Church Seasons: Holy Week

As the season of Lent enters its final week, we set aside the week before Easter and call it, "Holy".  The week begins with Palm Sunday, Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem.  We continue on Maundy (Greek word for commandment ~ referring to Jesus' new commandment to love) Thursday where we celebrate the Last Supper and, in some churches, foot washing.  We come the next day, Good or Holy Friday, where we stand at the foot of the cross.  For me, God did not need Jesus to die on a cross to satisfy some anger.  God had already come to us in the form of unconditional love and unceasing grace.  But when met with such a radical, unimaginable, un-human-like gift, we could not deal with the sacred.  In some ways, we still cannot.  We don't like it when we receive a gift without one to offer in "exchange".  We don't like it when we are upset and someone says, "I love you" or "I forgive you."  Such words fuel our fire of frustration.  Friday is us confronting our humanness and the myth of redemptive violence.  Jesus offered us a better way than eye for an eye justice, but we keep clinging to the old way rather than Jesus' new commandment.  Friday is only "Good" in light of Easter morning.  Friday is only "Holy" because our violence and brokenness is never the last word.  

These three days can turn the soil of our soul.  They shine a light bright on joy turned to betrayal and denial and desertion of friends turn to death.  In the course of one week we experience and explore every emotional humanly possible.  I don't know why exactly these services are not jammed.  Every where people are thirsty for meaning.  Every where people are talking about spirituality.  If you want to stop splashing around in the shallow end or cotton-candy promises of happiness that leave us feeling empty, we can find no deeper and more holy time than the three services of Holy Week. 

I realize that this has not always been the explanation of the Christian Church.  I understand that after the palm branch waving of Palm Sunday, most of the time the pastor sounds more like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" or what Dallas Willard once called, "Vampire Christians" so interested in Jesus' blood.  Some of that has to do with the time of the Gospels.  Blood was the life force.  Blood had to be drained from a sacrifice just right in order for it to be excepted.  Just as our understandings of "freedom" or "consumerism" influences our faith today, so did the practices and ideals of Jesus day impact people's confession of faith.  So, before we go rolling our eyes, let us be honest that the expressions of faith today are culturally conditioned too...it is just that we don't always see our assumptions.  

These services can take us deeper into a connection with God and neighbor.  These services can lead us to a deep place.  If Lent is in invitation to explore further "God-with-us", Holy Week is trying to binge watch the mystery of God in the course of one week.  Holy Week is an invitation into God found in moments of joy, to holy meals, to garden moments of despair, to accusations and trials, to a cross, and to the silence of sighs deeper than words on Saturday.  That is life.  That is Holy Week.  There is more than a trace of grace...it is the very foundation and culmination of God-with-us, the light that shines in the darkness.  If that is what we are about, then Holy Week is a week we cannot avoid, for in it, we might just find life that is true life.  I pray it will be so for all of us this Holy Week.

Blessings ~