"THE PARADES OF HOLY WEEK"

 “THE PARADES OF HOLY WEEK”

In the Biblical story in all four gospels, Holy Week begins with a parade into Jerusalem. It was a ragtag collection of the followers of Jesus, entering Jerusalem in the powerful and evocative time of Passover.  There were many ideas of the purpose of this parade.  Jesus chooses to do it in Passover as an “in your face” to the Roman and Jewish powers, similar to the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge (should be the John Lewis Bridge) on the march from Selma. In his powerful play of Clarence Jordan’s “Cotton Parch Gospel,” Tom Key suggests that the followers of Jesus felt like they were going to the big time, leaving behind the tent revivals in small town Judea and heading for the capital.  

From the Roman point of view, it was a dangerous march, like the Alabama authorities felt on that Selma march in 1965.   Passover is a Jewish festival that remembered and celebrated political liberation from slavery and captivity in Egypt.  The Empire did not want the pesky Jews to get any ideas, so at about the same time that Jesus entered Jerusalem, so did Pontus Pilate, the Roman governor of the region.  Just in case the Israelites got any ideas about liberation, Pilate and Rome wanted everyone to remember who was in control. By the end of the week, Rome would execute Jesus as a threat to the empire, and that is the central event of Holy Week.  Whatever theological meaning we give to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, Rome gave it this meaning – we reign supreme:  don’t mess with us.

In this sense, Holy Week is always contemporary, reminding us in every age that the powers of oppression and suppression are always knocking on the door, telling us to come out and identify ourselves, as to whether we are loyal to the oppressive powers or not.  In this year, we have witnessed several parades of oppressive powers coming into our lives, rivaling the parade of Jesus of Nazareth. There is the parade of racism and white supremacy, marching into our lives, singing “Blood and Soil,” killing Asian-American women, suppressing the vote (both events happening in my home state of Georgia, and there are powerful connections between these two.)

There is the coronavirus parade, reminding us that it does not care about our ideology or theology – it only wants our bodies to be sacrificed in order for it to thrive.  It is a plague right out of American history, similar in scope to the one 100 years ago and with a similar mismanaged political will which enabled it to kill at least 600,000 of us.  It also speaks clearly of our history – sacrificing many bodies to bring life to a virus of materialism and racism.

There is the Trumpdemic parade, seeking to make us cynical about everything, especially community and government, making us lose the capacity to tolerate and work with others, seeking to make us unwilling and even incapable of compassion, moving us close to nihilism and chaos.   

Holy Week comes into our lives where we live, as individuals and as a culture.  It reminds us of the tragedy that courses through our collective and individual histories.  The week begins in celebration of a new vision of compassion and justice and community, values that enable us to resist oppression.  Many of Jesus’ followers are shocked that Rome and Jerusalem are able to absorb this parade and even to crush its values.  The Cross reminds us that the powers are always resistant to God, are always resilient in their responses to God’s breakthroughs for justice and love, and are always threatening us with the cost of seeking justice and living lives based on love.  Holy Week is God’s final reminder to us of the cost of discipleship, a reminder thar asks us to consider our lives and the meaning of our lives.

Holy Week takes both the meaning of our lives and the cost of that meaning seriously.  To live out of justice and love means that we will be in danger of being run over by the other parades of our lives – Rome, racism, Covid-19, Trumpdemic.   We know that the story does not end here on the Cross, but the story does remind us of the cost of living lives based in justice and love.  In order to get to the true meaning of our lives, we must encounter the Cross and walk with Jesus through that valley of the shadow of death. Thank God, it is not the final word, but it is a powerful word, and yes, we were there when they hung him on the tree.