“Both Donkeys”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Reading: Matthew 2:1-11; 27:45-54
There’s a lot happening today. Hard to think of a bigger whiplash effect in church than Palm/Passion Sunday. We start with a parade, a festival, a hootenanny. Tree branches and a donkey, shouts of hosanna, re-creating Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Then things pivot hard, turn solemn, and we revisit Christ’s crucifixion and death. Something for everyone today, whatever you’re facing.
First, the triumphal entry. I love that we have the donkey back in the house with us today. Many species of donkey have a distinctive cross-shaped pattern on their back. We take this as a sign of Christ having ridden the animal into the holy city on the way to his cross. And the entire species is subsequently marked by contact with him. I first heard that from a farmer in North Carolina. Heard it again from friends in Sudan in east Africa. Maybe the more time you spend outdoors, living off the soil and close to other animals, the more you discern Christ in all creation, not just us humans. But just think, if donkeys are marked by Christ just sitting on them for a bit, how we human beings are marked by God becoming human.
There were all kinds of other ways Christ might have entered Jerusalem. When the German Kaiser arrived in Jerusalem in the 1890s to christen a new church, he did like you would expect a Caesar, an emperor to do—he rode the grandest horse in the realm, flags flying, bands blaring, blinged out with military regalia. Jesus bumps into Jerusalem on a humble work animal, feet only inches off the ground. Proper kings lead armies. Jesus leads children. When Romans put on triumphs to mark a victory, they would indeed have palm branches as signs of victory. They also carried spoils of war from their conquered enemies, including slaves—the former nobles and kings they’d captured, usually naked and humiliated, ritually put to death to entertain the crowd. Jesus’ parade was rather different. It still is. We call it church.
What impresses me most in this story is a little obscure. How many animals does Jesus ride? Zechariah the prophet had announced the following:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
The prophet already sees that the messiah will subvert war—cutting off chariots and war horses, breaking bows. He also anticipates the messiah riding on a donkey—on a colt, the foal of a donkey. That’s a standard poetic doublet—two lines that say the same thing slightly differently. Matthew says this: “6 The disciples went and did as Jesus directed them; 7 they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.” Matthew is so eager to show this fulfills Zechariah’s promise, that he has Jesus riding two animals at once. That’s possible, I guess. Israel’s hopes included a king who would end war, not win it, and Matthew is so keen to say that’s Jesus that he has him on two beasts at once. He takes the poetry literally. I love it.
And in case you missed it, the prophet’s promise that God will have dominion from sea to sea is embedded in Canadian identity—we just put it in Latin on our national crests to hide its Hebrew origin.
Things pivot fast in holy week. The crowds that acclaim him on Sunday are gone by Thursday. His disciples are gone, the male ones anyway, the girls stick around. And another crowd gathers, probably with some of the same people, who shout: Crucify! Away with him, we have no king but Caesar. Matthew describes Jesus’ last few moments in a passage bursting with meaning. The church has spoken of this passage as offering three signs. Three signs. Insights into what’s really happening, the way the world really is. The darkness, the open tombs, and the split curtain.
First, the darkness. From noon to three there is no light. The sun in the sky looks on the Son of God, dying, and wants no part in it, hides its light. When Jesus dies, it’s as if the cosmos is unraveling, the light that God first separated out from the darkness at creation is blotted out. We human beings might not get what’s happening, but the stars and the sky do. We’re always tempted to limit faith to our little hearts, a pick me up, having a better day. Fine, but that’s small stuff. Faith is also about light and dark themselves, the sun and its shining are here occluded.
This says something. Darkness is not all bad. God does his best work in the dark. Creates in the dark. Right now, in the dark just under the soil, plants are ready to push up, they’re just millimeters from breaking earth, if they haven’t already. If you’re in the dark, take heart; God does great things in the dark.
Second, the tombs. This is only recorded here in Matthew of the four gospels, as if the other three writers thought, nah, that’s too weird, they’ll never believe that, better leave it out. I tried to look online for art about the tomb raiding. But artists also take a hard pass. No way to make that look anything other than cartoonish. Here goes.
The earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Imagine bumping into the last person we had a funeral for here. Oh, hi Bill, you’re back. ‘Yeah, Jesus was on his way to hell, disturbed my grave and woke me up.’ More than a little weird. What’s going on here? Well, we do believe in the resurrection of the body. Just as Jesus is bodily raised, so too will we be. We’re not the only ones who believe this. Our Jewish elder siblings can still be buried at the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, where they believe the messiah will come for the first time. We believe the messiah will come there too, but for the second time, and the dead will rise to meet him. Jesus’ death begins this raising of the dead, as saints rise from sleep. The only difference between Jews and Christians is we think the resurrection has already begun, with one Jew. The rest of us will soon follow. As a child of the 80s, I think of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video or various zombie movies, Night of the Living Dead. But these awakened dead in the Bible aren’t zombies. They’re saints, raised, when Jesus ransacks death.
The tombs open because of an earthquake. The earth’s very crust is bearing witness that hell itself is opened. Plate tectonics are altered. St. Francis of Assisi, great renewer of faith in the Middle Ages, always built his monasteries on places where the rocks were split. You can ask any Franciscan monk or nun where the split in the rock is. They figure it was created by this earthquake at the cross, and so a perfect place for prayer. Let’s do the same friends: any split in the rock we see, from a canyon or ravine to a skipping stone in your hand, give thanks: that bears witness: death’s reign is now over.
I’m not sure how to apply this one. Jesus’ death raises the dead so we should do the following... what exactly? Here’s a try. One of you facing the impossible asked me this week: God still does miracles, right? Yes, God does do miracles. Like raising the dead and shifting the earth’s crust. Awfully hard to plan your day around them though.
The third sign: the curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. It’s the barrier that separates the holy of holies where God dwells from the rest of the temple. God’s presence in the holy of holies is like how we think of a nuclear reactor: it’s important, it gives life, but don’t walk in there unprotected. The high priest would enter once a year to make offering for Israel’s sins. Now it’s open to all. God’s presence is not limited to the temple; every place is now irradiated with divine fire. If you ever wonder whether you’re in a holy place, the answer is always yes. No place would exist if it weren’t for God’s sustaining hand. The cross shows there is no place not full of the presence of God: even the most degrading place of execution. God is fully bodily present there to save.
There’s a legend I love about that temple curtain. It suggests that the one who sowed that temple curtain in the first place was none other than Mary of Nazareth, future mother of Jesus. Some of our early church stories—not in the Bible but still good stories—suggest she was presented to the temple to live and grow up in as a young girl. A prodigy with the needle—I mean, she’d later sow the Son of God together in her womb—she was entrusted to sow that curtain her son would later tear. I don’t know what that means but it’s lovely, isn’t it?
We might add a fourth sign to the church’s traditional list of three. The centurion, whose job it is to execute troublemakers, to take out Rome’s refuse, and snuffs out life for a living. He sees all this and says, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” Jesus’ own people have failed to see who he is, his fellow Jews. His own disciples have deserted him and fled. The brute Roman executioner sees what others so far have not seen: this is God’s child, God’s own self, God saving us at great cost. The first shall be last, and the last first. The ones who should see, don’t; the One who most should not see, does. God always works backwards from how we expect. Again, I can’t explain that. But I also can’t not point it out.
I hope you’re keeping track of everyone who’s professing faith this morning. The donkey’s back. The sun and the sky. The earth’s plates and the split rock. The curtain in the temple. The executioner. That’s quite a choir—of the unlikely.
What about us. Will we join in? And praise the One whose death makes life for all?