Dreams and Disappointments

In her Palm Sunday sermon imagining the variety of dreams and disappointments of the people of ancient Jerusalem, Barbara Moyer Lehman, associate pastor at Park View Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, VA, brought new insight to the familiar Holy Week passage by focusing on the lowly donkey as the means of transportation for the coronation of a king. After all, she noted, our president rides on Air Force One, the British queen rides in an ornate horse-drawn carriage, dictators and rulers ride in bullet-proof limos and even the pope rides in his Popemobile. Certainly Jesus could have done better, the people thought, as they lined the palm-strewn road on which He rode this beast of burden into town. It was a powerful symbol, prophesied much earlier, not of power and might, but of leadership and authority defined by humility and servanthood. "It was a planned political demonstration with a subversive mission."