Holy Week

What calendar do you look at when you plan your life?

There is the calendar of mother’s day, father’s day, Fourth of July, birthdays, and anniversaries. This calendar also includes things like St. Patrick’s day,  Mardi  Gras, Valentine’s Day, President’s day, baby day, grandparent’s day, Earth day, bring your kid to work day, teacher appreciation day.

We typically don’t forget our children’s birthdays, and the most lunatic kinds of mothers spend months planning a tediously themed party which no one will remember (strictly my opinion). We mark our calendars for vacation, and we spend the year anticipating the arrival of the week within the little red circle. We know when Menards has their next super savings sale. We anticipate the first day of spring, we impatiently wait to voice our opinions in election seasons, and we all know men who go missing around the opening day of hunting season each year.

We have fireworks on the 4^th of July, where thousands of people gather to watch thousands of dollars in ear-splitting explosives fly across the sky, all while mindlessly devouring hot dogs and waving little flags. The entire city of Grand Rapids turns into a green-beer-drinking cacophony of chaos on St. Patrick ’s Day. We shamelessly adhere to Valentine ’s Day, the day which is forever faithful in providing couples another reason to be irritated with each other.

Now don’t hear me wrong. I am not condemning secular holidays. As Christians we have little basis for condemning days which honor our parents, bring attention to environmental stewardship, or celebrate our cultural heritage.

There is nothing inherently evil in proudly wearing your “I voted!” sticker after a heated political season, and I will most likely be the lunatic mother planning my three year-old an elephant-themed birthday party next month. By all means, please buy your wife flowers on Valentine’s Day, and as far as I am aware, there are no theological issues with growing your facial hair out for deer hunting season men.

Seriously though, the problem is not days, because we know that days are just days, and these holidays are just made up by well-meaning people. The problem has to do with what captures our attention. The problem has to do with what we center our lives around.

On the Christian calendar, this week is Holy Week. It began on Palm Sunday, when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people shouted, waving palm branches and laying down their cloaks in the path of Jesus and the donkey. Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! (Luke 19:38). This marks Jesus’ last week of life, and we hold in tension our praise to God against our knowledge that Jesus will go to the Cross in just days.

For the Christian, this week is anything but just another week. It is the week that changed everything, for everyone, forever!

Holy week is also offensive and mostly ugly. Our secular holidays are always celebrating (worshiping?) something or someone. These are happy days, sentimental days, days which claim an inherent ability to turn our attention toward “what matters.” These are the days which tells that “what matters” is that we are happy, well-fed, and recognized as important.

Holy week does the opposite, and has little to do with easing our minds or softening the blow. It gives us a sharp reminder that “what matters” is Jesus and what he has done to redeem the world through his death on the cross.

This week, we remember the suffering of our Lord. We read slowly about Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, we linger as He washes the feet of His disciples, teaching them to wash each other’s feet, to love one another in humble love.  

We hear Him telling us not to let our hearts be troubled because He is going to prepare a room in heaven. We hear Him promise the Holy Spirit in His absence. We see the baffled faces of the disciples, who even now do not understand what is happening. Then we hear Jesus pray for the disciples, and then he prays for us, too.

He is arrested, bound, and betrayed by Peter who denies him not once, but three times. He is questioned, beaten, flogged, and mocked. They clothe him with irony in a purple robe, give him a crown of thorns, and Pilate hands him over to be crucified.

He carries his own cross to Golgotha where they strip his clothes and nail him to the cross. A mocking sign is placed on the cross, reading “Jesus of Nazareth – King of the Jews.”

On Good Friday from 12pm-3pm, we remember that Jesus hung there for three hours. They pierced His side with a spear even after he was dead, raining blood upon the onlookers. He was dead, and submissive to the will of the Father to the very last breath.

God knew the world was being redeemed, but Jesus’ followers could only look on in horror. Jesus’ mother stood under the Cross, splattered in the blood of her son, most likely weeping hysterical with the other women and the disciple who remained.

What were they thinking? The Messiah is dead…It was not supposed to be like this…what have they done…God surely hates us all…

One can scarcely imagine the depths of despair which these gathered ones must have felt. Hope was lost, not just now, but forever.

The violent, humiliating death on the Cross does not make for a very good Hallmark greeting card. The birth of Jesus? Sure. The Resurrection? Absolutely. But not the Cross, not the suffering, not the blood mixed with tears and dirt and death and hopeless void unending.

We want to rush forth to the Resurrection. The Resurrection gives meaning to a seemingly nonsensical murder of God.

But for Holy Week let’s slow down and linger here in this place for a bit. Let’s look at the faces of Mary, tear-streaked with blood and the depth of human despair. Look into the faces of those who were there, and look deeply. Because they are mirrors of our faces, too.

To those who witnessed the crucifixion and to the 21^st century reader alike, the excruciating and humiliating death of God on the cross is too much to comprehend. We cannot see purpose in such an act; how can we believe that God’s hand is in this?

This is not easy to think about. It is never easy to explain suffering. But this Jesus on the Cross, this suffering Jesus had a bigger purpose than could be seen at first. Jesus did not suffer for nothing – he suffered to redeem the world. Jesus died for sinners to be saved.

It may not be the warm consolation we all want, but Jesus on the cross also reminds us that our suffering in this world, too, is not without God’s greater purpose. We see our God is still in control, even when bloodthirsty crowds gather and hell seems to have come to earth.

This week my prayer is that suffering, both Jesus’ suffering and your own suffering, leads you deeper into Jesus who died for you.