Riding a Borrowed Donkey, a sermon based on Luke 19: 28-44, preached on April 13, 2025

I was watching Driving Miss Daisy last week. Do you remember that movie? I was on a plane trying to decide how to occupy my time on this flight, and I realized that I’d never seen Driving Miss Daisy. It takes place in Atlanta during the age of the Civil Rights Movement, and Miss Daisy gets invited to a dinner where she’ll hear Dr. King speak. She asks her son to go with her, and her son likes Dr. King. He believes in what he stands for. He agrees that it’s time for change. He knows that segregation is holding the South back, and as a Jewish man, he knows what discrimination feels like, but when it comes down to making a choice to stand publicly with the Civil Rights icon, he gets worried about what rubbing shoulders with an agent for change might do to his business. Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe you’ve been there before. There’s a choice to be made, and some people join the parade, cheering beside the Messiah riding on the borrowed donkey. Others stand near the edge, trying to keep a foot in two camps. They’re with Jesus, but quietly. They don’t want to disturb the peace. They get all wrapped up in second guessing, wondering: “What will people say?” “How will this choice affect the bottom line?” Not everyone is comfortable taking the risk to follow Jesus, so while today we celebrate these crowds of people who waved their palm branches to welcome the king and who lay down their robes in defiance of Rome without a care for tomorrow, listen as Jesus says, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” What does that line mean? He means that if these people weren’t celebrating, then the stones would. In other words, this celebration is inevitable. This moment in history is unavoidable, and whether the parade of people forms, whether their cheers are loud or soft, it doesn’t really matter because Jesus is the King of Kings, and He doesn’t have to win an election to make that true. He just is. His Lordship is not based on public opinion, but on the arc of history. Nothing lies in the balance. The future is not uncertain, for He commits to us fully even if we suffer from cold feet. He is determined, and He has decided. He rides on a borrowed donkey because there will not be a return trip. He rides to the cross, where the price of our salvation will be paid. If we don’t lift our voices to praise Him, the stones will. That’s the message I want you to hear this morning, in an age where it seems to many that our nation sits on a precipice. My friends, empires rise and fall, stock markets rise and fall, nations have histories that begin and end, while His kingdom will never end. Do you believe it? As mortal creatures, it’s hard to grasp something that never ends, but I caught a glimpse of eternity last week. I watched Driving Miss Daisy on the plane to California because we flew there to see the giant sequoias. The largest one is called General Sherman, and it’s been growing for more than 2,000 years. It’s truly something to stand at the foot of a tree that big. The marker claims that standing at the foot of General Sherman and looking up at its branches is something like how a mouse feels when he looks up at a human. The proportions are about the same. Compared to a giant sequoia, we are like a mouse, yet compared to the God who created the heavens and the earth, the giant sequoia is like a toothpick. At some point, that tree will fall. Maybe we’ll be alive to see it; maybe we won’t. Regardless, all that we see and worry over and obsess about will end, sooner or later. The work of our hands, for good or for evil, will not outlast the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Bow to His power in awe and wonder today and allow the politics and the problems of this present age to take their place in the backdrop of your consciousness. The powers of this world will rise and fall, but the Word of God will stand forever. Stand with the One who rides that borrowed donkey and have the assurance now. Believe the Good News today that the One who rides that borrowed donkey, He rides on to bring our salvation. Halleluia. Amen.