Good Friday Exchange: Harrowing Holy Week

Hard to Take Holy Week

Holy Week is taxing. It’s a whirlwind of exchange–a roller coaster ride of emotional ups and downs (for the full biblical stories check out: Math 26-28; Mark 14-16; Luke 22-24; John 18-10).

Starting with Palm Sunday Jesus rides into Jerusalem through exultant crowds bursting with expectancy, mere day’s later hope is dashed and extinguished. At Passover the joy of intimate dining with the closest friends soon dissolves. In a midnight garden under the pressure of existential agonizing Jesus is certain of an imminent, tortuous and pain filled physical death. Betrayal greets him with a death sentence kiss. Then, after the cross: the burial and grief, the furtive skulking, the terror of being discovered by the authorities and subjected to a similar fate–the feel of entrapment–entombed like the body of Jesus. Followed by the sweeping uplifting surge to victory, the Resurrection promise of new life and new beginnings with hope restored.

The abrupt highs and lows of Holy Week I find hard to take. Lent is generous with forty days to reflect, pray and fast (see: https://wp.me/p89n5f-dm Faith Unfurled: Forty Days) but after Holy Week wouldn’t another forty days be welcome if only to recover from the emotional vortex?

Travails of a Faith Life

Such are the travails of faith. I wonder why anyone would want to be a Christian because it’s not for the fainthearted.

I don’t mind the party atmosphere at the beginning and end of Holy Week but the middle makes me tremble–so much drama–even though I enjoy drama but only watching it from the comfort of my couch or a cinema seat. But when the going gets tough… well, I’m just not that tough or brave.

In my prayer life when Jesus asks me “Will you come with me?” my impulsive and unconsidered answer is “Yes.” That’s before thinking about the implications or scanning the landscape ahead, particularly at Holy Week when asked to journey with Jesus. Between Palm and Easter Sundays it’s a treacherous landscape. What if the journey to the cross is too difficult and I fall down half way, like Jesus, but don’t rise to my feet again like he did? What if, like Peter, I falter, fail and deny Jesus? Why would I choose a journey with failing assured and emotional and psychological duress guaranteed? Why would a sane person do this?

It’s a bizarre inexplicable thing that holds my heart. Those of my non-believing family, especially my cousins who are my age, I am sure look at me askance. I can’t blame them. I can barely explain it to myself let alone anyone without a faith life or with a faith life that doesn’t include Jesus. How to explain the machinations of a loving God that allows a loved son to suffer in sacrifice for an undeserving humanity? For an all-powerful God sacrifice seems unnecessary. Surely a loving God can forgive and restore without the bloody mess of a sacrifice.

Making Sense of Love’s Exchange

Reluctantly I went to Maundy Thursday service. I’d toyed with showing up for the fellowship of the pre-service Agape supper (our churches imitation of the Passover dinner) and disappearing before the service started. I’d had a busy, stressful week but most of all I didn’t want to face the emotions I knew the service would stir. The evening’s intent was to mirror Jesus’ journey from the camaraderie of the Passover dinner to the loneliness and despair in the Garden of Gethsemane. I went anyway.

For the same reason I didn’t want to go to Good Friday service the next morning either. The journey to the cross tears at your emotions and I hate crying in church. I sometimes get angry. Why would you allow this to happen to Jesus, God? It doesn’t make sense.

I’d forgotten our new Bishop would be at our Good Friday service. In Bishop Jenny’s homily she did a good job of making sense out of the senseless.

I think I got it right, but paraphrasing she said something like: “Love cannot exist unless there is an exchange; otherwise love is powerless sentimentality. It has no substance.” An exchange gives power to love.

Bishop Jenny encouraged the congregation to recall the difficult people in our lives, the ones who challenge us to dig deep. Often helping is draining. We come away from the exchange depleted. In loving another we give something concrete of ourselves–mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. This is not insubstantial sentiment.

Having raised two children I better understood when she made the analogy to parenting. She said parents give up things that benefit themselves (sleep, money, peace of mind, etc) in order for their children to prosper. The parents diminish to augment the children. There is an exchange–one gives, the other receives. Should the parents not give, the children do not thrive.

With a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes Bishop Jenny assured her point with recounting the story of the police officer, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, who in a recent terrorist attack in southern France offered himself in place of a female hostage. He exchanged his life and died saving hers. His intervention brought the attack to a quicker close. Arnaud was a Catholic Christian. The priest to marry him and his fiancé in six weeks time performed the last rites.

Bishop Jenny said when Jesus looses he wins.

Briefly the terrorist will be remembered for his evil but Colonel Arnaud Beltram’s sacrifice lives on as a witness to the world of the power of love’s exchange.

I was glad I stuck it out and went to church. A wise Bishop explained to my heart the inexplicable.

Christ is raised. Happy Easter!