The Power of Holy Week

               When I was the rector of my parish, we usually had an “enacted Gospel” on Palm Sunday.  Participants would sometimes dress in costumes, but the point of it all was to dramatize the very long Gospel describing the last days of Jesus’ life.  There was the betrayal by Judas, the moments in the garden with Jesus praying and the apostles sleeping, then the arrest, the moment before the high priest, then the time with Pilate and the trek to Golgotha and the crucifixion.  I always loved those dramatizations because they made the Gospel come alive in the midst of the congregation.  We would have the people in the pews cry out “Crucify him!!” when the time came for the crowd to act.  It also gave a wonderful wholeness to the story, not just something that a reader was providing to us from a book at a lectern. 

            The problem with this story is that it is incredibly depressing.  We already know the outcome; the death of our savior on the cross and the dispersal of the apostles.  We know that Judas will be the betrayer and that Peter will deny that he knows Jesus three times.  In my homilies on those days, I tried to tell the people to not think about Easter; that the week we were heading into would involve the last supper on Maundy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday and then Holy Saturday when God is essentially dead.  I have to admit that when I would come into the church on Holy Saturday and smell the flowers that were being arranged for Easter by the Altar Guild that I would secretly cringe because that anticipation was keeping us from the utter despair of the death of God.  I know that there was nothing else that the Altar Guild could do.  But it is that despair that is so wonderfully redeemed at the break of day on Easter by the resurrection of our Lord.  Without living through the despair caused by the crucifixion, it is hard for us to understand the incredible gift that Easter is for us.  Easter is nothing that we do for ourselves.  It is something that God does after we have done our worst in causing the crucifixion.  That is why Peter’s denial means so much to all of us.  It is not only Peter, but all of us who have denied Jesus.  It is also all of us who are given the great gift of the resurrection of Jesus by our God whose love transcends all of the evil that is in our hearts.

            That is what Palm Sunday means for me.  It begins with the slow journey through the streets of Jerusalem with the crowds laying palms before Jesus as he rides his donkey.  It ends with those same crowds calling for Jesus’ crucifixion and those palms are turned into a cross to hold the Son of God.  It is a remarkable transition.  We are a part of that crowd, both in the laying of the palms and the calling for the crucifixion.  We are the ones who have done it.  Keep that in mind as we go through this Holy Week.  When we understand our part in the death of Jesus, we will also know the magnificent wonder that we are given when our Lord emerges from the tomb.