The First Days of Holy Week

"If these were silent the very stones would cry out!" Indeed! This was Jesus' response to the religious leaders insistence that he silence the crowd that greeted him as he entered Jerusalem.

The scene is recaptured to some degree in most if not all of our churches across the United Church of Christ. In Norwich four congregations provided an outdoor, ecumenical witness to the Triumphal Procession of Jesus. The Episcopalians, American Baptists, United Methodists joined with the members of the United Church of Christ in Norwich, reported UCC pastor Joseph Connolly, pictured holding the large cross. (Thanks to Bonnie Scott Connolly for the photo.)

We usually mark the memorable events of Holy Week. The procession on Palm Sunday, and the cleansing of the Temple on Holy Monday. Of interest to me, however, are the "lesser" moments, the narrative fillers, if you will, sandwiched around the greater events.

Mark said that after the procession into Jerusalem, Jesus looked around, surveying the lay of the land. Luke wrote that it was on this Palm Sunday night that Jesus cried over Jerusalem, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes." (Luke 19:42).

On Holy Monday as Jesus and the disciples walked into Jerusalem to cleanse the temple, they passed a fig tree. It was barren of fruit and so Jesus cursed the tree. It's easy to moralize about this, especially when combining this story with the cursing of the temple. That and they that do not bear fruit, whether for eating or of the more spiritual kind that befits repentance, will become lifeless, indeed!

Moralizing about such things seems too easy to me, however. At another time, Jesus told a parable of a fig tree that didn't bear fruit in which the message was to wait patiently another year to see whether things changed. I want more chances to bear fruit, don't you? I need more chances. If Jesus were to walk by me, or look into my heart, on many of my days, he would see little bearing of good fruit, I'm afraid.

Is it self-serving or false to develop a theology of grace and salvation based upon what I want from God? Probably. Yet, grace is what Christianity is about, I believe. God so loved the world that God came in the flesh in Jesus of Nazareth to love us and show us the way to love, even to the point his ignominious death and glorious resurrection. This is grace -- meant for me and for you.

I don't like the story about the fig tree. And, the challenge of Jesus, "if you only recognized the things that make for peace" becomes a dagger in my heart, too. And, I pray, "Save me Lord Jesus. Forgive me God. Show me the way that makes for peace so that I will take heart and follow."

The stories of Holy Week unsettle me. They recall me to face myself and invite me to turn to God for the help that only God can give. Thank God.

Blessings,

Rick