Holy Week Blues...

I've been in ministry almost as long as Jesus was alive on Earth. This will be my 32nd Holy Week observance since becoming a pastor. This fact offers a unique challenge: What "fresh" or "new" stuff can I glean from the old, old stories of Jesus and His cross?

One might ask, "Why do you have to find something new? Aren't the timelessness and theological significance of the stories of Holy Week enough? (Well, that last part about "theological significance," you might not ask, but I would...)

Understand, that this is the Modus Operandi of almost 32 years of preaching. Each week, as I study the biblical texts in sermon preparation, I scour them for something I've never "seen" before, or for some new angle that makes me go, "Ah HA!" Then, I try to preach the "Ah HA!", figuring that if the "find" is interesting to me, it must might be to someone else in the listening audience. Often, members of my congregation are astounded--even excited--about some novel aspect of the sermon or text, but usually nowhere near my personal "Ah Ha!" Still, I'm good with that, for it signals the Spirit was afoot, and kept me from tripping over my own big homiletical feet. Jesus saves again!

Back to Holy Week. First, there is Maundy Thursday, which some call Holy Thursday. This is the day we commemorate Jesus' washing the feet of the disciples, and sharing the Last Supper with them. The church I attended throughout my adolescent years called it Maundy Thursday. Did you ever wonder what Maundy means? Actually there are a lot of theories about this. One is that it comes from a Latin word, mandatum (mandate), referring to Jesus' command to "love one another as I have loved you." Others suggest it is from an old English custom of placing "maundy baskets" out to collect alms for the poor. In archaic English, "maundy" means "money."

Some churches wash feet on Maundy Thursday. As a young pastor, celebrating my first Holy Week, I did this. That congregation pretty much went along with anything I wanted to try, as I was the youngest pastor they ever had, was laboring as a seminary student, and they really liked my family. The whole thing went pretty well, but I could tell that 20th Century folk didn't have the same sense of blessing from having their feet washed in front of 80 or 90 people by a guy wearing a black pulpit robe and using his car wash towels to dry them. Each year after, as we planned subsequent Holy Maundy Thursday services, member would recall that first foot washing. Hearing that they seemed to harbor warm memories of it, I would ask, "Would you like to do it again this year?" To which they kindly responded, "Ah...No...No...No..." Got it.

This year at St. Paul's, we're having an "educational Seder." We do it for our Confirmation class, but open it to the whole church. I learned years ago that our Jewish friends really like us to educate our people about this important Passover observance, and don't even mind that we sample the symbolic foods, but they don't necessarily like us actually "doing a Seder," as this is a Jewish ritual. Also, they really don't like it when we "Christianize" the thing, equating each of the liturgical food elements with some part of Jesus' suffering, or whatever. So, we're telling what and why the Jewish people hold a Seder, and will sample the foods, followed by an actual meal of matzo ball soup and salad. Of course, many suggest that the Seder is what Jesus celebrated with the disciples, but several scholars point out that, while Jewish people celebrated the Passover, the configuration and Haggadah (story) of the Seder don't appear until the pages of the Mishnah writings, which wasn't written until around or after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., or well after Jesus instituted the Last Supper.

Good Friday is a mysterious, foreboding, even depressing observance. Mel Gibson made it even worse with his gory movie, The Passion of the Christ. The theology of what is going on when the Son of God submits himself to such horror, only to have it end in the cruel form of capital punishment known as crucifixion, trumps any film depiction of human violence. Imagine: God's Son on the cross, like a common criminal, and even God "abandons" him. Libraries of books have been written theorizing what all is going on here in an event theologians dub "the atonement." Frankly, I find it just awful. I'd like to think that this mode of granting redemption and forgiveness might be something much more civil if Christ had waited to come to Earth in our time, but honestly, do you think it would? If God deemed that this "sacrifice" was necessary, even if Jesus had tarried until our century, imagine if the Good Friday story had Jesus in front of a firing squad, suspended from a hangman's noose, strapped into an electric chair, or, even worse, tied to a gurney with poisons dripped into his veins. That kind of puts it in perspective, doesn't it? I have to admit, I don't understand the "science" of the atonement. Why did Christ have to die? I get the whole Old Testament sacrifice deal, but couldn't there have been another way? I guess this is exactly what Jesus was asking God in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Sometimes we light candles on Good Friday. Sometimes we put them out. Either way, we usually end up in darkness. At St. Paul's, we will celebrate Communion again. The sacrament of grace at least reminds us we are remembering, but that, thanks-be-to-God, we are living in the post-resurrection community. Even as we will walk out in silence on Good Friday, our hearts are strangely warmed by the fact that the current state of our Savior is alive and well in 2017.

By the time Holy Week gets to Easter, we are quite ready for its arrival. It's a little like smacking yourself on the knuckles with a ball peen hammer--it feels so good when you quit. On Easter, the knuckle-smacking ends and the healing begins. But that is the subject of yet another post.

And the theological significance of Jesus' life, teachings, death, and resurrection are the subject of more libraries of books than even Amazon could contain.

May your Holy Week serve to remind you that you are in the "image" of God, that God loved you so much Jesus came here to walk among us, and that no sacrifice was too great for you to be restored, redeemed, reconciled, and embraced by the Divine. Shalom, Yinz.