As we begin preparing for Holy Week and the joyous time of Easter, I have had a tradition in our Preschools that I wanted to share with you. Every year, I have had a chance to read the Winky, Wonkey Donkey story to our Preschoolers at Chapel for both Trinity Christian Academy and Methodist School for Early Education. If you have never read the story, it is a joy! It follows a donkey that is having a really bad day and page after page, we learn that something else is now wrong with him. I talk to the little ones about our bad days and ask them if they have ever felt cranky, or naughty or dealing with something that sets them back. I remind them that Jesus loves them anyways, even when they are feeling those things.
Then, I try as best as I can to connect the Winky, Wonky Donkey back to the story of Palm Sunday. I teach the kids about the parade that Jesus came into Jerusalem in. I talk about the donkey he rode and the people that waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna! And then I tell them that while we don’t really know how stinky or naughty the donkey was that Jesus rode into the city on, we do know that God loves us and can use us even on our worst of days. We have fun telling the story with motions and laughing about the Winky, Wonky Donkey. Look the video up on YouTube to listen to the story. It is worth your time.
And after I shared this story over the last few days, it go me thinking about the crowd of the people shouting Hosannas and waving palm branches, and I had wondered if I would have been amongst them? Here is why I ask you this question. There were two processionals through Jerusalem in the year AD 30. The first was Pilate’s Imperial Procession coming from the West. To ensure order during the crowded Passover festival, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, would ride from his coastal residence in Caesarea into Jerusalem. Author and Theologian, Brain Zahnd writes, “What we see on Palm Sunday are two parades. One from the west and one from the east. One where Caesar’s Prefect of Judea rides a warhorse and one where God’s anointed Messiah rides a donkey. One is a military parade projecting the power of empire, the Roman Empire. The other is a prophetic parade announcing the arrival of an alternative empire, the kingdom of God. One parade derives its power from a willingness to crucify its enemies.”
Scholars believe this was intentional and planned by Jesus and his followers as an “anti-imperial” counter processional that would have put those present at the parade in some risk. Not only that, but in all three Synoptic Gospels, those in the crowds laid down their clocks and outer garments which was a public display of allegiance and hope in the new Kingdom Jesus came to usher in. In those days, your outer garment was also your blanket and your security and so to lay that down signaled a willingness to be sacrificially obedient for this new, counter kingdom.
And so, as we walk closer and closer to Holy Week and as we prepare for the sting of death and the hope of resurrection, I invite you to consider two things. First, would you have even been willing to put yourself at risk, to go against the degree as a citizen of Rome to join the crowd that celebrated Jesus’ final entry into the Holy City. And second, if you were there, what would you have laid down? Throughout this season of Lent, you may have chosen to let go of something or to take something on. But as we prepare for the Holy Season of Easter, what is the final thing God is asking you to lay down to prepare fully for the freedom found through death and resurrection?
Maybe it is your ego, your false self like Pastor Philip preached about Sunday. Maybe it is your anger or your bitterness towards others? Could it be your pride or your entitlement? Or maybe it is your fear of what will come to be in this world that seems to be spinning out of control. What is that outer layer that has been your security and comfort and whatever it is, would you have been willing to lay that down?
As we prepare for how God might show up in our lives over the next ten days, may we be watching and listening to how God might be inviting us into a new way of loving, a new way of living and a new way of living into the hope that just like the Winky, Wonkey Donkey, Jesus loves us even on our worst of days.
Winky, Wonkey Donkey Read Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKzrYLuI6Yo