The two faces of Holy Week

by Oscar Allen 21.APR.11

The season of Lent is designed as a Christian education campaign focusing on Jesus Christ and his crusade for the liberating reign of God. Lent begins at the Jordan river, where Jesus joins the Baptist movement for national repentance. Lent ends and leads up to Holy Week, where Jesus unmasks the Palestinian Leadership, is killed in a Roman conspiracy and leaves an empty tomb.{{more}} It is all about hoisting Jesus the Anointed one up on the bill board.

Holy Week is a rousing climax and a quite revolution.

Two faces of Jesus

I was very pleased to read two recent studies by Christian leaders which gave insights into Holy week. One is a work by Cuthbert Edwards, leader of the Methodist Church in the Southern (East) Caribbean. The other is a work by Joseph Ratzinger, leader of the Roman Catholic Church, its Pope Benedict 16. Both are excellent and helpful for explanations, interpretations and edification. Let us break Holy Week into its two parts, looking at them in the light of day, not in the mist of candle light. The three days of Holy Week are rambunctious. A season of terror to some, a taste of glory to others. Look at Mark’s Gospel chapters 11 to 13.

Fire for them

The first day sees an unauthorized demonstration in the city. Men, women and children, many from the countryside of Galilee, shout, pray, dance, entreat and acknowledge God for sending a new David to lead them – many of them poor – to freedom and righteousness. The palm branches were a signal of victory as if to say “We Win”. We don’t want this ruling class of Romans, traitors, Sanhedrin, no more. Jehoshua (Jesus) is our anointed one from God. It was the beginning of unease in the high places of Jerusalem. That is how Holy Week began. Those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness shook Jerusalem. Jesus led them. Read it again. Jesus Christ led the untutored rabble. Day two of Holy Week was another, even more intense day of crisis and prophetic carnival. Mark 11 vv 15 +16 put it so simply and matter of fact; we don’t notice the fire in it.

“Then they came to Jerusalem (Jesus had spent the 1st night outside Jerusalem with friends) and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and …”

Mark is telling a fiery hot story, but he is telling it quietly, because he is writing it in Rome where the emperor lives and a war against the Jews is fizzling. But you remember when, I think it was the special Branch cleaned up the vendors in little Tokyo some years ago, well imagine a one man Special Branch – Jesus – marching into NCB and 1st Car ibbean and Treasury and NIS and Inland Revenue and Parliament and running the managers and workers out, taking over the place and preaching. That is what the second day of Holy Week was like. The ruling class coalition had turned the large temple court into a central bank, a market, a thoroughfare, a place to dig out people eye and call it God’s work!

No way! Said Jesus: “This court is where people of all nations suppose to come and pray, praise, reflect and be with God. Watch what you turn it into!” And he began to teach the people that God is for them and their liberating salvation, their fullness of life. He put the rulers in their place, taking over “their” business place and turning it back into “my father’s house”. If they could’a catch Jesus, they would have killed him. But hear what v18 of Mark 11 tells us.

“And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching”.

The people’s educator

That verse tells us something about the character of Jesus. He was not a bad John, a gang leader, a tribal boss or cartel chief. He did not come out to impress people with himself. No, his teaching was to lite people into the presence of God, to show them who the Father was and what God was calling them to be. It blew their minds to know about God’s love, and so the rulers couldn’t touch Jesus. Their day of terror and awe had come, but the season of light and love had come to the people. On the 2nd Day

On Day 3, on the way back to Jerusalem, Jesus brings further teaching to his disciples about the way faith can open ways for them to interact directly with God. In Jerusalem, the leaders send their “spin doctors” to twist up Jesus, but Jesus was not in that game. He described them as betrayers of God’s trust, a new class of serpents deceiving God’s people. He showed the people the dirty clothes the rulers were wearing, and every trick question they brought, he used as an opportunity to build the people’s self confidence and God-trust. Mark 12:34 closes that interaction.

‘After that, no one dared to ask him any question.’ For the rest of that day, Mark has Jesus deepening his discourse and conversation with his disciples and the people. He speaks of things to come in the next generation and things to come farther along for he must prepare them for a new day.

Holy Week – Part 2

Now, after having demolished the ruling class and their authority in the eyes of the people, you and I would go for the kill. Topple them, take over and pass out the bread to our friends and to some of the people.

The second half of Holy Week

Week is far different. Instead of the broad onslaught against the rulers, and the agitated enlightenment of the people in the temple teach-ins, days 4 and 5 are quieter, slower community events in Bethany, and with his closer company. More intimate, more intense faith building moments and faith sharing agony in Gethsemane. What looked like an arrogant Galilean prophet is really a servant who washed feet, and says to the Father, ‘I am your boy, put me where you want me.’

And so as the week closes, and the rulers (mis) understand Jesus to be overthrowing them politically rather than spiritually, they come for him with their own rent-a-crowd. They have him killed. Jesus had given them pedagogy for the ruling class, but they were too bright/blind to see his call. He did not want their power to become another King David. He had another power, greater than David’s, greater than the grave.

Holy Week is a time to see Jesus anew, walk and talk with him, learn how to conduct our lives, and leave our arrogance and sin at the cross. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, in 2011, Holy Week opens up our eyes wide and challenges us personally, politically, and in the ecclesia. God is speaking, inviting us to the revolution.