Thoughts on the Holy Week

For many Christian traditions this period of the year is devoted to think and reflect on a particular part of the Scripture: the days preceding the death of Jesus at the Cross and to finalise with the climax of history, the Resurrection of Jesus. And so, I found it's a good occasion to write some thoughts about.

The Gospel of John makes a clear account of the days. E.g. "On the sixth day before the Passover feast" (John 12.1), he was anointed by Mary, and later on he entered in Jerusalem (v 12-19) as the coming King. I think that John's gospel makes often links to the book of Genesis, like the first verses of John 1 that bring your mind to the first verses of Genesis 1. And they are therefore speaking of creation. Genesis speaks about the creation of natural things, John, points to the cosmic event of the new creation, and the joining of heavens and earth, and the coming of the Kingdom of God.

When Jesus started his ministry, he announced the nearness of the Kingdom of God. And as we can see during this week, he embodied that announcement.

Now, the story between Israel and God is the story of God's people rebelling against God, and being punished for it with exiles and slavery; but it is always the story of God coming to rescue and save his people, and to restore them. Keeping this in mind, Jesus comes with the announcement of the Kingdom, the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Finally, heaven and earth will converge in a unique action that will be the final defeat of all powers of evil.

So the first thing when we see Jesus being anointed by Mary, someone who by listening to Jesus understood what was going to happen, we see the preparation for the most important event in history, that would be performed by Jesus, the only one who could do so. The next day, he enters Jerusalem in a donkey, and he is greeted as King. Subversive, because there was indeed a king in Israel those days, and a roman emperor too! But the King comes on a donkey ... strange figure, since the expectations of 1st century's Israelites were a victorious warrior Messiah, not a humble man sitting on a donkey. When God comes, apparently he never comes as expected by human beings. After that, he cleanses up the temple. Oups, again doing what it was an attribution of kings to do. Solomon and Nehemiah built temples; Hezekiah and Josiah cleansed the temple and celebrated the Passover!

The temple stood as the place for the forgiveness of sins (individual and collective), and the place where God's presence was expected to be. It was a place where both heaven and earth converged. Jesus is claiming temple rights: he forgave sins and spoke of knowing the Father and listening to Him.

But of course, so many pointing to a different Kingdom were also accompanied by a clear challenge to the powers in place particularly the Roman Empire. All his teachings could be summarised in "love God above all, and your neighbours as you love yourself". This idea challenges the understanding of power pointing to being servants to others instead of oppressing others!

More will come soon!