What can a donkey teach me?
As the time for his arrest and crucifixion drew near, Jesus made what has been called his “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem (cf Matthew 21:1-11) on Palm Sunday. The Bible says in verse 5 that Jesus entered the city “riding on a donkey.” In response to Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, Francis de Sales preached a sermon on March 20, 1622 entitled, “What can a donkey teach me?” It was first listed in the De Sales SPIRITUALITIY CENTER publication. The article I read goes like this:
If we can suspend our reluctance to have a beast of burden teach us something about what it means to be a disciple of Christ, our efforts may be well rewarded indeed. Francis tells us that Jesus singled out the donkey “because of its humility, its patience and its obedience.”
Regarding humility, Francis observed: “The donkey is a slow, ungainly animal, but a humble one. Our Lord, who came to destroy pride, chose to ride this simplest and humblest of beasts, due to his great love of humility and lowliness. God, says Isaiah, dwells among chastened and humbled souls, bidding the humble spirit, the chastened soul, to rise and to live.”
Francis continued, “His nature from the first was divine, but he dispossessed himself, took the nature of a slave and lowered his own dignity. Although the Father’s equal in all things, he would still be left out of all human reckoning, bowed with misery, and no stranger to weakness. Yet, humble as he was, he did no injustice to the Father or to the Holy Spirit in claiming equality of nature, power and wisdom with them. He made his entrance into Jerusalem not on a proudly-stepping horse with gay retinue, but on a simple donkey overlaid with the apostles’ round coats. He would not wow the crowds, but rather sought to win over their hearts by gentleness and humility.”
The second reason that Jesus selected the donkey was its patience. “It will suffer all kinds of ill treatment without retaliating with a bite or a kick. Our Savior’s love for this virtue moved him to become a mirror of patience by suffering the rough handling of his passion without a murmur. Humility and patience go together, so that you can scarcely have one without the other. A humble person needs to be patient in bearing the humiliations that come his or her way; a patient person needs to be humble in order to endure the misfortunes of life. The donkey is humble and patient: for this reason our Lord rode it to the holy city.”
Thirdly, Jesus chose the donkey because of its obedience. The donkey “lets itself be laden and led whenever its master wills, submissive to a burden which it makes no attempt to shake off. Our Lord’s love of obedience moved him to give a similar
example: our weakness, and it was Christ who carried the weight of it; our miseries, and it was Christ who bore them. God laid on his shoulders our guilt, the guilt of us all. He suffered what our sins deserve.”
“Tying these three qualities together, Francis preached: ‘Happy the souls who are pliant and submissive, obedient without murmur or excuse, willingly bearing the burdens laid on them. Like the donkey, these people, too, are the Christ-bearers of our world. But, in order to be worthy of this honor, we must be clothed with the virtues of humility and patience, the reins by which our Savior holds us obedient to his will’”
Francis promises that we will be happy if we are willing to bear Christ in this world. We can find fulfillment in being “clothed like the donkey in the apostles’ cloaks— that is, clothed in apostolic virtues. We will find satisfaction by living our lives in a humble, patient and obedient manner.
All of this, of course, depends upon our ability to overcome a fourth and final characteristic of the donkey with which we are all too familiar: stubbornness.”
This story was shared with me by a gentleman working in the VA who faces challenges every day. Obviously, since the sermon’s content was written in 1622, its author has extrapolated a lot from the simple Palm Sunday story of Jesus entering Jerusalem. Regardless, with all of the “loud hosannas” and “palm waving” that normally takes place on Palm Sunday, perhaps it would do most of us well to pause for a moment and consider the donkey.
••• Robert Box has been a law enforcement chaplain for 29 years. He is a master-level chaplain with the International Conference of Police Chaplains and is an endorsed chaplain with the American Baptist Churches USA. He also currently serves as a deputy sheriff chaplain for the Benton County Sheriff’s Office. Opinions expressed in the article are the opinions of the author and not the agencies he serves.