Easter, again. Meaning there has to be Lent again, and the Passion yet
again. We have to go through all the suffering of Good Friday, and the
exhaustion and emptiness of Holy Saturday to reach the transformation
of all our distress into the joy of Easter Sunday.
This joy wasn’t easily won for the Lord, and so not for us either. But thanks to his first Easter pilgrimage, through the mess we humans have made of ourselves, our own journeys are turned into the same pilgrimage and reach the same transformation. His love easters in us.
This year, the Friday a week after Good Friday is Anzac Day. Maybe that can be another good Friday, if we recall the sacrifice and non-warlike spirit of the Anzacs. Especially those at Gallipoli.
Maybe that’s why we treasure the story of Simpson and his donkey, bringing the wounded down through much danger to safety and healing, ultimately at the cost of Simpson’s own life. I don’t know what happened to the donkey.
Our cover shows Simpson’s donkey as painted by Martin Tighe.
There is something very vulnerable and tough about this donkey. A donkey is part of the Holy Week story, because one carried Jesus into Jerusalem on Passion (Palm) Sunday. The cross mark on its shoulders has always told of the donkey’s sharing Jesus’ load. In fact the donkey is the literal Christ-bearer or Christopher.
In Martin Tighe’s painting Simpson’s donkey is bandaged across its wounded nose with the Red Cross and stands on the same emblem. Poor thing. It touches something tender in us.
This donkey also looks like it’s holding its ground, as if being a byword for stubbornness is very much to its credit. Here is where it should be and it’s not going to budge.
The donkey has carried Jesus, carried the cross, and carried all the wounded Simpson could find in the gullies of Gallipoli. In doing all this, the poor tough creature has taken some flak.
Don’t we know people like this? In fact, what does it mean if they are not like this? This is a very Christian donkey after all. Carrying Jesus, being like Jesus, and in trouble because of Jesus; that almost sums up what it is to be a Christian. Brought to a holy and bleeding standstill by the Cross.
Presumably the donkey barely knows what is happening, and how many people do we know who are like this? We know people who carry the cross without knowing it, and, please God, experience something of the resurrection without being able to call it that. Well, maybe we are all like this at some time or other. I hope so.
God’s transforming grace is not stopped from working just because it’s not being noticed. Maybe God admires our stubborn endurance as well as pities our distress. And, with Jesus, joins us in our donkeyhood.
