Tag Archives: donkey

A Palm Sunday Conundrum

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This Sunday is Palm Sunday when Christians celebrate “The Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem, which was anything but triumphant. The New Testament Gospels describe it differently, which has absorbed the concentrated attention of more than one scholar or preacher trying to reconcile their differences. Steve Shoemaker, in his inimitable way, engages the debate about whether Jesus rode on just one donkey or two.

Perpectives

Matthew alone tells of the two,
the mare & colt, who carried him
into Jerusalem that day.

Since then many have mocked that view
as based more on an ancient hymn
than what an eye-witness would say.

But whether one sees one or two
depends upon the point of view:
and all saw Jesus, by the way…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 8, 2014

The Donkey’s Questions

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Matthew’s Gospel has two asses (donkeys), not one, in its Palm Sunday narrative. “They brought the ass and the colt, and put their garments on them, and he sat thereon.” Steve Shoemaker’s versed ponders the scene from the standpoint of the colt.

Verse – The Donkey’s Questions on Palm Sunday,
according to St. Matthew

He searched for just the right stick…
but then he never hit me? Why
go to all that trouble? Pick
the answer: 1. that he would try
directing the singing? 2.
to lean on when the day was through?

Why does he ride on my mom
while I’m just trotting alongside?
What does “Halleluja” mean?
Who’ll pick up clothes after the ride?
Now he shifts and rides on me–
he breaks the stick and makes a “T.”
His face looks like he’s had a loss…
Is he thinking of that cross?

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL,

The Donkey: a Kid’s Verse

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“The Donkey” has been waiting for the right occasion. Dennis Aubrey’s photographs and commentary “The Ineffable” on Via Lucis Photography linking suffering and beauty led me fetch “The Donkey” from the “draft” file today for reasons hard to explain.

What I love about Dennis’s commentaries is that he refuses to engage in simplicities that reduce ambiguity to something manageable.

It led me this morning to The Passion (“suffering”) of Jesus, which begins Palm Sunday with a mistaken public perception: the Redeemer is a King who will vanquish the Roman “King” and who, perhaps, by his “Triumphal” Entry, will triumph over suffering.

The wish to escape suffering is, in some way, the kiss of death. There are Christian theologians today who argue that we should remove the cross as the central Christian faith symbol because it glorifies suffering, shifts the focus away from Jesus’ life, and contributes to the perpetuation of violence. But to do so would be to run and hide from the peculiar mystery of the human condition described by Dennis Aubrey’s piece – the ineffable and the beautiful in the face of suffering. The truth is in the paradox and the contradiction.

Steve’s poem brings all of that to mind. Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem to free it from its military-economic occupiers and from its own violent self. The Passion continues to arrest our deepest soul in the mystery of life in the face of suffering and the abyss of nothingness. As Dom Sebastian Moore observed, “the crucified Jesus is no stranger” – we put him there…and we are he.

A Poem for Palm Sunday: “The Donkey: a Kid’s Verse…”

The coats the folks are throwing down

sure make it hard for me to walk

especially carrying this clown

whose feet are almost to the ground.

“Hosannah King!” is all the talk,

but this guy seems to be as poor

as I am–no one could mistake

him for a Royal–he’s just a fake!

They wave palm branches, and they roar,

but my long ears can hear the real

parade across the city square:

the General, the Priests, the score

of war horses–the whole grand deal.

This pitiful parade will fail

to save a soul, and soon the yell

will change from “Hail!” to…”Kill!”

– Verse by Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 28, 2012