Yesterday marked the start of Holy Week. All the named days are about to parade by…Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday. All the big events. The week contains some of the most familiar, and most disturbing, scenes from Jesus’ life. Holy Week is not for the faint of heart.
And what of all the values that we’ve been cultivating? What of faithfulness and nurture? Of presence and forgiveness? Welp, it’s not a good look, as my 15-year-old would say. During Holy Week, the people who once embodied these values suddenly vacate them. The faith of the disciples seems to evaporate with Judas, for starters. But even Peter’s faithfulness flees in the face of the Roman guards. And while we had been given one Mary, deeply present to Jesus, anointing his feet, we now get a different Mary so distracted by grief that she cannot see the risen Christ in front of her. As for nurture? Jesus himself has doubts, calling out to God from the cross that he has been forsaken. In Holy Week all our heroes turn antihero, if even for a moment.
In the end – isn’t this a huge relief? Doesn’t it somehow seem right that our most sacred stories are not just about the best of us, but the worst of us as well? I suppose if I ever needed proof that we worship a God who knows and loves us, the events of Holy Week are where I’d look first. Because it is during this week we see that God did not come to redeem those who get progressively better and better. He came to redeem a world of back-sliding, messy, and despairing people who need Him not despite these traits, but because of them.
We all know how the story ends. A quiet morning, the stone rolled back. God once again among us. And the last few stories are beauties – Thomas helped back to faith from doubt. Peter thrice forgiven and nurtured by a loving Jesus. Friends present to one another at a breakfast on the beach, laughing and eating together. I think it is in these final stories that real grace resides – here that we find the meaning of Holy Week. Easter, we see, is not just about the resurrection of Christ, but about the return of what is good and possible in each one of us.
-Susie Pratt