Column for Holy Week

I walked by a flashing church sign that proclaimed “He Is Risen” for their Easter service before Holy Week has even started. Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday in the Christian tradition. It assumes that people either go to church on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday or involve themselves in deep consideration of the last days of the life of Jesus. In reality, those who do attend church move from one high point to another, Palm Sunday and Easter in all likelihood. At the same time, I notice that National Geographic is planning a special entitled Killing Jesus, based on the popular series of books by the TV personality Bill O’Reilly. Along with watching the program, perhaps we could re-read the four accounts of the last days of Jesus in the gospels.

Can we appreciate the enormity of the resurrection without moving through the depths of Holy Week? Increasingly, the events of Holy Week seem too difficult, too painful, so churches shy away from engagement with them. We follow American culture and seek the “positive” to celebrate. Holy Week encapsulates the life of Jesus in sharp focus. A high point on Sunday, normal life for a few days, and the descent into the angst of approaching doom. So Jesus lives with us, identifies with us, in the ebb and flow of human life. The Incarnate One faces death as all do.

One of the recurring images in American culture is the person who peaked in high school rob Lowe does a version of it in his commercials, and John Updike made high art of it in his Rabbit novels. Life rarely goes from one high point to another. I just saw the new comedy at the St Louis Repertory Theater where the main characters look back on their lives with regrets as they cannot find high points at all.

In the various Palm Sunday accounts Jesus enters Jerusalem in a triumphal procession where he hears shouts of acclamation. John Dominic Crossan wonders if two different marches were going on simultaneously. One was a Roman force swaggering in behind banners and swords. The other may have been a small side event where Jesus enters by a different route. Imagine it as a liturgical procession more than a parade. The gospels note the cheers and slide back to Zechariah 9, where Jesus merges with the vision of a future ruler riding into town on a symbol of peace. The crowd shouts Hosanna, hurrah, but its meaning is save us, save us. Jesus would see four more sunrises.

Few accounts show the fickleness of crowds more starkly than this. It is entirely possible that some of the same people cheering Jesus were the same ones to shout crucify him. Some years ago, we had a church delegation to the Congo, where after being cheered, our delegation of church folks was threatened and had to be airlifted to safety. Think of how cheers turn to jeers at sporting events.

Suffering can demonstrate strength in some, and it can threaten to destroy others. Meaningless suffering compounds the cruelty of suffering. In the face of the torture and death of Jesus as a young man, the church was faced with the task of finding some meaning in his death. What does it mean in 2015 to say that Jesus died for us?

I was working on Holy Week material with our talented organist, Greg Fletcher. He recounted some family history of his grandmother growing up in Fidelity, IL. It gets a flood of mail around Valentine’s Day. Holy week is a sign of fidelity of Jesus to human life. Go back over the marital vows. Holy Week brings them into focus as a lens into the life of Jesus. Even death does not prove a barrier to the unswerving love of God in Jesus.