Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 31, 2025
Scripture: Numbers 22:20-35
I will apologize in advance, since this isn’t Holy Humour Sunday, but a sermon
about a story about a talking donkey just begs to be opened with a joke or two.
A talking donkey walked into a bar. The bartender says “Hey.” The donkey
replies, “Make it a double.”
A man was driving down the road and sees a sign: Talking Donkey for Sale. He is intrigued so pulls over and the farmer
directs him towards the barn. He sees the donkey tied up outside and approaches
and asks, “You really talk?” The donkey replies, “Yes.” Once he gets over his
shock, the man asks, “What’s your story? Why are you for sale?”
The donkey replies, “Well, because I could talk, I wanted to use my skills for
good, so I joined CSIS and became a spy. They figured that because nobody would
suspect a donkey, I would be able to overhear important conversations between
world leaders. I was one of their most valuable spies for 8 years, but then
constantly jetting around the world got to me, and I wasn’t getting any
younger, so I came home and got a job doing undercover security at the zoo.
Again, who is going to suspect a donkey? But now I’m ready to retire, and this
farmer doesn’t have any use for me so has put me for sale.”
The man goes to the farmer and says, “Sold! How much to I owe you?”
The farmer replies, “$10.”
The man asks, “Why so cheap?”
The farmer replies, “Because the donkey’s a liar – he never did any of those
things he told you.”
I will also say that the temptation to make political jokes out of a talking
donkey is there, but I’m not going to go in that direction today.
Instead, I want to look at the heart of the story. What might this story be trying to tell
us? When we have our weekly bible study,
one question that I sometimes ask the group, especially when it is a weirder
story and we wonder why it was included in the bible, is, “If you had to preach
on this story, what message would you pull out of it?” I’m often amazed at what the group comes up
with, because even in the weirdest stories, there are often at least a couple
of different threads of good news that we can pull out of it.
This week, the good news thread that caught my attention in this story is not
the fact that the donkey could talk, but the fact that the donkey was tuned in
to notice God’s presence.
Balaam comes across as a stubborn man.
God tells him directly not to do anything other than what God tells him
to do. But Balaam thinks that he knows
better, and even though God told him to only go if he was summoned, Balaam
saddled his donkey and went anyways, without waiting to be summoned. (And confession time – I have some sympathy
with Balaam here. It is hard for me to
wait for something if I’m pretty sure that I know what the right course of
action is. It is hard for me to step
back and let God be in control of the decisions.)
So Balaam sets out, God isn’t happy with him, and God sends a messenger, an
angel, to block the road in front of him.
And here, don’t think about Halmark Card or Christmas pageant angels –
think biblical angels with many eyes and many wings, and puffs of flame, and
we’re told that the angel has a sword drawn to block the road.
But Balaam, with his single-minded focus, isn’t able to see the angel and is
ready to keep on going. But the donkey,
on the other hand, sees the angel and turns away. Balaam blames the poor donkey, and beats the
donkey for turning off the path, then beats the donkey again when his foot
scrapes against a wall on the detour, then beats the donkey a third time when
the donkey lies down and refuses to go past the angel.
And finally, God gives the donkey the ability to speak, and the donkey cries
out to Balaam, “Why are you beating me like this?”
In the end, Balaam is finally able to see the angel, and recognizes the error
of his ways. He is prepared to return
home to await his summons, but God tells him, through the angel, that he can
carry on, but only speak what God tells him to say.
The humour, to me, in this story is the reversal of roles. Donkeys are usually known for their
stubbornness; but in this story it is the donkey who is willing to change
course while the human stubbornly tries to keep going through the roadblock.
In this story, it is the donkey who is attuned to notice God’s presence, in
this case, God’s presence in the form of an angel or messenger; while the human
remains ignorant.
We begin our worship services here with an opportunity to share our God
sightings – times when we have been especially aware of God’s presence, or
times when we have noticed God working in the world. Sometimes I wish that I had chosen a
different name for this part of the service, because God communicates to us
using all of our senses, not just our eyesight.
We hear God. We see God. We can
smell and taste God. We can feel God. And then there are times when our sixth sense
kicks in, and we are aware of God even though we can’t pin it down to any of
our physical senses.
But all of this only works if we are tuned in to be aware that God might be
there. Multiple times, people have told
me how much they appreciate this time of sharing our God sightings, because it
makes them much more alert to noticing God’s presence throughout the week as
they go about their day-to-day lives.
There are two pop culture references that jump into my mind when I think about
this – one is a line from the U2 song, “Walk On” when they speak about a place
that has to be believed to be seen. And
the other one is in Madeleine L’Engle’s book “Many Waters” which includes
unicorns, but the thing about unicorns is that you can’t see them unless – or
until – you believe in them. You can
ride the unicorns, but you have to keep on believing in them for them to
continue to exist.
I could really mix up my metaphors here, and conclude that the moral of the
story is to be like a talking donkey and believe in unicorns!
But truly, I think that maybe Balaam did learn something from his donkey. I think that he learned to be open rather
than stubborn. And I expect that the
next time God appears to him in the middle of the road, he will be able to see
God’s presence because he will be expecting it.
So maybe one of the lessons from this story is to be like the talking
donkey. To be open to perceiving God’s
presence through all of our senses. To
expect God to be present. And to be open
to wherever or whatever the encounter leads to.
And may it be so. Amen.
I had to choose between a funny donkey picture
and a sweet donkey picture –
there doesn’t seem to be any in-between –
and went for a sweet picture.
Doesn’t this fella look like he is about to speak?
No comments:
Post a Comment