Do you want to be the donkey, or the master? Turned in on ourselves, we don’t merely want to be the master of one donkey. We would like to own a thousand donkeys, a thousand beasts of burden to do my work – a valet to prepare my clothing, an army of lawyers to solve my problems. But in the language of today’s parable, we are not the master. We are the donkey, the one in the pit.

“Which of you,” Jesus addresses the Pharisees at their Sabbath dinner, “Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?” We are the donkey fallen into a pit. Look at your life! We’re in a pit of problems, sins of our own and the world’s corruption pushing us down. To adapt the story of Sisyphus, we try and try and try to climb out, but just as we reach the top, slide back down again. ...