Called to Worship
Scripture: Matthew 21:1-11, Isaiah 40:3-5
Well, here we are on Palm Sunday again. At the beginning of Holy Week, and the final stage of Jesus’ journey to the cross. It’s always a paradoxical and disorienting part of the story. A triumphal entrance into Jerusalem made in a way that is anything but triumphalistic. A crowd shouting excited “hosannas” that will slip into a chant of “crucify him” before too long. A welcome moment of celebration amidst the soul-searching of Lent that will soon descend into the soul’s darkest night. There is so much here that speaks to the nature of the gospel, the character of Jesus, the way that God is committed to working in the world.
But this year when I read the story I was caught and hooked near the beginning of this episode, where Jesus sends a couple of the disciples out on a rather mysterious errand to first find and then make off with a donkey and its colt. It’s kind of a weird ask, however you slice it. We watched Ted Schwartz’s take on the feeding of the 5000 at our Annual Meeting a little while ago, and you can imagine that he’d have some fun with this story too.
Jesus says: Hey guys, I’m going to stay here, but I need you to go a little further up the road to the next village. When you get there, have a look around until you find this donkey and her colt tied up together. What’s that? Your brother has a horse we could use? No, that’s fine, the donkey will do… No, don’t worry about who the donkey belongs to! Just untie them both and bring them back to me. Yes, I know I’ve made some strong statements about stealing in the past, but this is more like borrowing. Crickets for a second. And then the one of them works up the courage to ask the obvious question. Ah, I’ve got you covered there. If someone sees you and asks what you’re doing, you’ve got an ace in the hole. A bullet-proof explanation. All you have to do is say: “The Lord needs them.” Yep, that’s right – “The Lord needs them.” So, off you go!
I’m guessing the disciples probably drew straws at this point. With the two short ones destined for this daylight donkey-raid. It’s an awkward errand to be sure, with more than a little risk of appearing foolish – not to mention being chased out of town by angry villagers suddenly short a couple of animals. But I imagine there could be a deeper sense of discomfort here too. Even if the mission were a little more sensible, Jesus is sending these disciples on ahead without him. I’m staying here, but I want you to keep going. Further up the road without me. To a place you have not been and do not know.
It’s one thing to follow Jesus when he’s leading the way. When he’s there just a few steps ahead, blazing the trail and meeting whatever might be coming on the road. It’s one thing to leave your nets and boats to join the company of someone who finally seems to know where he’s going. Who leads with passion and truth and a fiery grace that lights up the world. But it’s another thing to follow Jesus when he’s pointing to the next town and asking you to go on ahead of him. When following means stepping out into the unknown with a mission that sounds more than a little crazy.
But I’d also guess that this is not an uncommon experience for disciples of Jesus. There are probably times when it does feel like Jesus is right there in front of us, when we can almost see his footsteps in the dust and know that we are following where he leads. And we need these stories of confidence in faith, where we are guided and even carried by the presence of God-with-us so close that we can reach out and touch it. But that’s not where we’ll find ourselves much of the time. More often than not, I suspect, we find ourselves starting down a road that – at best – we’re pretty sure is the one Jesus was pointing to. Hoping that we have heard and understood the instruction properly, but wishing with all our might that Jesus was still there a few steps ahead showing us just where to go and what to do.
Fourteen years ago last month, I came to St. Jacobs for the first time to interview for a position on the pastoral team here. The interview was at the Menno S Martin offices which until recently were on King St as you come into town from Waterloo. Laverne Brubacher had arranged for the venue. I don’t remember too much about the conversation itself. And I don’t remember everyone who was around the circle. It was a lot of new faces, all of which soon become so very and affectionately familiar. I do remember that Luke Brubacher asked me about playing softball, which was a kind reprieve. And I also remember that after leaving the building at the end of the night I had to sneak back in right away to grab the bag that I had forgotten at my chair. And even so, I still managed to forget the clipboard with notes and documents that had not even made it back into the bag. So Laverne was obliged to courier them back to me in Hamilton later that week.
As poor a showing as these parting gaffes might have been, I got home from St. Jacobs that night, looked at Pam and said: “I think they might want to hire me!” This was, truly, a bit of a surprise. I had never been a pastor before, and wasn’t altogether sure I was supposed to be one. I had a sense that this might be a calling for my life, but even more than that I had a sense that I needed to find a job. And working in a church seemed my most likely avenue for employment.
