A blessed Holy Week to all. Holy Week, the most sacred week on the Christian calendar, containing the Sacred Triduum or sacred three days, is a gift given to reflect on the climax of Jesus’ life. It’s a week where we see what his teachings and actions led him to.

            So much meaningful and coherent material has been written about this week, all I intend to do is to share a few thoughts, some of which are original to me, but most of which I bring from others. I also throw in a few musings or “let’s think about that.”

GARDENS ARE FOR LOVERS

 

The passion of Jesus was . . . Love.

“Passion” is an intriguing word.  You and I can easily say that our passion is . . . sports, literature, art, and so on. But, why. as soon as we connect that word with Jesus, does it become all about his physical suffering and torture?

Why do we love violence so much? Why do we focus so much on Jesus’ physical suffering during Holy Week? The gospels certainly don’t. In fact, a relatively recent feature film about the major events of Holy Week so emphasized the violence to and physical suffering of Jesus, that, in my opinion, it did a major disservice to the gospels.

I think some people gravitate toward Jesus’ sufferings to elicit feelings of sorrow or sympathy, so it becomes easier to stand back in awe and worship him rather than to follow him.

Did Jesus suffer physically? You betcha. But his suffering is made manifest in one who is a lover.

The modern spiritual writer, Ronald Rolheiser, presents us with an image surrounding Jesus the Lover – the garden. Scripturally, Jesus begins and ends his “passion” in a garden, and “gardens are for lovers.” Think the Garden of Eden.

The gospels take pains not to dwell upon Jesus’ physical sufferings. Nowhere are his tortures described. They are just stated straightforwardly. The evangelists focus on what Jesus endured emotionally and morally. Jesus’ passion is a moral drama.

When Jesus anticipates his passion, he experiences anxiety about his aloneness, his being betrayed and abandoned by those whom he loves., and so many more feelings we know so well when we suffer.  Jesus is a lover who is undergoing this drama. Jesus could have invoked divine power to escape, but no . . . He chooses how he will die, “Will I die a bitter, angry, unforgiving man; or will I die with a compassionate, forgiving heart?”

Jesus doesn’t suddenly suffer pain in a vacuum. He preached his whole life that love, community, and forgiveness will ultimately triumph. The will of his Father will prevail, but Jesus suffered for his commitment and message.

He says to Pilate, “Nobody takes my life, I give it over freely” (John. 19:10-11). He gave it over freely the night before in the garden. The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. come to mind, “Choosing self-preservation is not necessarily choosing life.” If we are true followers of Jesus, we are called on to let go of our lives without being resentful. What is special about Jesus is how he met his death, willing to die without resentment, with a warm heart.

 

He died not to assuage the wrath of an angry god. We say we are saved in his blood. For a Jew blood was life and as he was freely giving his life. Jesus absorbed the toxicity of all the evil being heaped on him and never gave it back. No tit-for-tat; no eye-for-an-eye; no calling out insulting names.  He takes away the sin of the world “by transforming it, by changing it, by taking it inside of himself and transmuting it” (Rolheiser). His death gives us the power to do the same. In his blood we are healed. Can we call that SALVATION?

Jesus’ seven last words, on which we so often meditate during Holy Week, can be summed up as expressing how Jesus chose to die. Jesus is victimized, but never a victim! He feels abandoned, yet he forgives. He shares his life with the thief; he looks to care for his mother and beloved disciple despite his agony. He thirsts, not physically but by anticipating that his invitation to new life will be proclaimed, and yet has the humility and courage to know that it’s time to say, “Father, your will is done and for me it is finished.”

The blood Jesus sweated in the garden, the blood of the lover, the blood of one betrayed, morally betrayed and hung out to dry, was the life-freely- given of the lover who saves us.

Jesus, the lover, is buried in a garden and is raised in a garden and first appeared to another great lover in the garden. We can hear him say to Magdalene, “Mary, don’t cling to me, I’ve got a lot more love to give.”

We celebrate Lent to prepare for the drama of the three great days, not just Good Friday or Easter Sunday, to become more other-centered as was Jesus. Suffering is morally neutral; it is how we receive it that makes the difference. “I put before you today death and life. Choose life” (Deut. 30: 15-20). Especially in Lent and Holy Week, we have before us that choice and the choice is at the heart of the matter of being human and a follower of Jesus. This Holy Week let’s take something Jesus suffered and transform it in our own life or in the life of someone else.

Let’s find a garden to walk in during Holy Week and remember the great lover and his ultimate act of love.

A Few Musings.

  • When Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple, that was the clarion call to put him to death. Let’s focus on one small element of the story. He struck at those selling the pigeons for sacrifice (specifically mentioned by Matthew, Mark, and “doves” in John). We see the poor who came faithfully to the Temple to offer sacrifice, and it was the poor, “the least of these,” who could only afford to buy these small birds for sacrifice. Is it hard to conceive that these merchants were raising the price of these sacrificial animals and extorting the poor? Is it hard to imagine how that affected Jesus?
  • The word damin in biblical Hebrew means both “blood” and “money.” We know what Jesus said about the rich entering the Kingdom and that we can’t serve both God and Mammon. Could we use the image of Jesus shedding his blood also as an image of the need to let go of our “money” if we are to become more Christ-like?
  • How hard is it to sit one hour with a loved one who is suffering? How deep is the love?
  • Were the “eleven” really any better than Judas? They all abandoned Jesus. He forgave and would have forgiven all. After all, he chose them.
  • What does it say to us when we hear that Jesus was handed over to the religious authorities who feared the people who were his faithful followers?
  • If the Resurrection promises new life and freedom, then the virtue that gives us full freedom is forgiveness.

 

A blessed Easter. We are an “alleluia people” (St. Augustine).

 

(My thanks to Ronald Rolheiser, Richard Rohr, Dr. William Donovan, Rabbi Gadi Capela, and the late Rev. Bob Smith for their inspiration).