Holy week, this most holy of weeks. The week that the whole of Jesus life and ministry has been leading up to. It really is a rollercoaster of a week, from the triumph of the entry into Jerusalem to Jesus’ trial and execution at the end. What a story! Jesus told us to tell his story and this is the crescendo of it, it all comes up to the final week of his life. He celebrates his final meal with his friends, he’s arrested, sentenced to death, dies and is buried in a tomb.
For me the peak of all this drama is Good Friday, I can remember when I was a child being told if you’re only going to go to church one day over that week then Good Friday is the most important. It took me a long time to work out why but for me Good Friday reveals the whole point and a real understanding of the reason for the incarnation. God came to earth in human form bringing hope but also to experience being human, for me, this is the time when Jesus is at his most human.
You can see this throughout the story of those few days, Jesus has already begged God to stop this ‘Take this cup away from me’, I can’t do what you’re asking of me. He’s been arrested, his friends have abandoned him, his been questioned and interrogated all night and now he has heard a crowd shout at him ‘Crucify him, Crucify him’. He’s then handed over to the Roman Soldiers who mocked him, flogged him, abused and tortured him before nailing him to a cross and leaving him there until he was dead. When the bread breaks in communion and you hear that snap, I think of Jesus bones breaking during this ordeal. Can you imagine the pain he must have been in? Jesus died to save those who had nailed him to that cross.
Jesus didn’t just die in his bed of old age, he died a horrific death in his mid 30’s and we can’t get away from that, ignore or underplay it (many try), I believe it does a disservice to Jesus as this is the time when he was at his most human. When asked does God really understand the suffering of humanity, point to the agony of Jesus on the cross, that’s how God knows. He died and went to Hell (as it says in the apostle’s creed). One exercise I have always practiced during Lent is to cover any crosses and images/representations of Jesus I have with white cloths. I do because this is the time when he is distant but most poignantly on Good Friday and Saturday when Jesus is dead. If you’ve not done this before maybe try it this year, if only on Good Friday and Saturday when we are mourning his death.
But of course, unlike those first followers, we know how this story ends. In the words of Tom Baker in Doctor Who, just before his doctor’s regeneration, ‘It’s the end but the moment has been prepared for.’ This one really had!
Christians are people of the Resurrection, re birth in the resurrected Jesus but remember the Jesus who came back still carried the scars of what he had gone through in the final hours of his life, it isn’t forgotten by him. This Holy week remember Jesus at his most human, when he was most like us and how he still carries those scars to truly understand his children, that’s how much he loves us!
Rev Helen
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 