That I applied to St. Jacobs in particular felt equally arbitrary at the time. It started with a single brief job posting that I saw somewhere – maybe on the Mennonite Church website, maybe in the Canadian Mennonite magazine. But something in it resonated with me. And I think it was the description of the pastoral team here, which sounded both healthy and similar to what I knew from my home congregation. But growing up a somewhat different brand of Mennonite in Manitoba, the ecclesial geography here was totally new to me. I wouldn’t have known St. Jacobs from Floradale or from the Waterloo-Kitchener church on George St. I had no idea what any of the congregations around here were like, or where I might actually fit best. But St. Jacobs is what I had seen, and so I started the process. One step at a time, ready after each one to discover that this wasn’t going to work out. But at each stage the next door opened. And suddenly there I was on the phone with Harold Martin being invited to come and meet the congregation.
It felt like Jesus had pointed down highway 6 from Hamilton and sent us off to the village up ahead. And that village turned out to be Jacobstettel – home to more than a few horses, and I suspect without going too far into the countryside, at least one donkey.
We could not have guessed the welcome and the life that we found here. We could not have guessed that we’d stay for the next 14 years, or that we would have three children in this place for whom the village and the church are the only home they have ever known. We could not have known that St. Jacobs Mennonite Church would turn out to be the most healthy and nurturing congregation a young pastor could hope to land in. I quickly discovered that colleagues starting ministry in other places were experiencing all kinds of tough things in their early years that I blessedly was not. And I could not have known that within a couple of years congregational ministry would become a clear vocational home for me. That I would indeed grow into an identity and calling as a pastor.
I know we were following Jesus as we made these decisions so many years ago. And retrospect always helps to see God’s leading along the way, especially when so much of what we discovered was pure blessing. But it also felt like tentative steps down an unknown road, taken one at a time as the path was revealed. And at the time it felt more like Jesus was back there sending us on than like he was two steps ahead leading the way.
It is amazing and inspiring to think of how often Jesus does send us on ahead with a calling and a mission. And how often people respond to the invitation and take those first steps down unfamiliar roads. When do we ever have guarantees of how a direction or a project will work out? We are finite creatures with limited capacities in a big world of obstacles and complications. We can only see so far ahead, and even that with glaring blind spots. And yet we inherit the summons of the voice that cries out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Is. 40:3).
Us? Preparing the way of the Lord? Who are we to go ahead of the Jesus that we follow? Who are we to make the way by walking it ourselves? And yet time and again we are sent. Sometimes we get so caught up in the moment that we dash ahead ourselves to lay our cloaks and our branches on the road where he is coming. We make that highway straight however we know how, full of hope and promise and confidence in what God will do. Even when we see so little of the picture that we cannot fathom where that road will lead. How it will wind its way through the heart of darkness to the place where a cross stands alone under the sky. How we ourselves will turn our backs, hosannas twisting into ashen calls for death. Thank God that we do not see it all, or we might not step out at all.
Jesus sends us ahead not because we’re ready for it. Not because we’re the best ones for the job. Not because we’re trustworthy or reliable. Not because we know the way. Jesus sends us ahead because even territory unknown to us is not unknown to him. Jesus knows what his disciples will find in the village ahead. A donkey and a colt. The humble form of a power that does not stand on strength and might. And he knows what he will find at the end of the road into Jerusalem. Violence, betrayal, grief, pain, emptiness and doubt. All those things that we fear might be waiting for us around the next bend. Even these when we stumble into their wilderness are not unknown to Jesus. And even here he points to a hope of healing and renewal and life from out of their very depths.
Communities of Christian disciples have always been sent ahead down unfamiliar roads that take more faith and trust than walking in Jesus’ shadow. Any golden age of confidence or success that we might want to point to, when churches were full or when it felt like we knew more clearly what we were doing, they carry within them the same wilderness call. The same invitation to go on ahead past what we know and find there what is most needed. The calling of the church today is no different for all that.
But we sure do feel it in our time, don’t we. That sense of being called into a future we can’t quite see. Of carrying a strange mission into a place we’ve never been. The upheavals and sea-changes of our age have been focused and accelerated by a global pandemic and we’re left throwing darts at the wall to see what might stick. Here at St. Jacobs, as in so many places, it’s felt like a year of soul-searching and experimentation. Who are we now, as we slowly emerge from Covid? Who is a part of our community on the other side of the shake-up, and what are we about? What resources do we have? What can we sustain? What have we left behind? What are we missing? What still works and what doesn’t? What new opportunities are now presenting themselves to us?
And in a time of staffing transition these questions loom even more urgently, big and complicated as they are. But I am encouraged by the conversations that have been happening here. And confident in the gifts and the calling of St. Jacobs Mennonite Church. Partly because of my own experience of finding health and vitality and hospitality in this village that was ahead of me on the road, but moreso because the one who sends us ahead has been there before too. And whether it’s a donkey or a cross that we find along the path where we are sent, it is a place where the risen Christ is revealed exactly as we stumble unsure and confused. A place where our shouts of blessing and praise are no less true for all that will yet be in this Holy Week to come. And so we join with the crowds making straight the path of the Lord as Jesus rides in on a donkey. “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Amen.