You remember Harvey the six-foot talking rabbit? Jimmy Stewart’s friend in the movies? I am sure that some of you remember Mr. Ed – right? He was the talking horse who had an owner/friend named Wilbur who increasingly depended upon the wisdom of Mr. Ed to get through life’s little problems. Wilbur and Mr. Ed did not have a lot of critical issues with which to deal – except for the fact that Wilbur was the only one who ever heard Mr. Ed speak – and consequent problems arose from that fact.

You may know of Harvey or Mr. Ed, but I wonder, did you know that there is a talking donkey who is much more famous than the talking horse, and he is not found on TV, he is found in the Bible. No, it’s not the donkey that carried Mary to Jerusalem in the Christmas story and it’s not the donkey who carried Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it is a talking donkey owned by a prophet named Balaam from a time way back just a few decades after the Exodus.

The Bible is filled with stories, some of them more obscure than others, and while you may or may not have heard of Balaam and his Ass, I am going to tell you a bit of the story this morning as it is found in the Book of Numbers.

There was a prophet named Balaam, way back in the ancient times, the story goes. He was sought out by the King of Moab, who was in quite a panic since his lookouts had first noticed the hoard of Hebrews that were wandering across the Sinai Desert and heading in the direction of the Kingdom of Moab. His informants told him that this group of liberated slaves comes from Egypt and had already had altercations with other tribal nations and had already battled with one of the nations of the Canaanites and totally wiped them out, as they had also done the Amorites before them. Balak the King of Moab was frightened by this mob of thousands of Hebrews led by Moses and came up with a plan.

He sent his servants to seek out the Prophet Balaam who lived in the valley of Euphrates River – current day Iraq. Balak had decided that if Balaam the prophet would curse the Hebrews in the name of God it would cause them to be weakened sufficiently that the Moabite army could defeat them in any battle. His messengers were instructed to inform Balaam that any amount of money would be made available to him if he would only just come on down to Moab and curse these wandering strangers.

Balak’s emissaries said, “Look. A people has come up out of Egypt, and they’re all over the place! And they’re pressing hard on me. Come and curse them for me—they’re too much for me. Maybe then I can beat them; we’ll attack and drive them out of the country. You have a reputation: Those you bless stay blessed; those you curse stay cursed.” (Numbers 22:5, 6)

Balaam asked the messengers to wait over night, while he went in to pray and seek God’s direction. God came to him in the night and explicitly forbad him from going with the messengers – in fact, God forbad him from cursing the Hebrews as well. God said to Balaam, “Don’t go with them. And don’t curse the others—they are a blessed people.” (Numbers 22:12)

As is often the case in these wonderful old stories, nothing is settled the first time – it takes another round of messengers from Balak, another night of prayer, and finally Balaam agrees to go to Moab and meet up with the king. So he saddles up his donkey – that is Balaam’s Ass – and starts out with the men from Moab. God did not want it, you recall, so God decided to send the Angel of God armed with a mighty sword to stand in the path. It was only the donkey that could see him, however…and the donkey balked and tried to turn aside and went into the ditch and was whipped by his master Balaam until he once again proceeded. However, the road narrowed down through a vineyard and for a second time the Angel of the Lord appeared in the middle of the passage and the donkey stepped off the road to avoid him and landed in the rough and nearly toppled over so that Balaam whipped him again, and yelled at him. Finally, the road narrowed down between two high cliffs and the Angel of the Lord appeared again and the donkey could not get by so, filled with fear, Balaam’s Ass just stopped and would not move another inch.

Balaam totally lost his temper, jumped off his back and grabbed a stick and began beating him mercilessly – hollering and cursing the poor beast. Then God did a wonderful thing! He gave the donkey the power of speech.

She said to Balaam: “What have I ever done to you that you have beat me these three times?”

Balaam said, “Because you’ve been playing games with me! If I had a sword I would have killed you by now.”

The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your trusty donkey on whom you’ve ridden for years right up until now? Have I ever done anything like this to you before? Have I?”

He said, “No.” (Numbers 22:28b-30)

At that point, God gives Balaam the power to see the mighty angel in the road who says, "You are lucky you have such a good donkey, if she had not stopped, I would have killed you."

Balaam’s Ass was the agent of salvation for Balaam – and what was Balaam about to do? God was angry that Balaam was heading off to curse the Hebrews and that is the point of telling this story. It goes on for a while longer, but the upshot of the story is that in spite of offers of wealth and in spite of threats from the Moabites, Balaam did not curse the Hebrews; he blessed them according to God’s instructions.

