Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

The passion of Jesus is an ever popular drama, recreated in oratorios, plays, movies, musicals and operas from Johann Bach’s Passion and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ; from Oberammergau to the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. It is fitting that we should try to reenter that historic moment through stagecraft, because the crisis of that first Holy Week was indeed a drama. It was the truest representation of God’s saving love for us, and it could be shown to us in no other way.

In two day’s we will celebrate Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. On this Friday we hear, “The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.” There is a long, tragic tradition of Christians blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. They overlook his own words in John 10:

This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father."

Worse, they totally miss the point of this drama. The Jews no more killed Jesus than the Pharaoh drove the Hebrews out of Egypt. Both were divine displays of God’s enormous authority.

To get some grasp of this truth we must walk with Jesus to Jerusalem, to the Cenacle and to Calvary. We must listen and be quiet and watch what happens without thought, without opinions, and without judgment. It is impossible to appreciate God’s mercy unless we see him crucified. We can make up all kinds of philosophical statements about God’s goodness but they are so much humbug, so much wishful thinking, unless we have been to Calvary. Sure, God ought to be good. Sure, God ought to be all-powerful, all-wise, and all-merciful. Those are nice ideas about God and who wouldn’t agree with them? But you’re talking through your hat until you have been to Calvary and seen it for yourself.

As we enter Holy Week we must follow the lead of Saint Thomas,

So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go to die with him.” John 11:16