During Holy Week, a lot of our attention quite naturally falls on Jesus. He is the one, after all, about whom the gospels are recorded, and the narrative of Holy Week in particular centers around his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection.
But… Jesus traveled with a crew. Most famously, the twelve disciples, but also a much wider cohort of friends and supporters (probably even more than twelve disciples, because the gospels mention more than twelve because the lists are different), especially a group of women who are regularly mentioned throughout the text.
So consider, what must it have been like to be this community, the community around Jesus, during Holy Week? Let’s experiment with imagining ourselves in their place.1
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One of the first moments is the woman (unnamed) who pours an alabaster jar of costly ointment on his head while he reclines at a table. The disciples are offended at this, pointing out it could have been sold and given to those in need.
I’ve heard this kind of internal division frequently in beleaguered communities, the in-fighting about strategy. One person wants to welcome refugees. Some others say, “But what about the homeless right here in our town?!” As if it’s an either-or, and there aren’t enough resources to do both.2
Jesus rebukes the disciples in this instance, and remind them if they live in his way they’ll always have poor people with them (because they have committed their lives to serving the poor). So it’s also okay to pour some perfume on him for his future burial.
It is at this moment that one of the disciples, Judas, goes off to make his deal to betray Jesus.
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Jesus’ community is often called upon to acquire the props for religious observances. The first is the acquisition of a donkey and a colt for his triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
I think this can be construed in no other way as active participation in protest, in resistance. The beleaguered community (who has been previously warned about the risks of accompanying the Messiah who will go to Jerusalem and die) are now asked to be complicit in organizing a public action that will be perceive both by the religious authorities and the Roman government as a threat to their “peace.”
Remember also the very next thing Jesus does after riding that donkey and colt into the city: he overturn the tables of the money changers in the temple. So add “threat to the economic system” on top of political and religious resistance.
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Intriguingly, when Jesus is going about healing the blind and lame, it is especially children who are calling out in a loud voice, “Hosanna to the Heir to the House of David!” So even the children participate in the revolutionary activity. This makes the religious leaders indignant. Of course youth are quite often perceived as threat by regressives who hold power. “Those meddling kids!”
But bottom line, the kids are in the beleaguered community also.
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The gospel of Matthew presents us with a number of parables and teachings of Jesus while he is in Jerusalem the week of his arrest. This means the community around him followed him and listened to him. Beleaguered communities attend teach-ins.
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Jesus was fundamentally an an-archist. So another part of such beleaguered community is the putting into practice of non-hierarchical community. Jesus teaches the community to perform the observances the religious scholars teach, but don’t imitate their actions (which were often performative). Call one another siblings, rather than titles that elevate. The greatest among you will be the one who serves the rest. Etc.
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Holy Week observances begin in earnest on Thursday. This is the day on which Jesus shared a meal with his disciples (and in some gospels, though not in Matthew, washed their feet). I think generally speaking a large part of life together around Jesus was eating together. And apparently, although it always gets just passing reference—singing. Matthew 26:30 reads: “Then, after singing the Hall, they walked out to the Mount of Olives.”
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The disciples go out to pray with Jesus at Gethsemane, but what they really do is fall asleep. I’ve always wondered about this, assuming I should find some salient point the gospel writer was making about the disciples. But more and more I just wonder if they were all just genuinely exhausted. I mean, the pace at which Jesus moved, the emotional weight of serving among the poor and sick and committing your life to this particular way.
Meanwhile the betrayer is still awake, bringing in the armed forces to arrest Jesus. It’s almost as if those committing injustices are inexhaustible and energized. There’s some strange comfort here in this text. If you feel tired following Jesus, you’re not alone. The disciples did too.
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Next is a passage that will surprise some. Apparently, those who accompanied Jesus were armed, at least some of them were. It’s not entirely clear if this had to do with self-defense, or whether it was related to plans for actual armed insurrection on the part of some in the community. But I think we can learn from this that all communities in the way of Jesus, by the nature of their organizing, will have to have difficult conversations about safety, protection, etc.
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Peter ends up betraying Jesus three times because strangers recognize him as one of those who was with Jesus when they entered Jerusalem. Part of beleaguered community is guilt by association. You know you are really living in solidarity with Jesus (and those who Jesus cares for) when people point out your proximity or similarity. This can often catch allies by surprise. If we’ve lived with privilege for a long time of not being profiled by the police, not being accused of rabble-rousing, and suddenly we receive such attention, it can been a quick and easy emotional move to evade, to disavow affiliation. Peter’s example gives us fair warning.
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The arrest and crucifixion of Jesus means he is taken away from his community. In this sense, this moment is a lot like any family who lives with the difficulty of their family member going through the criminal punishment system. Lots of separation and distance.
This makes a line late in the gospel all the more poignant. After all his whippings and trials and death, we finally get Matthew 27:55, which reads: “A group of women were present, looking on from a distance. These were the same women who had followed Jesus from Galilee as minister to him. Among them were Mary of Mandala; Mary, the mother of James and Joseph; and the mother of Zebedee’s children [the same mother who asked that her sons sit at his right and left hand].”
A wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathea, gets Jesus’ body and buys a tomb for his burial. These women, once his body is lain there, remain near the tomb and grieve. As difficult as it is to be in such a situation, I think if we have identified ourselves in this experiment with the beleaguered community around Jesus, I think we can find a lot of similiarities to our own situation today. Sometimes things really are so terrible about all we can do is stand nearby and weep.
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There’s a reason Holy Week includes very long readings from Scripture, plus liturgy that re-enacts key moments in this last week of Jesus’ life. On Palm Sunday and then again at the Good Friday service, we take the time to actually read the entirety of the passion narrative, because sitting with such texts allows us to enter into the story and bring our own lives alongside it. So too the liturgy, in particular Maundy Thursday service, has us practice the meal and the foot-washing as liturgical examples of how we are to live together all the time.
I’m going to work exclusively from the gospel of Matthew for this experiment.
There’s a significant earlier moment in the gospels, right as Jesus is telling them they’ll be heading to Jerusalem, James and John’s mother brings them before Jesus and asks him to promise that they’ll sit at his right and left hand. The other ten get indignant at this. Jesus’ response: “Anyone among you who wishes to be first must serve the needs of all.”
First regarding always having the poor with you, this is simply an economic observation.. imagine everyone in the US received a million dollars. A dozen people
Go to Starbuckd for a coffee for $8. These people are now the poor people in your community.