These are my people, said God. God did not want them cursed because God “loved them.” So the prophet Balaam pronounced an oracle:

Balak led me here from Aram,

the king of Moab all the way from the eastern mountains.

“Go, curse Jacob for me; go, damn Israel.”

How can I curse whom God has not cursed?

How can I damn whom God has not damned?

From rock pinnacles I see them,

from hilltops I survey them:

Look! a people camping off by themselves,

thinking themselves outsiders among nations.

But who could ever count the dust of Jacob

or take a census of cloud-of-dust Israel?

I want to die like these right-living people!

I want an end just like theirs! (Numbers 23:7-10)

An ancient story about a talking donkey which suddenly appears in the midst of the history of the wandering tribes of Jacob on their way out of Egypt to the promise land…and what is the point? The point is that these people could not be cursed…. because they were loved! They thought of themselves as the world saw them, as outsiders, but God thought of them as insiders – the beloved of God.

God had told Abraham, in today’s lesson from Genesis:

I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”(Genesis 17:6-8)

There is something different about these people – the difference is that God is in their midst – God is in our midst. A people set apart by their conviction that God has chosen to honor them with Divine Favor in all the circumstances of life. While other nations lived under the threat of their Gods – Israel lives under the blessing of Yahweh.

A brief survey of the ancient myths and stories of every other nation which were encountered by the people of Israel – whether it be the Egyptians and Ra, or the Babylonians and Marduk; the Moabites who worshiped Baal or the Philistines who worshipped Dagon – all of them lived under threat. The theology of the ancient near east was, before the advent of Biblical faith, a theology of fear – and understanding of the need to appease god, to pleasure their gods with gifts and sacrifices because one never knew how God would act tomorrow – the drought may come or the Trojans might kidnap the most beautiful woman in the world and who knew how the gods would behave. (There is a current movie being hyped called the Battle of the Titans which explicates the point – the gods of Ancient Greece did not like humans, let alone love them.) The gods of Israel’s contemporaries were spiteful, angry, and jealous of the very creatures whose worship they demanded. Not so with Yahweh – Yahweh was in love.

You remember, just before the portion of Genesis we read this morning, God asks Abram to look at the heavens – and promises him as many decedents as there are stars in the sky.

There is no indication why God chose Abraham – it is only for Abraham’s decedents to be grateful, not to understand the reasons for God’s love – that is within God’s own mind not for our understanding, just for our receiving. God’s choice is to become known, to establish a relationship with humanity. The rest of the story of the Scriptures is the story of God reaching out to us seeking to restore the relationship. We are a people bound by the weakness of all human flesh – and consequently, we continually break the faith with God. When we go after other gods – when we get to thinking that it is not Yahweh on whom we depend but upon our own cunning ways, we get caught. Sometimes we even think we can use God against our perceived enemies like Balak of Moab tried to do…and Balaam almost fell for it. So we end up in Egypt as slaves or in the exile of Babylon – we become fearful and jealous of one another; weighed down by our own baggage as we are liberated from the bonds of slavery one more time by the loving God who calls us his own.

As someone has said about the saga of Abraham:[1]

God’s habit is to draw near. This God who created light with a single command is also a God who will not let us go. There seems to be no good reason for God to draw near to us except God’s sheer love for creation. There appears to be no traceable metric that drives God to become flesh in Christ. Although we, being broken and frail and prone to death, confess that we desperately need this incarnation of God, we can find no reason for God to become bone and blood and vulnerable other than God’s magnificent love. After having decided to whisper all things into being…to shape time and hope, God has also chosen to take on our lives with all their quirks, sins and finalities.

God’s ultimate gesture – the final hope – is the incarnation. Jesus in the Garden, according to the Gospel of John, has come to understand in the passage that we read this morning, that the journey will lead to his death. His prayer, here rendered in contemporary language,[2] is that the sacrifice will accomplish that for which it is purposed.

I’m praying not only for them

But also for those who will believe in me

Because of them and their witness about me.

The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—

Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,

So they might be one heart and mind with us.

Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.

The same glory you gave me, I gave them,

So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—

I in them and you in me.

Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,

And give the godless world evidence

That you’ve sent me and loved them

In the same way you’ve loved me. (John 17:20-23)

From the time we first fell into sin – this is all God has ever wanted – to be in relationship with us, a mutual relationship of love and trust. All God has been after is to free us from our fears and our wanderings and to bless us!

So let the prayer on Jesus’ tongue linger in our hearts….that we will mature in our faith and that we may become of one heart and mind with our God, and that we may be one with God and with each other. Amen.