Holy Week

It’s Holy Week, that strange and storied eight days, from Sunday to Sunday, beginning with a “triumphal entry” into the city of cities, a city rife with rumors and rebellion, under the iron fist of Rome and a local leadership bound and determined to maintain peace. The crowds roar their approval, with palm branches and cloaks laid down before the procession, the entry of Jesus and his disciples, from the Mount of Olives, on a donkey, rather than a steed of war - an image of hope and deliverance.

What was the crowd thinking?

Many things, I’m sure, but caught up in the moment of those days, that week, a time fraught with so much hope and so many dreams, the crowd welcomed Jesus. He had a reputation for tweaking proud noses, and irritating the righteous. The crowds loved that sort of thing.

But it didn’t take for the crowd to crow a different tune a few days later. Oh how fickle the crowds can be. Fame so fleeting, and then it’s gone. Another race, another bet.

The officials consider what needs to be done, and Judas conspires with them, for his thirty-dirty-pieces of silver, and what was he thinking?

With a kiss, just to make sure the police get the right man, Judas betrays him. Jesus is led away, beaten and bloodied, presented to Pilate, then to Herod, and then back to Pilate - a show of law and order, but a complete and total moral failure. Power always has trouble with truth … power understands power, but truth is another matter. Finally, the roaring crowds are given a choice: shall it be Jesus or perhaps Barabbas; a prophet or a rebel?

The story ends badly, at least for Jesus. He’s led to a cross, a Roman execution, in a most public place, to let the world know who’s in charge and who calls the shots.

Jesus is crucified, dead, and buried.

Of Barabbas, we know nothing.

Of Pilate? Well, it didn’t end well for him either. Rome wasn’t happy, and so he’s invited to an early retirement.

Holy Week - when the darkest of motives are exposed, when God’s presence in our world is utterly and completely rejected by the crowds, by the powers, by just about everyone.

It seems that one of the two rebels crucified with Jesus had some regard for him. And the women at the foot of the cross, too. And then Jesus is dead, and just to make sure, a spear is driven into his gut by one of the soldiers; was it the one who was struck by it all? Soldiers doing their job, but not always happy

about it.

Jesus is tucked away … hurriedly … in a borrowed tomb … the disciples slink away to gather their thoughts and plan the next move, but mostly to hide from the growing threat of retaliation against them. And that was that.

But we shall meet them again, in the next chapter. But for now, we have to wait. That’s part of the strangeness of Holy Week. Nothing is entirely clear; it’s a time of fog and fatigue, disappointment and despair … one of those times when we cling to one another, even as words fail us. We cry, and we cry out.

Until then …