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Easter is now well behind us and christians have recovered from the roller coaster events known as Holy Week. Holy Week is the unofficial beginning of spring, beginning on Palm Sunday and ending on Easter Sunday. In Christian thought it is a week full of symbolism and emotion: Parade! Temple rage! Foot washing! Betrayal! Bread and wine! Tortured death! Eternal life!
Cheryl and I often watch the streamed church services from Islington United Church (free plug!). The past Palm Sunday gathering was hosted by children singing and acting out their version of Jesus’ donkey-ride into Jerusalem. The kids were endearing, the music was fun, the palm branches were waved, and I can still hear the voice of one of the children exclaiming:
“Jesus is in town!”
My thoughts traveled back to the first time our staid little church handed out palm branches for Palm Sunday. I don’t know about the other congregants but I still recall how real it felt for shy-little-me to celebrate Jesus that Palm Sunday in a new, physical way.
Waving a skinny palm branch made me feel like he was still in town.
palms-n-blood
Jesus lived under the canopy of the Roman Empire but more directly within the influence of two regional kings – Herod the Great¹ (who tried to kill him when he was born) followed by his son Herod Antipas (who was complicit in his death). The younger Herod reigned through most of Jesus’ life.
Interestingly, Jesus never showed much interest in Herod except to brush him off as “that old fox” when told of the king’s plot to kill him. Nevertheless, Jesus’ donkey-ride into Jerusalem was a direct rebuke to Herod’s military parades which were designed to maintain Roman influence through intimidation.
After he rode the donkey into Jerusalem, Jesus proceeded to the Temple – the religious centre of the Jewish people and one of Herod the Great’s major building projects. The Temple was operated by the Sadducees, the wealthy, priestly types who maintained a cozy relationship with Herod. It was during this visit that Jesus angrily chased the profit-takers from the Temple and overturned their merchandising tables, insisting that access to God was free for all.
That first century relationship between church and state feels eerily similar to the theocracies we see in the world today: government as a weapon; religion as a mascot. As Richard Rohr observes, “A heart of stone cannot recognize the empire it builds and worships.”
But Jesus took a different path, bypassing the influence of the wealthy, the religious, the powerful, the comfortable, and proclaiming a different kingdom of justice through love. Jesus chose the side of the weak, and the “principalities and powers” hated him for it.
History lesson: within a few years the Sadducees had disappeared from the face of the earth.
thanks woody
Recently I discovered that the band U2 had contributed to a tribute album called, ‘Folkways, A Vision Shared – A Tribute to Woody Guthrie’. Their song was titled Jesus Christ ² written and recorded originally by Woody Guthrie, a folk musician known for his resistance songs.
Guthrie strikes a familiar theme in his song with lyrics like:
‘The bankers and the preachers they nailed him on a cross,’
Or how about this reminder from the last verse:
‘Yes, if Jesus was to preach [today] like he preached in Galillee,
‘They would lay poor Jesus Christ in his grave.’
You can search YouTube or your favourite music provider for both versions of the song. Guthrie’s original recording is acoustic, spartan, ironic, pointed. U2’s version adds instrumentation as well as the word “Hallelujah!” in the chorus, making it rhythmic, triumphant, joyful.³
Each ironically reminds us that the ‘grave’ and the ‘hallelujah’ existed side by side during that when Jesus was in town. A week we now call holy.
holy weak
The week leading to Easter was the unofficial beginning of spring. This blog may seem a bit late or out of place but I wanted to pause and recognize it as a pattern, a template for our own lives. William Blake said, “Without contraries is no progression” and that seems about right.
Holy Week is our annual reminder that sorrow and joy seem to be mystically intertwined though we don’t know why. I suspect it has something to do with how all things – good and evil, visible and invisible – are unified and purified under the crushing will of Love. Or something like that.
The ‘principalities and powers” seemed strong, yet Jesus triumphed in spite of them … through them, in fact. The hard truth of Jesus’ example is that each week is in fact, a holy week, built on the interplay of our troubles and triumphs.
And Jesus is still in town.
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¹Herod the Great was known for multiple ego-driven building projects – ports, fortresses, palaces, the magnificent temple we read about in the NT, and a massive arch bearing his name
² https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Jesus_Christ.htm
³ These days I often find more spiritual substance in so called ‘secular’ musicians than with the current crop of industrialized christian music
Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash
