What We Learn from a Silent Donkey
Here's the second advent reading I'm sharing from Christmas Glory.
Animals are a wonder because of their silence. They stand on the cusp of language, uttering with their eyes, whispering with their glances, beckoning with bending necks, fearing with folded ears. They have a wordless tongue. And in a strange sense, that’s why we love them. Sincerity’s home is silence.
And the donkey certainly seems sincere, doesn’t it? A lowly beast to carry a lowly savior, a wordless worker to carry the Word for the world. The popular children’s book The Small One portrays a donkey as a humble, self-sacrificing friend to a little boy. Towards the end of the book, when it looks as if the donkey will have to give his life up to help the boy, a kind stranger (Joseph) offers to buy him. The story ends with Small One carrying Mary into the blue moonlight to Bethlehem, bearing her on his little back without a grumble. Sounds like sincerity to me.
In reality, we only know one thing about that donkey: he didn’t speak. With his head nodding to his own shifting steps, he carried on in quiet. He bore the mother who bore the savior who bore the sins of the world. It seems fitting that a wordlessanimal would usher in the most beautiful Word the world would ever hear. It’s as if the donkey’s life were a great pause before the voice of God broke through Mary’s womb beneath a burning star. Silence is the arena for speech; the donkey was the arena for the Word of God. On that long trek to Bethlehem, under the navy sky, silence carried speech.
Christmas is hardly ever a time we associate with silence. Silver Bells and Christmas carols, sure. But silence? And yet Christmas came on the back of silence, on the rough-haired hide of a donkey that would serve in secret. Christmas came to creatures who had trouble closing their mouths. The great irony is that the child of Christmas would eventually be described as a silent sheep who would not open his mouth (Isa. 53:7).
Why? Why would the Word for the world, who entered a silent night on a silent beast, not open his mouth when spoken against? Why not utter the truth, and perhaps even save himself through that? Why be like the donkey when he was more like the angel chorus of light, singing sweet salvation into the somber cities of men?
Maybe it was because, even all the way back on that first night of his life in the world, silence would still serve its purpose. It would still be the arena for speech, the pause before the utterance. And if that’s how Christ came into the world, doesn’t it make poetic sense for this echo at his exit? The pause, the silence, worn so well by a tired donkey, would come before God’s speech of resurrection. Jesus would go silent as a lamb before its shearers because the greatest thing he would ever speak required a full breath, a full, back-from-the-depths-of-hell, born-of-water-and- the-Spirit, serpent-head-crushing breath.
When you sing “Silent Night” this year, think of the donkey. He doesn’t get much credit for his silence, just as Christ doesn’t get much credit for not opening his mouth before a delirious mob. But silence makes way for speech. The dark makes way for the light. The donkey makes way for a King, the mute makes way for the majestic. I am thankful for the silent donkey that gave Christ the pause he needed before God spoke the most potent Word in all of history. That, my friends, is why that silent night is a holy night.
Silence for a savior, before the coming speech,
Silenced our behavior and put love within reach.