“The Lord Has Need of It”

Preached by John DeBevoise
At Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church
On March 25, 2001

After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

     Luke 19:28-38

I have a deep sense of gratitude this morning, and I am so grateful for your participation in this effort together. I have a deep sense of gratitude for where the Lord has brought us in terms of restoring the building that was burned. Today we will cut the ribbon on it, and I extend my personal thanks to all of you who have been a part of this journey: the planners and givers and workers alike, from the contractors and the workmen who have labored on it to those who have prayed over it, to those who have been a part of the raising of the funds. God bless you for being open to blessing us this way.

We will cut the ribbon today, and we hope to take occupancy in the month ahead. We have yet to receive a certificate of occupancy from whoever it is that issues those kinds of certificates. That is scheduled for this month, and we look forward to the furniture arriving and our occupying the building in April.

I am happy to report that to complete the three phases of this building project, we needed to raise seven million dollars. And now, as we are at the ribbon cutting for the first phase, you have raised, or God has raised through you, $6,575,000. If you divide the seven million into fourteen steps, as I have in my mind, that is fourteen $500,000 steps. The Lord has led you through thirteen and a half of them, and you have a half a step to go to get to the goal. And I am so thrilled that even as we are cutting the ribbon on the first building, before we have begun construction on the other two phases, we are this close to the goal. God is faithful, and we believe that God will be faithful in this last half-step, and we will continue to go forward in strength, seeking to raise that last half-step as we build the next two phases.

The text this morning is traditionally a Palm Sunday text. It’s the text that the lectionary gives us this year as we remember on Palm Sunday Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. I moved it to this morning because I think that’s where the Word has intersected with my life on this day.

Jesus wanted to ride a colt into Jerusalem. The Gospels remember that. He sent the disciples to go and get the colt for him. I have found it interesting this week that Jesus did not go and get the colt himself. Why didn’t he? Do you think that Jesus needed the help of the disciples to get this colt? Was it that he couldn’t get this colt himself? Why did he need the help of the disciples? Some may say, “Well, it was to fulfill prophecy. Because the prophets spoke of his needing this colt.” But I would think that prophecy predicts what it knows reality will contain, and that in the reality of the present we don’t have to do things, contrive, to make prophecy appear truth. Prophecy tells us not just what will be, but what  God has ordained.

When the owner recognized the phrase, “The Lord has need of it,” the phrase Jesus tells the disciples to repeat as a phrase coming from Jesus himself? Or had the owner of this colt even ever heard of Jesus? Was the phrase a kind of Bilbo-Baggins-like magic phrase that simply would make the opposition melt upon the hearing of it? You would think that Jesus would give them a little better speech than simply, “The Lord has need of it.”

How odd to speak of the Lord having need of something. The psalmist says, “The earth is the Lord’s.” The psalmist says, “All of the silver and all of the gold is mine, sayeth the Lord.”

Isn’t there something almost offensive about saying “The Lord has need of anything?” Why, it’s even here in the gospel of Luke where in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus later will say, “Do you not know that if I were but to utter the command, God would send at my command immediately two legions of angels to do my bidding?”

A colt that has never been ridden would be rough ride. Part of the miracle here is that Jesus has a comfortable ride. The colt immediately accepts him. The point of it is that the colt has a purpose. It confirms that now the Messiah has arrived.

And so we know that Jesus did not have to have the disciples go and get this colt for him. If God had chosen, a colt could have walked up immediately at the moment Jesus had needed it, walking there into Jerusalem. God could have simply made a colt be present. It wasn’t that Jesus had to have the disciples go and get it.

Where in our lives do we release anything, anything at all, simply on the grounds of the Lord has need of it?

As pastors, I know we often have heard people near the end of their lives, perhaps with very poor health, wondering why they are still alive. And sometimes they say to us almost these exact words, ”I don’t know why I am here anymore. There must be something that the Lord needs me to do.” That’s their witness to us.

What is it in our church, in our community, that we would let go of simply because the Lord has need of it? It can be hard, but maybe sometimes because the Lord has need of it, it should be enough. I think it’s interesting that in Luke the colt has owners (in the plural). This is something that they all have to give up. I remember Jesus had disciples and friends and supporters who had funds. They could have purchased a colt for him. He could have taken a gift, or he could have had his own personal colt to ride on all over Galilee and Jerusalem. But he doesn’t.

It may be hard for us as Americans to identify with this story, because we don’t have to give up or share very much. We live in a culture where we like to have our own, and where we are encouraged to have our own. So we have our personal watercraft and our personal trainers and our personal floatation devices.

The biggest experience I ever had of living in a community where we had to share things was the five years of my life that I shared one bedroom with two brothers. It wasn’t a big room, either, the three of us there in that room. The room stayed the same size and we just kept getting bigger and bigger over the five years. It was an experience of forced intimacy. You know, in a room like that, you don’t have anything that’s your own. Your shirts aren’t your own. Your letters aren’t your own. Even your prayers are kind of broadcast over the room as a whole.

