What is Holy Week All About?

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Matthew

Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem has so many layers. It was the fulfillment of scripture. It was a sign that he is the Messiah, although a different sort of Messiah than expected. Scholars tell us that it was also a not-so-subtle act of political theater, mocking Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem on his charger surrounded by soldiers with crowds forced to turn out to cheer him. So much is going on in the story that the temptation is to reduce it to one element or another.

And that’s true for the whole of Holy Week. What’s Holy Week about? What’s the truth? Is it about a religious conflict or a political one? Is it about human sinfulness or fearfulness? Was Jesus executed for blasphemy or sedition? Was his crucifixion demanded by God as payment for sin or offered by God as a sign of God’s love? All of the above?

My sense is that although we tend to pull out and separate the various aspects of Holy Week, it’s all of a piece. The whole of Jesus’ life and the life of his world was present in Holy Week: the suffering and the poverty of the people, the impulse to self-preservation and pride of place of the religious leaders, the brutality and economic exploitation of the Roman occupiers, the failure of all to love God and neighbor. It’s all there.

And that’s true for us as well. Our lives are of a piece, and the various layers can’t be isolated and addressed apart from one another: the poverty of so many in America. The pandemic and its aftermath. Hostility toward Jews, people of color, and our LBGTQ siblings. Gun violence. Climate change. The impulse to authoritarianism. Suspicion about religion and the failures of religious institutions. Everyone’s failure to love God and our neighbors. It’s all there in our Holy Week.

Holy Week invites us to reflect on the cost of life in this world, the cost paid in one way or another by each of us for our failures to love one another. And then invites us to consider a way forward as people who all suffer and who are all to blame. Jesus embraces our suffering and offers himself as the answer.

What do you believe? Is love the answer?

God bless you.