Usually, we don’t speak of God needing anything. God lacks nothing essential that we human beings could provide. Yet the Gospel at the beginning of today’s liturgy speaks of Jesus’s need before his entry into Jerusalem—he needed transportation. To enter the holy city, an occasion of joy for his disciples but triumphant only in retrospect, he asked for a colt upon which to ride, like the Messiah-king in the book of the prophet Zechariah, who entered Jerusalem “humbly, riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” In the Old Testament, this is the only messianic announcement where the Messiah is explicitly described as humble. Like most kings, Jesus understood history and the power of images. Only, in his case, the “need” he confesses underscores the paradoxical way in which he will fulfill the role of Messiah. Instead of sumptuous cloths of silk, his disciples spread out their cloaks—no doubt made of simple fabric. The religious authorities do not turn out to hail him; instead, a small crowd salutes Jesus with olive branches. In this humble, even poor, display, we can perhaps see and speak of God’s “need.”
Today, Jesus clearly voices his need for his friends. Yet in the command, “Do this in memory of me,” he also expresses his need for us—so that his body does not remain simply an object of devotion, but so that, nourished by the Eucharist, we may be inspired to go forth from the assembly to feed a hungry world. In the command, “Go and teach all nations,” the Master shows that he has need of us to spread his Gospel and its values—above all, love, justice, and peace. Jesus’s disciples, the same ones who enter Jerusalem with him, will be absent for another kind of procession out of the city in less than a week’s time. Amid the fear and confusion of the intervening days, they will question their experience and no doubt wonder: Why?
In our times, don’t we disciples sometimes ask the same question? Why believe? Why stick with it? Why stand up to a culture that idolizes power, worships money, and fawns over whatever the media pronounce beautiful or interesting? Why keep loving and giving? Why risk my heart?
Let Jesus provide our response: “If someone asks you why… you will answer, ‘The Master has need of it.’”