What’s it like to live in a community where we share things? Is it a part of what Luke is saying here and remembering is that the disciples had to go and to get this colt, saying that the Lord has need of it, is a part of what Luke is saying is that the Christian community has got to be a community where we are willing to share things? Is that one of the reasons why we have a common table and not each our own separate communion place mat? Why we have one cross that we gather around?

Is there any indication in the story, even, that the owners of the colt are in the community? Or are they outside the community? And if so, is that an indication that this willingness to share should transcend into the community and flow from the community to the rest of the world?

When Mark tells the story, he has the disciples go and say about the colt, “The Lord has need of it, and he will return it immediately after he is through with it. “ But Luke doesn’t put in that last phrase, whether he forgets it or chooses not to say it, Luke leaves it out. Why does Luke leave it out? Is it because he wants to push this sharing element with his community as he is writing the story for them?

What does the Lord need from us and what is it that you are (maybe even subconsciously) hoping and praying that the Lord doesn’t ask you for?

Now here’s the truth, as I think. Everything in the Bible, the whole of the Bible and most of human experience, teaches us that Jesus did not require the disciples to go and to borrow that colt. God could have placed a colt there, presto.

I’ll say it again. Jesus did not require the disciples to go and to borrow that colt. God could have placed the colt there, presto.

Must we not conclude that God seems to want to involve us, to involve our willful participation some way in the divine human narrative?

I’ll tell you something about that restored and fine building next door, after all of the planning and visioning and work and giving and asking and praying that you have done over it. God didn’t require you to participate in it. That giving, planning, visioning, and restoring of it. God didn’t have to have your help with it, but God seems to delight in the willingness and eliciting the willingness of humans to participate in God’s kingdom. God seems to be drawing you, trying to draw you into the God agenda. God doesn’t have to have you as a partner, but maybe it’s in your best interest to partner with God.

I’m not just talking about money. Of course, our resources are a part of it. But I wonder if you can see the statement The Lord has need of it as more of an invitation to be involved with God’s enterprise than a statement of God’s personal need. Is the statement The Lord has need of it possibly a more powerful evangelistic tool, a more compelling evangelistic question than Are you saved? for this culture and this generation?

Shucks, everybody says that they’re saved. I like to question Have you given your life to Jesus Christ? Or the cracking-of-the-door version of that question about something in our life, maybe not the whole of it, just one thing, the Lord has need of it. That’s not the statement of God’s need. That’s the divine invitation.

The Hardaways and I went to Presbytery this month, and we took Donna Clark with us. While we were there, we got to hear Eugenia Gambell preach. She’s the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama.  The First Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama, had fallen on hard times. It had lost a good number of its members and had lost a lot of its vitality. She had taken the call to be the pastor there, and she was talking about that experience. She was sharing that as a part of that work she would find herself going into the sanctuary in the afternoon, when it’s empty. (It’s a wonderful time to come over into the sanctuary. Just come over and knock on the trailer door and get somebody to let you into the sanctuary when it’s empty in the afternoon. The Spirit of the Living God is there then.) She would walk up and down the aisles in the sanctuary, and she said she would find herself praying and lifting up to God. She would be praying about the different plans that she had for this church. She would be praying that the Lord would help her with these plans, and all of the programs she was hoping would catch fire and grow in the life of the church, and of the desires she had about how she wanted that church to thrive. She would be worrying over those, and as a part of her worry she would be lifting up as prayers and she said she began to hear the Spirit tapping her on the shoulder and saying, “Eugenia, Eugenia. You know all those plans you have for your church? All those programs and those activities you are so counting on to work? You know the life of that church? You give that to me.  You give that to me.

She said she went to see her father, who was much advanced in years. With her husband, she had a wonderful afternoon, a Sunday afternoon visit with him. They went to his house, and they had prepared a meal together, and she just drank from the well of love in the human relationship. They shared stories, and she just was able to check in with him. Late in the day they got in the car and were driving away, and he in his advanced age, stood on the front porch and waved at them as they were leaving. She said she looked through the back windshield and she saw him waving at her and she realized, in a moment that many of you have had looking at someone that you love like that, that this might be the last time she ever saw her father waving at her. In that moment of vulnerability, she said she heard the Spirit saying to her, “Eugenia, you know the care you have for your father, the way your life is intertwined with him and the prayers you are offering up for him, and the worry you have for him…. Eugenia, you give him to me. You give him to me.”

“The Lord has need of it,” Jesus told the disciples to go and say about the colt. What is it that the Lord is knocking on your door saying, “I have need of that in your life.” Have you given your life to Jesus Christ? It’s one of the blessings of the restoration of this building, the way it has invited us as a community to be a part together of something God that God was doing? Was part of the blessing that we got to be a part of what God was doing? Was the need in this project a kind of invitation to be a part of God’s community?

Where in your life do you hear the Spirit whispering, “The Lord has need of it”? And is that an invitation to partner with God?

© John T. DeBevoise, 2001