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“...Experience the gospel viscerally; not only by reading the words, but with sight and sound, smell and taste. The good news should impact our senses, so that the world we encounter in its light, its sound, and its taste, is transformed.”
During Lent I have been reading Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week by Amy-Jill Levine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018) , who is an Orthodox Jew, and a New Testament scholar based at Vanderbilt. She frames Holy Week around the risks that were present to Jesus and his followers.
Holy week is a time to reflect on the mortality of Jesus and ourselves, while also looking toward the celebration of God’s power to undo the effects of death. This week is fraught with risk for Jesus and his followers, and the greatest risk is death. Much of the risk rises out of the way Jesus confronts power. As Jesus enters Jerusalem in a triumphal parade, Jesus challenges power that employs violence to ensure peace. As he steps onto the Temple courts, he challenges people who espouse a faith that has long claimed that there will be a day when adherents will not need vendors to provide unblemished animals for the Temple sacrifice, for every house in every town will be a Temple (see Zechariah 14:21 and Jeremiah 31:34) and “...the entire land lives in a sanctified state.” As he teaches on paying taxes with the coin of the realm, he is pointing out that the graven images of emperor Tiberius, the son of Augustus who had been declared divine by the Roman senate, and his wife, Julia, who was named a high priest, were a subtle form of Roman propaganda reminding all people who is god, who has the power, who holds the money. As he accepts anointing by a woman carrying costly nard, he is in a long line of kings, priests and prophets who had been anointed into their ministries, and he is foreshadowing his death with the practice of bodily anointing before burial. As we enter the place of the last supper, we begin to hear sacrificial language and see that Jesus is our sacrifice, much as a lamb was sacrificed as an offering at the Temple altar for the Passover seder. As we enter the Garden of Gethsemane, and as we witness Judas betraying Jesus (literally “giving him over”) to the authorities, as the swords are drawn and as Jesus does not resist arrest, Jesus once again presents non-violence as a better choice than violence.
Each of these actions brought risk– risk to reputation, risk of righteous anger being confused with violent wrath, risk of rejection, or denial, or betrayal, and the ultimate risk to life and limb. Following Jesus may not seem so risky these days, and yet the subversiveness of the gospel still has the power to make us uncomfortable as we reflect on gaining peace through violence, using money that is ultimately propaganda of a government, and the seeming incongruity of humility and extravagance.
Holy Week, as the final week of Lent, continues the focus on human bodies, minds, and souls. The gospels engage all of our senses, asking us to be in our bodies to smell, taste, hear, see, and feel the crowds, the sacrificial slaughters and roasting meat, the smell of the nard, the tiredness of bodies, the bread and cup of the last supper, and the fragility of life. As you step into Holy Week, I encourage you to notice how your body reacts to the events.
“Breathe in, and you can feel the ‘breath of life’ known already from the garden of Eden. Taste the bread and remember that John has told us that Jesus is the bread of life. Taste the grape and remember that John told us that Jesus is the true vine. See the sunshine, or flip the switch in the bathroom, and remember that John has told us that Jesus is the light of the world. Touch the palm of your hand, and then touch the hand of your neighbor, and remember that John has told us that the word became flesh. And listen to the good news.”
Blessed Easter to all. Pastor Tony
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