In a recent message, I heard a pastor lament over the heart of those people who devote themselves to a ‘church’ i.e. the building. He recounted the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey where people spread palm branches and their cloaks on the ground shouting, “Hosanna… Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”
He asked his listeners to consider, “Do you think the donkey thought it was for him?” and added the comment, “This building is a donkey.”
I have heard this illustration used before from others and wondered about the source. I’m not sure I know, but I found a post from 2005, “The Humility of a Little Donkey”, where the author speaks about the impact of hearing Mother Teresa talking with Johnny Carson. She appeared on his show after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He’d asked her if she thought that the prize money or the notoriety that accompanied the prize would ‘go to her head’. She answered…”Do you think, Mr. Carson, for one moment, that that little donkey thought the crowd was giving him the praise and glory instead of Jesus?”
[Read here for Joe Bagby’s post.]
Nice. No wonder Jesus taught deep, spiritual truths through parables – such effective communication tools. i.e. I see your speck of dust but miss my own plank! Priceless!
The Donkey is a great reminder of our pride.
In an article on Fox News, Second Sunday of lent: Pastor recalls worshipping with Christians in Ukraine, Pastor Lucas Miles, from Nfluence Church in Granger, Indiana, talks about the season of Lent as a period of time to honor and remember the sacrifice of our Savior. The article includes what I consider his prayer for the audience.
“During this Lenten season, as the world rages mad all around us, may each of us become fully awake to behold the glory and goodness of our Lord, who gave his life as a sacrificial lamb so that we could enjoy eternal security and life in his name.”
Amen, Pastor Miles! As a Christian that reads Scripture and is grounded by two fundamental truths: (1) God never changes – Great is His faithfulness! And (2) there is nothing new under the sun. I am constantly drawn back to Luke’s Gospel where in the midst of Jesus’ performing signs and wonders, there are aways people who are drawn closer and put their faith in him right next to people who doubt and seek an alternative reason to explain His miracles and teachings. Let’s face it… there is a real cost to following Jesus and becoming His disciple. But once you believe, there is nothing more important than convincing those you love of this truth. And THAT is not easy… in fact without His Spirit, its impossible. 😥
Regarding this article on Lent, I applaud Pastor Miles’ courage in proclaiming Christian faith on a public stage… now let’s scroll to the comments section and let the persecution begin!
Along with the usual, and useless, bickering in comments, I am unexpectedly drawn to one cleverly named user, DONKEYHOLEY. 😏 In a comment, credited as having been made 4 hours ago, he writes… ‘I am giving up all supernatural thinking for Lent.’
Also 4 hours ago… DONKEYHOLEY commented: [Pastor] Miles explained the Old Testament history of covenant, noting that in those times, “a blood covenant was a binding agreement between two parties. Together, they would dig a shallow trench into the earth and line it with the carcasses of slain sacrificial animals.” —————- Primitive stuff
Then another listing marked 3 hours ago… DONKEYHOLEY added a quote: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they cannot tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. Marcus Aurelius
Then 1 hour ago, DONKEYHOLEY writes… Try this: Punch in google: “Preacher arrested” Now punch in: “Atheist arrested” By this evidence, who are the good people?
And finally, 41 minutes ago… One of the evils that came out of the bible was the verse about the mark of Cain. Slavers interpreted that to mean black people. The Bible has shown how it can be used for evil.
Ah, DONKEYHOLEY, you are my new friend… welcome to ‘Spiritual Schizophrenia’… not my term, one I heard a pastor use and thought… Oh, yeah, that definitely captures it!
Fun fact: Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 to 180, was a Stoic philosopher. He was born in 121 AD and died in 180 AD. He was born into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Embracing Stoicism meant he embraced fate, reason, and self-restraint. Stoicism was a philosophy founded in Athens in the 3rd century BC, based on logic and reasoning, concluding that happiness can be found in practicing the 4 cardinal virtues of mind and character: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
I once actually liked the idea of Stoicism, but decades of trying to logically discern and predict what is good, what is right, and what is just, only ended with disappointment and frustration… because of… PEOPLE – I gave up faith in Stoicism and the evolution of anything ‘good’ in people. I started to ask… why is it that it’s always people that get in the way of any good philosophical or political system?
So, DONKEYHOLEY, my new friend, every comment you wrote made me wish that more Christians spent as much time wrestling with these thoughts as you did. For wrestling you did… posting side-by-side, both stoic, i.e truth-in-nature thoughts… along with giving up the supernatural thinking. (That’s just so rich!) Then later, noting the bizarre covenantal practices of ancient people, yet dismissing our current idiom of ‘blood brother’ implying loyalty or faithfulness. Christians do recognize the bizarre nature of the laws given to the ancient Hebrew people, and we also wrestle with the commandments for the Israelites to honor those laws in order to set themselves apart from their neighboring peoples – whose practices were also quite obscene to the modern reader. But the New Testament, or New Covenant, does the explaining… of the necessity of sacrifice and atonement and best of all, the righteousness we have, by God’s grace, a result of our faith in the Lord Jesus who fulfilled all the requirements of that first covenant.
After two hours of some mental struggling, DONKEYHOLEY, you turned to Google. 🤦♀️ Dude! Give up on Stoicism if this Google argument is the best you can come up with! You are not very good at this… you are just being lazy and are easily distracted and led astray. Priest arrested… atheist arrested… THEREFORE… Come on, would that line work on anyone? Is that the best debate strategy you have?
Finally, you wrote… slavers interpreted the mark of Cain… ‘the Bible has shown how it can be used for evil’ Wow, that is some low hanging fruit. The Bible did not show that… stupid, selfish people used the powerful Word of God to justify their own selfish desires. What the Bible shows is how easy it is with sinful humans, (Genesis 3), to be led astray and commit acts of evil. But consider this, it is the powerful Word of God, and the Spirit of the Living God, that can act on the hearts of men like William Wilberforce and John Newton, to step forward and take on the fight to abolish the English slave trade in the early 1800’s.
Familiarize yourself on the actual work of God in history and THAT my new friend DONKEYHOLEY, I’m assuming your name to be a clever reference to Don Quixote here, is what it is like to dream The Impossible Dream, (sung by Josh Groban)… or even better, the clip from the “Gomer Pyle” episode, featuring Jim Nabors. (You don’t get TV like this anymore… 1000s of more channels, but nothing worthy of these 8 minutes!)
My prayer for you, DH, as I was reading your comments was this… You are so close to entering the Kingdom. Jesus stands at the door of your heart and knocks, but you must open it. And, you also know that when you do, nothing will ever be the same. Godspeed on your journey! 💖 Trust Him and quit looking around.