Rent-A-Ride

On Palm Sunday, there's one thing I always wonder about: who is that man with the donkey?

I mean, if some dude came up to me and said, "Hey, my master needs to borrow your ride," would I hand over the reigns without any hesitation? Would I think for a while and then hand them over anyway? Or would I laugh in the crazy-person's face and make sure the knot tying the donkey up was extra secure?

If I had a car, and someone I didn't know asked me to give them the keys so they could borrow it for a rowdy parade, would I do it?

That's certainly what the donkey man did.

Now I know the theory that Jesus set the whole thing up in advance, just like how he set up Passover digs using a man with a jug on his head. It's a good theory that the donkey man knew Jesus was going to borrow his donkey in advance. Maybe Jesus even paid for it. It's a good theory because Jesus wasn't leaving anything about this crucial time to chance.

But I still wonder about it.

What if the donkey man was really a stranger, the God-given fulfillment to a prophesy? The Virgin Mary fulfilled such a prophesy, and she had free choice about it, so it stands to reason the donkey man would have, too. Somehow, I don't envision the angel Gabriel appearing to him and saying, "Lo, there shall come unto thee a disciple whom thou knowest not, asking thee for the use of thy donkey, the foal of an ass; and thou shalt give him thy donkey, for on it shall be riding the Messiah, the Son of God."

Yet he decided to hand it over, whether for money or otherwise.

How well did he know Jesus, anyway, if he wasn't recognized? If he did agree to loan the donkey in return for a price, how could he have known he'd get it back? A donkey is really expensive - those things are a person's livelihood. I doubt Jesus could have afforded to buy one. Whether the man was getting paid for the loan or not, whether this was planned or spontaneous, he was taking an awful risk.

He must have had a great deal of trust in Jesus.

I wonder if I would have had the trust to hand over my donkey to him? I'm not sure. Although I've spent much of my life as a practicing Christian, I'd probably be so afraid of what might happen to it that I'd refuse. A donkey isn't something I could afford to lose. It makes me feel ashamed to admit it, but I know that it's true.

But that man, that man two-thousand years ago, handed his donkey over. I don't know what he was thinking or feeling. I don't know why he agreed. What I do know is that he, and so many others like him, made it possible for Jesus to do what he did. Their support in small yet tangible ways allowed Jesus to make his way into the city as the Messiah, allowed him to eat a meal with his disciples in an upper room, allowed him to be executed in the most brutal way the Romans could imagine.

Whatever his reasons for helping Jesus accomplish his Passion, the donkey man, and others like him, did so without understanding what it meant. He didn't know that this would be a burden so terrible Jesus would ask that it be taken from him. And he didn't know that Jesus' death and resurrection would be for the salvation of the world. He didn't understand or know what we understand and know, but he helped Jesus anyway, trusted him in ways that would be beyond most of us.

And we don't even know his name.