Balaam and the Donkey

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Numbers 22:1-35
June 6, 2010 (Second Sunday after Pentecost)
First Sunday in Series: "God's People in Hebrew Scripture"

I can remember vividly, one of the most freeing days I had in seminary. As any seminarian would tell you, at least, if they are not those arrogant, pompous, know-it-all kind of seminarians, one of the biggest fears many of us have is preaching…every week (or every other week)…in front of (gulp) people. The idea of it all seemed so overwhelming to me, the Bible so big and dense, the things to say on one hand being so mind-blowing, and on the other hand, so obscure that it was enough to make me want to hide in the bathroom before my first preaching class, feigning illness.

But before that unfortunate event ever occurred, (and honestly, I never hid in the bathroom), before any preaching or worship classes. I remember asking a fellow seminarian, who was also a pastor, “How do you know what scriptures to choose when preparing your sermons?” How many of you ever wondered that? How do they choose their scriptures? And like a breath of cool wind she spoke the beautiful words: “The Lectionary.”

“The what?” I asked. “The Lectionary” she repeated.

“What is the lectionary?” I shyly asked. Even though I was not one of those arrogant, pompous, know-it-all-seminarians, I did want look like I knew what she was talking about. But I asked anyway. What is the lectionary?

She proceeded to tell me that the lectionary is a list of scriptures, broken up into weekly readings for a cycle of 3 years. So for any given Sunday, I can go to my minister’s manual, find which year we are in (a cycle of year A, B, or C—we’re in year C by the way), and it will give me four options to choose from for the day I’m preaching: a Hebrew Scripture, a Psalm, a Gospel reading, and an Epistle (those are basically all the other books of the New Testament that aren’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). If you look at the back of your bulletin you will see “bible readings for today” and “for next Sunday.” Those are lectionary readings.

Torin and I, for the most part follow the lectionary to guide our worship planning. Historically, Brethren and Mennonites haven’t followed the lectionary. By following the lectionary, we know that what we hear in scripture here, in Morgantown, WV is likely also being heard in a small church in Brooklyn, NY or along the Eder River in Germany, or in the Sistene Chapel in the Vatican City, or in a gathering of Christians in Samoa. I like how taking readings from the lectionary can tie the breadth of the Christian family together in worship.

But there are definite draw backs. In case you haven’t noticed, the Bible is huge. There are so many things in it that could not possibly be explored in such a system of three years rotation. And like many things in church history, the choice of what got put in the lectionary, and what got left out of the lectionary, had a lot more political motivations than we would like.

But for we Anabaptists how have chosen this preaching path of the lectionary, we have to supplement much of the Sermon on the Mount that gets forgotten, and other scriptures that are vital to the living discipleship we believe we are called to.

Stories are neglected in the lectionary rotation, particularly stories about women. Strange stories are left out, beautiful yet perhaps too challenging of stories are left by the wayside. The lectionary leaves lots of gaps so we are encouraged to stray a little bit, and like wanderers in an unknown land, we pick up the unknown, turn it over in our hands, look at it from this way and that way, and present it, to the community of faith…in all it’s beauty and challenge, and gore and strangeness.

So…speaking of strangeness. This is not just a worship planning 101 an introduction to the lectionary. It’s kind of a lead up. Now that you know a little bit about what the lectionary is, are you not surprised that today’s scripture…about a talking donkey…is not included in the lectionary? And just image all those poor souls whose pastors only preached from the lectionary, who have never heard this story. Maybe you have never heard it. If not, I’m so glad Torin and I decided to do something different this summer!

It makes one stop and think, what we might miss if we aren’t open to hearing something out of the ordinary, in places that aren’t part of our ordered way of hearing the word of God…All those stories…go unheard.

And yes, this is a doozy of a story. We don’t hear many stories out of the book of Numbers either, so let me quickly catch you up. Moses and the following generation of Israelites have been wandering in the desert these many many year It’s been a pretty rough go, as you can imagine, but God has been faithful to God’s promise and has begun multiplying the Israelite people—this is really a wandering nation we’re talking about here. And they become so big that kingdoms nearby begin getting a bit nervous: after all, a large number of people, without a place to call home can seem pretty threatening. This could be a matter of severe national security.

Which is exactly how Balak, the king of Moab responds. He wasn’t just a bit nervous, he was “overcome with fear” as it says, he was in “great dread” it says--Balak was shaking in his sandals and he uses a colorful metaphor: “This horde will now lick up all that is around us, as an ox licks up the grass of the field!” So King Balak calls his messengers to take a message to a man named Balaam who we gather was a diviner—someone who can predict the future. Balaam was from the land of Mesopotamia. Balak asks Balaam to curse these people, to do the king’s dirty work.

