Can You Hear the Donkey

The children's Palm Service on Monday couldn't have gone better. I was able to put out the bollards along a completely empty street on Sunday night to block off spaces for the donkeys' trailer, and came to church early on Monday to find that they hadn't been moved or interfered with in any way. Just before 9am as the children massed in the church hall the green trailer hoved into view at the end of the street. 'Did you have a good journey?' I asked Mr & Mrs Norelake who are the donkeys' minders, assuming they had as they were here bang on time. It turned out they thought they'd had an awful journey, delayed by an accident for half an hour and only arriving on time with the aid of prayer. But the sun was shining and faces were happy. It couldn't have gone better. 

I'd only remembered the night before that I had to preach a homily at the service. The week I was recuperating from my op I missed Church Club at the Infants School, when they'd done the story of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem. The craft activity was making a donkey collage, which one girl had asked whether she could turn into a unicorn. This transforms one's mental image of the Entry Into Jerusalem but curiously a bit of Googling reveals that she isn't the first to have had this idea (there are also some remarkably weird images involving Barack Obama riding a unicorn, Jesus cradling a baby Tyrannosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus riding Jesus, and any other combination of these figures). Anyway, I found myself on Monday saying how of course Jesus didn't ride a unicorn, but a donkey, just an ordinary donkey, grey and not grand or beautiful and probably a bit smelly, but he needed that donkey so the ancient prophecies could be fulfilled. And we may not be grand or special or beautiful, more like the donkey than the unicorn, but Jesus still needs us too, to do his work today.