Week eight: Holy Week I

Week 8, Holy Week I: Citing this week’s readings, what recommendations would you give churches today observing Holy Week, through Holy Saturday?

Jesus is completely abandoned in the hours leading up to his death. As Raymond Brown points out, while the first disciples left everything in order to follow Jesus, his last disciples left everything in order to get away from him.[1] Standing in church on an April afternoon today, it might be easy to think, “Well, if I had been there, I would have stood up for him. Or, we, as a congregation, would have stood up for him.” But in the previous chapter, Brown has suggested including Christians among the cast of characters opposing Jesus in the Passion play. He explains:

"Gospel readers are often sincerely religious people who have a deep attachment to their tradition. Jesus was a challenge to religious traditionalists since he pointed to a human element in their holy traditions—an element too often identified with God’s will. If Jesus was treated harshly by the literal-minded religious people of his time who were Jews, it is quite likely that he would be treated harshly by similar religious people of our time, including Christians. Not Jewish background but religious mentality is the basic component in the reaction to Jesus."[2]

In reflecting on the season of Lent for week five, I suggested that Lent be a time for us to slow down, to notice God’s absence, and to observe where we have turned away from God in our lives. Perhaps Holy Week is a time for us to ask, “Where is belief getting in the way of my relationship with God?” “Are their aspects of my worship that have become stale (“chametz”[3]) and that separate me from others and/or from God?” “What beliefs or practices do I need to let go of in order to deepen my relationship with God, with others, and with myself?”

In his description of the Jewish Passover, Greenberg writes, “True freedom means accepting the ethics of responsibility,” Several pages later, he adds “…sharing or reaching beyond the self is a fundamental mark of free people.[4] After the performance of a Passion play in which Christians also played the role of Jesus’ oppressor, it would be helpful to think creatively about the role of oppression in our current lives. In a group setting, it would be helpful to discuss the dual identity of oppressor and oppressed and to then explore how these identities take shape in our personal and communal lives.[5]

Though space is limited, I want to make two final points. The first point is that the practices suggested above are meant to help us to understand that like the Exodus, the crucifixion did not destroy evil in the world. “What it did was set up an alternative conception of life.” Greenberg writes of the Exodus. “…it points the way to the end goal toward which all life and history must go.”[6] I believe this holds true of the crucifixion and resurrection as well.

Secondly, I believe that to fully understand the Christian version of this alternative, we must remember that all life turned from God in the final hours of Jesus’ life. “Nature itself is plunged into a darkness that covers the whole land … from the sixth to ninth hour,” Brown reminds us.[7] Even Jesus turns away, asking “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” The entire world has rejected Jesus. Now he must let go of his God and face death. According to Father Bede Griffiths, it is in this surrender to nothingness, to darkness, that Jesus is taken to the total Love. “Behind death is this tremendous power of Love,” says Father Bede.[8] Ideally, the rituals and practices of Holy Week will help each one of us to experience the pain of being mocked and rejected, of being isolated and cut off from everything we know and love. And it will then allow us to gradually awaken and to be released back into the world, connected once again in God.

[1] Brown 156
[2] Brown 149
[3] Greenberg 41-46
[4] Greenberg 49-51
[5] The work of Paulo Freire would be useful in leading this discussion!
[6] Greenberg 36
[7] Brown 162
[8] http://thechristianliturgicalyear.blogspot.com/2009/03/father-bede-griffiths-surrendering-to.html