Holy Week

The more I read from the Gospel According to Mark, the more I am convinced that the foundational Jesus stories portrayed him as an active instead of a passive player in the events of Holy Week. While the Church has grown accustomed to understanding Jesus' Crucifixion as something that happened "TO"  him, I believe that we are led, in Mark, to think of these events as occurring "BECAUSE" of Jesus. Jesus forced the hands of the authorities, both Jewish and Roman.

On Sunday, Jesus finally reaches Jerusalem. While residing in Bethany, perhaps with a leprous family that he knew, Jesus decides how he will enter Jerusalem. The choice was not made innocently. Jesus decided that he was going to enter Jerusalem as a new king, coming for coronation. It is an ancient symbol, promised in Zechariah 9:9. This is Messiah. This is the new political hope of the burdened. This is alternative to the broken systems under which the poor and disenfranchised lived. This is your new king.

Jesus knew that this act was likely to rile the passions of those who sat daily, begging at the gate. They would embrace any alternative to the evil empire of Rome. This form of entry would have been immediately recognizable. Jesus borrowed the symbol purposefully, to incite their passions.

This is especially the case as the Judaic world approached Passover, the highest celebration of its liturgical year. Passover was the celebration of the ancient emancipation of the people from the slavepits of Egypt, from the injustice of the Pharaoh, from Egyptian empirical power. (Readers will recall that Passover is named for the spirit of death, which passed over the homes of those who had placed the blood of a lamb over their doorways. It killed the firstborn of all the families in Egypt.)

When a new king comes riding into town, in the course of the ancient celebration of emancipation from empirical power, the governing power has reason to be sensitive. So does the officially recognized religion. Temple Judaism had so compromised the faith, so weakened its practices, rituals and celebrations, that a line was then drawn between religious practice and everyday life. While the Temple celebrated Passover, it had ceased to be a political reality. It belonged exclusively to the world of ritual and liturgy. It had no application to practical life.

Jesus brings Passover into the realm of the practical. He makes the remembrance political. He frees the teachings of the Temple from liturgy and ritual. He embodies the promise of emancipation. The gate-community immediately sees and understands, just as Jesus intended. The crowd does not celebrate Jesus' coming to Jerusalem, but the advent of a new king, a new kingdom, new systems of justice and equality. I am convinced that it is the symbol that they celebrate. It is not Jesus.

Because Jesus finds himself alone at the Temple, he knows immediately that the gate-people and Jesus' followers are too rapt by fear and too self-concerned to follow him. The revolution has failed. There will be no claim from those at the gate, on either the Temple or the State. In what seems like a moment in Mark, Jesus decides that he has to do even more to force the hands of the authorities, hoping to foment in those at the gate the zeal necessary for revolution. 

On Monday, he attacks the economic infrastructure of the Temple. Jesus is violent and angry. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he teaches that the Temple is to be destroyed, that the ways of the Temple are about to be replaced by those who will follow him. On Passover, Jesus sits Seder with his students and compatriots, shares with them a new ceremony of bread and wine, goes out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and is there arrested. Just as Jesus had planned.

If they arrest the new king at Passover, if they put down the revolution by removing the head of its leader, then surely the people at the gate will arise in response. The Temple Authorities manipulate the situation to arrange for a Roman Crucifixion. Imagine the body of a would-be king hanging upon a cross, the symbol of empirical power in reaction to a threat, during a season of celebration for ancient emancipation from empirical power. Surely, the people will not tolerate this affront! Surely, they will arise!

Jesus looks out from the cross, over the gathered few. He anticipates a crowd of angry bystanders, or at least the sound of distant battle. Instead, there is silence. He can hear the breeze whistling around him. Jesus realizes the profound folly of his plan. He feels the emptiness and loneliness of the cross. His entire mission has failed. No one has noticed. No one cares. His beatings and humiliation have meant nothing. The people at the gate barely notice, as their former hope dies. Even Jesus' followers have abandoned him. All is quiet. There is peace. Jesus dies.

None of it worked as planned. Damn them. Damn those people at the gate. To Hell with his disciples. Why did they place the sole responsibility for their salvation on his shoulders? How dare they? They are so weak...so afraid...so complacent in their suffering. They will not raise a finger to help themselves.

Has this all been for naught?

Maybe not.

See You Sunday!