To watch the sermon click here.
“The Lord needs them.” (Matthew 21:3)
The Lord needs… We don’t usually think about God needing anything. We think about people having needs, not God.
I experienced this last week when my very independent 12-year-old came down with the flu and pneumonia. He’s fine now, but for a couple of days, he really needed me to care for him. I’ve never thought of God in that way, as needing me. But it’s a curious idea.
God creates, provides, and sustains. God blesses, renews, reconciles, and loves. But, need? That’s not something we typically associate with God.
God isn’t supposed to need anything. We are the ones who are needy. We rely upon one another and God to help meet our daily needs. What could it mean for God to need?
In its oldest meaning, “need” is about something unavoidable—something that must be. It is not optional or merely desired, but actually required. And maybe that’s the clue.
It’s not God who is lacking… it is love.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells the two disciples to go and find a donkey and a colt. If anyone asks, he directs them to say, “The Lord needs them.” Is this simply logistics? Getting ready for the big parade into town or something deeper? Does it fulfill a prophecy?
If Jesus can turn water into wine, heal the sick, and raise the dead, can’t he manifest a donkey when the situation calls for it? Or is Jesus reflecting to us a God who “needs”?
When Jesus enters Jerusalem riding a donkey it is not random. The donkey is this thing that must be, the thing that is needed. In the same way, the cross, which we will get to later this week, is not accidental, it’s where God’s love goes all the way.
Maybe when the gospel says, “The Lord needs them,” it doesn’t mean God is lacking something. Maybe it means this is the way love works. Jesus is choosing vulnerability. Love moves forward, it gives itself, it does not turn back.
While Jesus could be omnipotent, he chooses relationship and participation. Jesus partners with his disciples and fulfills his ministry through others, not around them. This is a well-established pattern through scripture.
God works through ordinary people to achieve God’s purposes on earth. Think about it. When God chooses to enter this earthly kingdom in the person of Jesus, he does so with the partnership of Mary, a young woman who agrees to mother the Son of God. God needed Mary and Mary needed God. It was mutual.
God works through ordinary people on Palm Sunday too, maybe even through a donkey. It is a funny day. There are competing needs in this chaotic and noisy scene.
Jesus is talking with the disciples and trying to get a donkey to cooperate. The people lining the street are like a crowd waiting on a parade. They are talking, yelling back and forth to friends and neighbors, distributing palm branches, and making plans to line the path with their cloaks. They are shouting, “Hosanna!”
They need a savior or a king, someone to rescue them from the tyranny of Roman oppression and occupation. “Hosanna! Save us”, they cry!
Jesus needs a donkey for his entrance into the city. Why a donkey? Riding a donkey is awkward. Jesus is entering the city in humility. While the crowd reaches for control, Jesus embodies vulnerability.
The crowd isn’t wrong for having this need. It’s just that they misunderstand what will meet their need. This is so very human.
I know I prefer having control, certainty, and quick resolution. When Myles was so sick, I was miserable. I wanted certainty that the antibiotics would work. I wanted control over his lungs that were so full of fluid. Those are human needs. All I could really do was pray and wait.
God doesn’t need like we need. God desires to be in relationship. God wants us to respond. God wants us to dwell in God’s presence.
“The Lord needs them” sets the tone for this week, Holy Week. God calls for our presence.
On Thursday, God desires us to gather around this table, to break bread together and share in communion. God desires our companionship. Thursday night, in the Garden of Repose in the Chapel, God asks us to stay awake with Jesus. And on Friday, God calls us not to abandon the cross.
When we pray at the foot of the cross, we are seeing God fully and completely; not distant, not hidden, but right there in suffering love. It continues into Holy Saturday as we keep vigil; as we watch and wait.
God doesn’t save us from a distance. God is embodied in Jesus and he is revealed to us through complete surrender. Jesus on the cross is not power imposed, but rather love exposed.
As we enter this most sacred week, I urge you to consider your needs. They are real. We often confuse ourselves as to what will meet our needs. We think we need 3 bedrooms and 2 baths when we really need a roof and four walls. We think we need God to respond to our prayers with answers, when really, we only need comfort in the unknowing.
Today is not the day for any kind of answers. It is a day for discomfort. Palm Sunday is unresolved with an underlying tension on purpose. Stay with it. Walk into the week with intentionality and don’t skip ahead to Easter. We’re not there yet.
As you step into what God is asking of you this week, your presence, your companionship, your love, let your understanding of God be reshaped.
The Lord needs them.
• A donkey
• A table
• A cross…
It isn’t because God is lacking, but because love refuses distance. What kind of king are we willing to follow? And are we willing to be part of what God needs?