The Logic of Holy Week

The progression of Holy Week proceeds from Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. The events of this week in the life of Jesus are given to us in a fair amount of detail in all of the gospel accounts. There are few stories more drenched with political and religious drama than what unfolds in the pages of our gospels as Jesus proceeds through the week. He arrives being hailed as the promised King. On Monday, he pronounces judgment on the Temple and Jerusalem through his actions in the temple, turning over tables and fashioning a whip. This action, in many ways, unites three groups against him that were never united over much of anything - in fact they were mortal enemies - the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Priestly council. He proclaims a not so enigmatic prophetic allegory concerning a vineyard, the sins of its stewards, and the coming judgment against these stewards (the Temple was made to look like a vineyard, and Israel was called in the Old Testament, the Vineyard of the Lord). He provides instruction and comfort to his disciples both concerning his impending arrest as well as the judgment coming against Jerusalem which will ultimately become the axis point between the Old Age and the Age to Come. He is arrested, executed and buried. And then, as we will celebrate on Easter Sunday, he is raised from the dead.

The story itself is intriguing, but it also contains an inner theological logic to how the Gospel actually works in our lives and in society. It is a logic which plays out throughout the New Testament accounts of the Gospel, and in particular, when the Gospel is preached and people are saved. We (and everyone else) is first confronted with the Authority of Jesus as pictured on Palm Sunday. He doesn't come as one preparing to conquer, but as one who's victory and authority are already assured. He is the King, the righteous Judge of all the earth, and the One before whom all must bow. This confrontation immediately creates a problem: We are, all of us, traitors. We have persisted in presuming to be our own gods, rebelling against God's Law. Any good King will execute judgment against traitors to His Kingdom. But Christ dies in our place, atoning for our sins, and bringing about our reconciliation. And so, we move from Palm Sunday to Good Friday.

But our problems are not simply judicial. We actually must be made new. We are not only condemned by our sin and the spectre of death. We are dead in our sins. We are enslaved to our sin. We must be raised from the dead. And so, with Jesus - by faith in Jesus and through baptism, we are raised from the dead to walk in a new life. Christ ascends to the Father and takes up his throne as King of all the nations, and gives us the good gift of His Spirit that we might have life. Thus, we come to Easter (and subsequently, the Ascension and Pentecost).

Every part of this movement is essential to our understanding of, and faithful obedience to, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you will have the Lordship of Jesus without the cross, you will only have judgment. If you will have the cross without the Lordship of Jesus or the Resurrection, then the Gospel is reduced to sentiment and the trappings of the therapeutic. If you will only have the Resurrection without Christ's authority or Christ's cross, you are left with a moralism that will be shaped by the mood of the times in which you live. We proclaim and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he died on the cross for our sins, and that he came out of the grave, declared to be the Son of God and the giver of good gifts to His people. May these precious truths which we confess be confirmed in you as we approach Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.