The Colt That Has Never Been Ridden

Mark 11:1-11

As I step into this pulpit that has been used for instruction, correction, comfort and challenge through the faithful exploration and exposition of Holy Scripture for decades upon decades by more preachers than any of us can name …  As we spend yet another Palm Sunday together (this year makes eighteen), we should note that once again Jesus is done … He is done with his teaching and his verbal instructions to us.

As comforted and challenged as we are by his words, read and re-read all year, discussed in Sunday school and preached in worship services every week, he’s done trying to tell us, through the words of ancient texts and humble Pastors, how we’re supposed to live with one another … and love one another, all others … so that the Kingdom of God that he inaugurated may be fully realized on earth … as it is in Heaven. He’s done with all that. No more words.

You see, this week he puts his beliefs into action. And, as I’m certain he did with his first followers, he’s hoping (and praying) that we will do the same – put our faith, or belief and trust in, and our fidelity to, his Way – into action. The Good News that God is with us and that the Kingdom of God is among us was not completed in Jesus’ earthly life and death, or even in his resurrection, the experience others had of the Risen Christ on Easter Morning. He knew that. He promised and Advocate. He told us about the necessity for watchfulness, to be “aware and keep alert”, after he was gone, because he knew there was more work to do after his work. The Kin-dom was inaugurated through his life, death, and the experience of new life. But, not fully realized, for two thousand years and counting. So this week, Jesus once again stops talking and teaching and begins showing us how to finish the job. We … should be on the donkey now, the colt.

Let us pray …And listen for the Word of God. Read Mark 11:1-11. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

How many years have we heard the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, all four Gospels, all subtitled the same in our translation? How familiar is this passage, even with the slight variants among our gospel writers? What could possibly be brought up that we have not already considered and picked apart?

I ask myself those questions year after year. And most years, the answer is nothing, or not much, and we faithfully explore something we’ve explored before. But, I think – I don’t know, of course – but I do believe this year we have been lead to something new. To a four-legged character in this narrative that plays a big part in the deeper meaning, that we have certainly noticed, but not really understood.

What struck me like a ton of brick this year through the readings and the course we’ve following with our friends from A Sanctified Art, is the description of the colt, popularly known as the “donkey”, that Jesus sends his two disciples to procure. Did you hear it? A colt … “that has never been ridden,” as described only in Luke and here in Mark. A colt “that has never been ridden” is what Jesus was riding in on. That’s the something new for us this year. Such is the way of the Holy Spirit, I suppose, when our hearts are opened to newness and fresh interpretations. Let’s see if yours are.

Literarily, the colt’s having “never been ridden” suggests that it is for ceremonial use, from Torah instructions for proper ritual sacrifices and from first Samuel for the beasts that carried the Arc of the Covenant. But, let us consider this colt allegorically, metaphorically, symbolically. For this is the colt that we, too, must ride in on – every day of our lives. But it sits in our stalls … unridden, day after day, after week, after year.

Jesus and his disciples approach Jerusalem from the east, Bethany being located on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives. He pauses to send two ahead to bring back this “colt” that is tied up in a village ahead of them. Curious … because at Passover, people were expected to walk into the city. There are pilgrims on a journey. No doubt Jesus’ followers expected him to do that, since he always walked wherever they went, anyway. So, to begin with (this year), we might well ask: Why does Jesus decide to ride into Jerusalem? To lampoon the political powers of Rome and their military procession into the city. We’ve explored that possibility … that probability over many years together. True enough.

But for a man who has spent his life living so humbly, pushing the focus away from himself toward God, telling his closest followers not to share some of the most miraculous things they will ever experience, trying to stay ahead of those who seek to harm him by staying out of the spotlight, teaching so cautiously … For someone such as Jesus who has been so modest, to now be so ostentatious, so conspicuous, so “seen” by everyone in power who want to silence him …?

Why?

Because, as we’ve already proclaimed: This week he puts his beliefs, his words, into action. So, he rides in on a “colt.” But not just any colt says Mark. A colt that “has never been ridden.” We may consider that colt to be the “Way of the Christ”, the Way of the anointed One (or ones) of God, the Way of those who would follow Jesus … all the way. And that Way is rarely, if ever, taken – that “colt” is rarely, if ever, ridden.

The deep and ancient power of God, symbolized by Jesus’ station on this humble colt, is one of sacrifice and service. Not one of profit and selfishness. It is one of obedience to peace through justice for all, not through the defeat of others. And it is a commitment to salvation for all through love of all, not through survival of the fittest. We profess that no one before rode such a colt into the heart of the world as we have created it, as Jesus did. Mark’s gospel makes it clear that no one had. We further say that no one has ridden such a colt since. And yet, we call ourselves followers, “little” Christs, known as Christians. How strange. What are we waiting for?

Him to come back and do it again, do it for us, do it “right this time” – through the violence of annihilation and destruction of creation and one another. That’s a “colt” that has been ridden hard (and put away wet). It is still being ridden  - by those who profess to be followers of Jesus, no less. But that was never the “ride” Jesus chose.  Nestled here in a story we’re so familiar with, in a character we’ve always noticed, but only now have understood, Jesus chooses a different Way, a colt “that had never been ridden”, to put his words into actions, actions that would lead – and still will lead, if we choose to act – to the greatest gift any of us can offer: sacrificial love.

Jesus, as our Savior, chose Love. He wasn’t a helpless victim as this week began. He was very much in charge. He knew exactly what he had come to Jerusalem to do – revolt against and subvert the powers of this world. This day, this parade, this procession we commemorate every year is a revolutionary and subversive act. But it has nothing to do with violence or brutality.  God’s revolutionary act in Jesus Christ disrupts the indifference of the world, insisting it pay attention to this “novel” approach to life.

God’s subversive act in Jesus Christ distracts the oppressive powers and principalities and people in the world that are so concerned with their own comfortable rituals and way of doing things, with the alleviation of their own anxieties that they (we) exclude and condemn anything or anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable and … “icky.”

Even in the process of letting go of his life, in the procession to the cross he begins with this week, he is in charge. Putting our lives before his own life and embodying everything, everything he has spent the last three years talking about. This is why we call him Savior.

But, if we’re to call him Lord, if we are to recognize Jesus’ Lordship in our lives, then we should be putting his words into action, too. We should be calling for and climbing onto “the colt that has never been ridden” and processing into the heart of the world with the only thing that will change it – Love. In Christ, by the power of the Spirit, God unites us all through baptism, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, geography, or theological conviction. There is no place in our lives for discrimination against any person.

We are not helpless victims either – of an original sin or a depravity so total we can do nothing but squirm. I know you have been told so … but I tell you … there is another way. It’s right before our eyes, right under our noses, there all the time, waiting to be untied, prepared, and mounted. It’s revolutionary and subversive, this “colt.” But it’s the only thing that will lead us to the Life that lays beyond the death we’ve created.

It’s Palm Sunday. Climb on … This is the day the Lord has made and all the hours are God’s own. Let us sing of our Way ahead, and begin our preparations for the cross.

Amen.

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / March 29, 2026