prayer of the Day, with the
kids arrayed near the chancel, I selecte a kid as Jesus. We are going to enact the
Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. (Scholars may quibble as to exactly how
triumphal the entry in fact was, but I never bothered the kids with that.)
I
pick a kid up (always the smallest I can find; my disk, you know) and as he rides
into Jerusalem, the other children are to cheer and flourish their palm
branches shouting “hosanna.” This usually requires several tries before they get
to shouting with any real energy.
This
wasn’t my children’s sermon; I stole it. I first saw it done in 1978 by Rev.
David Risch of Faith Lutheran Church in Whitehall, Ohio, when I was a
seminarian and he my pastoral mentor.
He
arranged the kids on the chancel steps, picked one of them up, declared the
child Jesus, and processed into Jerusalem. The children cheered and the palms
were waved.
Passing
before the children he paused and asked them, if Jesus borrowed the donkey
would he return it like he promised?
Of
course he would, the kids agreed. Does Jesus keep his promises? Yes. If he
promises to love you, will he keep that promise too? Yes, yes, yes. And so, Jesus
entered Jerusalem.
I
found this such a charming approach that it became my default every Passion
Sunday. I always asked, how did Jesus get the donkey?
If
they listened to the Processional Gospel they could have figured out that Jesus
borrowed it, which is what they were supposed to say. This would neatly lead to
the question, if he borrowed it, will he bring it back? Then on to the other
promises Jesus keeps.
But
whether they paid attention to the Gospel reading or not, their actual answers
to the question “where did Jesus get the donkey” depended to large degree upon
the community environment where they lived.
In
the Detroit inner-city neighborhood where I did my pastoral residency, the
children’s consensus was that Jesus likely stole it. Out in rural Nebraska a
fifth grader was of the opinion that Jesus got the donkey from the same place
his dad got livestock, at the sale barn. In a Southside Chicago parish a kid
asked, “What’s a donkey?” I did my best to clear up misunderstandings.
There was one drawback: If the kid I carried was
Jesus, well, everybody knew who the donkey was, didn’t they.
This
is all a roundabout way of calling to mind John Mason Neale (1818–1866). Neale
translated into English the Latin hymn Gloria, laus et honor written by
the hymnist,
St. Theodulph of Orleans (d. 821). We know the hymn today as All Glory,
Laud, and Honor, a traditional Passion Sunday entrance hymn.
While
otherwise faithful to the Latin, Neal nonetheless thought it prudent to omit
one verse from his translation:
Be Thou, O Lord, the Rider,
And we the little ass,
That to God’s holy city
Together we may pass.
While
there is evidence the line was in use until the seventeenth century, the verse
was perhaps too rude for the more refined worshipers of later centuries. No
American hymnal has ever included it—wisely, I think. There is little point
giving small boys reason for snickering in church; they can usually find their
own reasons without any assistance.
But
that verse brings to mind yet another donkey, this one from the pen of G. K.
Chesterton:
The
Donkey
When
fishes flew and forests walked
And
figs grew upon thorn,
Some
moment when the moon was blood
Then
surely I was born.
With
monstrous head and sickening cry
And
ears like errant wings,
The
devil’s walking parody
On
all four-footed things.
The
tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of
ancient crooked will;
Starve,
scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I
keep my secret still.
Fools!
For I also had my hour;
One
far fierce hour and sweet:
There
was a shout about my ears,
And
palms before my feet.
Russell E. Saltzman is a dean in the North American Lutheran Church,
assistant pastor of St.
Matthew’s Churchin
Riverside, Missouri. His
latest book, Speaking
of the Dead, is being published this year
by ALPB Books. His previous articles can be found here.
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