But Balaam, for all the bad things we are supposed to believe about diviners (divination was considered evil to the Israelites) this man pauses and says—I have to talk to YHWH about this. And that night YHWH says no don’t do it. But King Balak doesn’t take no for an answer and with even more desperation, returns his messengers—more messages, more distinguished messengers, no government lackies, these are heads of state here—and again implores Balaam to curse the Israelites.

And Balaam, this man, who never even heard of a people call the Israelites, uses the Hebrew’s special name for God YHWH—he says YHWH said no and not for mansions full of gold or silver will I curse them. God came to Balaam that night and said that he should go with these men, but do only what I tell you to do. So Balaam got up in the morning, saddled his donkey, and went with the officials of Moab.

Now. Here is where it gets strange. I know you haven’t forgotten about that talking donkey, that’s strange enough. But, also, I can’t understand why we just hear God giving Balaam permission to go, and in the next line it says God’s anger was kindled because he was going.” What? Can’t a guy catch a break? And here is where it all begins, what Thomas Dozeman calls “a burlesque, slapstick story about a clairvoyant animal who speaks a word of common sense to a seer.”

An angel stands in the donkey’s way and the donkey goes off the road. Balaam hits him and brings him back. Two more times the donkey tries to divert the path and Balaam hits him until the donkey lays down in front of this angel thatwe can only assume Balaam does not see, even though it is standing right in front of him.

And then… “the Lord opened the mouth of the donkey, and it said to Balaam”…and forgive me, but I can only image the voice of Eddie Murphy coming out of this donkey: “Hey! What did I do?” and without hesitation, without a look of horror or a double take, Balaam answers him. And a dialogue takes place, the donkey wins an argument, and Balaam’s eyes are opened to actually see what is in front of him, an angel. After criticizing Balaam for the abuse of the donkey, he repeats YHWH’s command, to go and speak only the words of YHWH, which we know would be words of blessings for the Israelites, and not curses.

It is widely understood that this section of the story, this talking donkey section, was another story, added in at another time which is why the entire story seems so disjointed, why YHWH says go in one breath and is angered in the next breath. This is a bit of folklore. But folklore doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it. But, I’ll admit hearing God’s voice in folklore, or myth, may seem as strange to us as—hearing God’s voice coming from a donkey. or witnessing divine revelation from someone outside the fold, a Mesopotamian diviner rather than a Hebrew prophet.

But I think therein lies a message for us. We can tell each other “listen to God’s voice, or for God’s voice” seek it out! Open your ears, your eyes! Search for it! We make “listening” a sport that we are told to practice and practice so we can win the game. The end goal.

Yet theologian Renita Weems, reminds us that life isn’t full of donkeys telling us what to do all the time. She says ".we rarely recognize what we ought to recognize at the moment we ought to recognize it. It usually takes us hours, days, weeks, months, perhaps years for most of us to realize, that we were visited by an angel. We are usually too preoccupied with our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interest to notice."

If you are anything like me you likely dance between the two Balaam’s in this story. Earnestly seeking God’s direction, God’s voice, going to God in the depths of the night asking what should I do and sometimes—oh, sometimes if we are lucky—God speaks to us in that clear voice that we know is of God.

And then, the next day, only one scripture verse of our lives later, we’re riding that path we think we’re supposed to be on and we can’t see the angel in front of us. We don’t understand that what is moving us off this path is actually saving us. Too preoccupied with our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interest to notice.” What don’t we notice…what don’t we hear?

How do we negotiate with these two parts of ourselves? The ready and willing with the too-often preoccupied donkey abusers? I think we introduce the two in a practice of willingness. Of openness. Of receptivity. Being open to hear. Being willing to see. Be present and mindful enough that when the voice of God does come, we will hear it faintly but compellingly.

Somehow, I don’t think it is the active listening that allows us to hear God, the work of straining our ears or our eyes to catch any divine breath. It seems like when we actively search for God’s word we let our own thoughts, own prejudices, own self interests into the quest. The focus is on the end message, not the listening, not the gift that we can receive when we realize that what we are doing is not clamoring or searching, but listening.

If we become open, simply opening ourselves through prayer, silence, witnessing God’s work around us, maybe we don’t have to strain to hear as much. Perhaps we are preparing ourselves to receive. It makes one stop and think: what we might gain if we are open to hearing something out of the ordinary, in places that aren’t part of our ordered way of hearing the word of God…All those stories…available for us to hear.

In these moments of waiting worship, don’t strain to listen, yet don’t fly away on the thoughts of your own self interests. Prepare yourself. We have often heard the phrase, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” How about for just a moment we “Don’t just do something…sit there.” What happens when we prepare ourselves to hear? What stories might God share with us?