... Jesus ... went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As He approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, He sent two of His disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it.’” Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as He had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They replied, “The Lord needs it.” They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As He went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When He came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!” “I tell you,” He replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:28-40)

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     On Palm Sunday - the last Sunday before Easter - we traditionally reflect upon Jesus’ arrival at Jerusalem on His last journey to that city, and the focus of the church is usually upon the symbolism involved in His entry into the city on the back of a donkey – portrayed usually as either a fulfillment of prophecy or as a sign of the peaceful nature of Jesus’ Kingdom. That’s all very important, but my focus today is on something a little different. Rather than focusing on either the meaning of Jesus’ arrival at Jerusalem, or even on the means of His arrival, I want to focus today on how He acquired the means. How did He get this donkey colt? The passage refers to the colt’s owners – who are unnamed and unknown to history – and it makes no suggestion that the colt’s owners knew either Jesus or His disciples. Some have suggested that the words “the Lord needs it” were a code of some type that had been pre-arranged so that when the disciples showed up they would simply offer those code words to the donkey colt’s owner, and he would give them a “wink! wink!” and let them take the animal. That sounds a bit too cloak-and-dagger to me, and there’s no evidence for that speculation in the passage, which seems to tell us that the disciples got this donkey colt from someone they didn’t know and who didn’t know them. The surprise then is that the owners of the donkey colt let the disciples take him with no questions asked. “The Lord needs it? Go ahead and take it!” It was that simple. The colt’s owners simply allowed the disciples to take the colt, solely on the basis of what I have to admit would have come across to me as a rather flimsy excuse: “the Lord needs it!”

     As you reflect on what happened in this passage, imagine yourselves in a similar scenario: you walk out of your home and discover a group of complete strangers in the process of taking your car. You challenge them, but they offer no explanation of what they’re going to do with it, other than to say that their boss needs it. Now imagine your response to that group of strangers. Some simple questions cross my mind. Who are you? Why do you need it? What are you going to do with it? Are you going to bring it back? We’d ask those questions at the very least, and, frankly, most of us would probably simply call the police, but we wouldn’t likely just hand over the car to this group of strangers. We’d ask questions and looking for answers about what was happening, because we simply don’t live in the kind of society which places very much trust in strangers. Setting aside the suspicion we have of strangers, we also live in a very cost-conscious age. We want to know what the price tag is before we get into something too deeply. So, even if we were willing to give up the car, we’d want to know what was in it for us – whether what we’d get would be proper compensation for what we’d be giving up. We do that with almost anything - even something as simple as our time. Whenever anything is asked of us the first thing most of us do whether we realize it or not is a cost/benefit analysis. “Is what I’m going to get out of this more valuable than what I’m going to put into this?” If there’s no direct benefit for me, or if the direct benefit seems uncertain, then most people are reluctant to do whatever it is that’s being asked of them. I’m neither criticizing nor condemning that attitude. It’s simply the state of the modern world.

     This issue strikes home, because the cost of being a disciple of Jesus is not cheap. Jesus demands a lot from those who follow Him. “Take up your cross and follow Me,” is not an invitation to a life of ease and comfort. To some extent, that explains the reasons for declining church attendance pretty much everywhere in Canada. Attending church is surely one of the least demanding requests Jesus makes of His people, but many have done a cost/benefit analysis about Sunday mornings and have decided that there are more valuable ways to spend their time – and that’s fine. People have a God given right to make their own decisions and to set their own priorities. Free will is one of the great gifts God has given us. I’m simply making the point that church attendance is one of the easiest things our faith in Jesus asks of us, and, to borrow from a parable, if we can’t be faithful in the little things, we’re going to have a lot of trouble being faithful when the real cost of being a disciple of Jesus arrives.

     Of course, I speak to the converted, don’t I? We’re here, after all – and, except for a few of us, none of us are being paid to be here, but that cost/benefit analysis still gets done, reflected in the question: “what am I getting out of this?” Lots of people assume that they’re supposed to “get something out of” going to church, but our presence here is about giving rather than getting - and I’m speaking not so much about money, as I am about our willingness to give in a holistic sense: perhaps money, but also our time, our talent and our best effort - and it does take effort. Working at being truly faithful to what Jesus asks of us can be hard and exhausting work that often doesn’t seem as important as some of the other things we fill our time with, but to truly serve Christ is in fact an exhilarating experience. Those who throw themselves into the service of Christ (as the owners of the donkey colt did in today’s Gospel) find themselves spiritually refreshed because they know that they have performed a valuable service for the Kingdom of God, and surely that is what Christian life is about. Christian life is not about finding excuses to avoid serving God, it is about finding opportunities to throw ourselves into the service of God!

     Think again for a moment about the owners of that donkey colt. The colt’s owners gently ask, “why are you untying the colt?” and the disciples respond simply, “The Lord needs it.” Would that satisfy you? It wouldn’t work for me faced with that guy hotwiring my car! And yet, according to Luke, the colt’s owners make no attempt at all to stop Jesus’ disciples after they receive that highly puzzling and – to me – entirely unsatisfying answer. They simply responded to Jesus’ claim upon their lives. We who are here today claim to be followers of Jesus, but are we at His side, accepting whatever costs that relationship might entail for us, or do we follow at a safe distance, making it easy to run and hide if the going should get tough? That’s a fair question for all of us to ask, especially at this time of year. Within a matter of days after he entered Jerusalem to the cheers of the crowd, hailed as the Messiah that the people had been longing for, Jesus would be confronted with the jeers of the crowd, and accused of being a blasphemer. This morning, having seen the palm branches, we are confronted by the table in front of us. Today, in the midst of celebrating Palm Sunday, Good Friday is looming ahead of us. The table and the cross remind us of the price involved in being a disciple of Jesus. Is Jesus worth the cost involved? I submit to you that He is!