By Celani Sikhakhane
An Eastern Cape pastor who rode a donkey around town on Palm Sunday has been lambasted by a bishop who said such acts were turning the church “into a circus”.
Videos of the pastor were posted on TikTok by someone from the Eastern Cape but the pastor’s name and that of the town are not known.
The pastor was reenacting the role of Jesus in the Bible, who rode a donkey into Jerusalem, fulfilling a prophecy in the Book of Zechariah.
Palm Sunday is the Christian feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter and commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Bishop Vusi Dube of the eThekwini Community Church was not impressed with the stunt.
“Some of these things are turning us into a laughing stock,” said Dube. “Already the Christian community is no longer taken seriously because of the things being done by some of us as church leaders. We have humiliated the Word of Jesus by our doings.
“This thing of riding a donkey is one of the extreme acts that is turning us into a circus.”
Another post on TikTok showed a man outside a supermarket – possibly in KwaZulu-Natal because he was speaking fluent isiZulu – calling on Christians to stop believing pictures that portrayed Jesus as a white man.
“When will you Christians stop turning yourselves into idiots? Why do you believe that white boy that he is Jesus?” he asked.
“Remember that no one knows Jesus because there were no cameras at that time. So someone decided to fool you with the picture of a white man and made you believe that it’s Jesus.”
Dube echoed those claims and said people should have a clear understanding that no picture was ever made of Jesus.
The Christian community is heading into a celebratory weekend with Good Friday on 29 March followed by Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.
Pictured above: An Eastern Cape pastor riding a donkey.
Image source: TikTok
