The Semana
Santa, as they call it in Spain, or Holy Week, begins for Christians all over
the world soon.
You know the
historic story and the familiar scenes of the trial of Jesus and his final
journey to the Cross. It is an epic story, a story filled with drama and
cruelty and mystery and love.
What is it
really about? The classic Christian interpretation tells us we are all sinners
lost without hope. We were born ruined, the children of the first parents,
corrupted by their selfishness, by their ignoring God’s command to stay away
from the Tree of Knowledge, and supposedly by their wanting to be like God. As
the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve whose sin we inherited and are sure to
repeat, according to classic Christian theology, we are all to be punished and
sent to hell. So Jesus came to die for our ruined souls. He died in our place so
God would not send us to hell. He paid the ransom for us, we are told. His
physical death took care of our spiritual debt. He then rose from the dead in
power over sin and hell. All we have to do is believe in this and be saved and
we are redeemed from the curse of ourselves.
That’s the
classic, the traditional Christian meaning of Holy Week. Simple enough, right?
Not quite.
We are not
born into sin. Our souls are not ruined at birth. The story of the Garden scene
with Adam and Eve and the Tree and the snake and the fig leaves—just a story.
It’s an inadequate attempt of some long ago writer to explain evil in the
world.
How might
human history be different if the Bible told us we were all born into love?
For me, Holy
Week is actually about that. It’s about love. The very human Jesus, through his
life and ministry, his teachings and wisdom, and in his death, was trying to
show us what human love is all about; not what awful doomed sinners we are.
Rolling about
in the muck is no way to get clean. To be consumed with our badness, our evil,
our sins, and to believe that we are damaged souls who are incapable of being
responsible for our own lives, for our own behavior, that we have to be rescued
by a Christ figure in order to be good and do good, is, as far as I’m concerned,
a terrible misunderstanding of life and a very strange way to think of
ourselves as human beings.
I don’t think
the Jesus of history ever thought of us in that way.
To believe
that Jesus was sent to earth by God to be beaten and mocked and crucified so I
can go to heaven, so I can be redeemed from the original sin of wanting to know
things, is not a truth I can accept. It has never made any sense to me and I
totally reject it now and have for years.
Jesus died on
a cross because he was a threat to the Roman Empire. He was executed because he
had a growing following of people who liked what he said and did, which gave
him influence the real power brokers wanted. As a result he was killed as a
trouble maker and a teacher who rebelled against Roman authority and strict
Jewish laws. But he didn’t die in hate, or bitterness, or raging anger. He died
in love. He died saying; even if you kill me I will still love you. He died
taking it all in. He died with courage.
The twelve
disciples, the New Testament writers, and later the early church fathers could
not handle the death of Jesus. It seemed like such a defeat. For them, Jesus simply could
not stay dead. So they invented the resurrection. As New Testament scholar C.H.
Dodd once wrote, “The early church thought of the Cross only as a disaster
retrieved by the resurrection.”
It doesn’t
have to be that way. The real glory of Holy Week is not Jesus coming back to
life, but his showing how far love will go; his taking full responsibility for
his life, his teachings, his actions,
and his death. That is what he is showing us. It is a model for our own human
journey.
Psychiatrist
James Hollis has said the capacity to grow emotionally “depends on the ability
to internalize and take responsibility for” our own depths. There is your Holy
Week truth.
I want to die
on my own messy cross. And hopefully do it loving, down to the very end, just as Jesus showed us.
© 2014
Timothy Moody
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