Walk with Jesus: Holy Week 2020-Friday

This week, I'll be posting a study: Walk with Jesus: Holy Week 2020. You can download the entire study, or just visit this page every day. (If you download the pdf, you should be able to print it 2 pages to a sheet (8.5 x 11) if you set it to landscape.)
We'll journey through Israel, pausing to read and reflect at various events of His life and ministry. These events took place at specific locations, so you’ll learn a bit about Israel in 30AD, too. There are questions to inspire you to meditate on your response to Jesus’ ministry and how that may be different this year due to self-isolation and social distancing. After completing the daily study, take time to reflect and journal on the questions. If you are doing this study with friends, share you insights with each other. Each session has an activity to do as well to help you move faith into action.
Close each session with the prayer in the lesson.

Opening Prayer

Lord Jesus, walk with me and open my heart to what you would have me learn from these lessons. Amen.

Kingship of Christ (Friday): Golgotha

Kingship and Kingdom are a little foreign to us in the 21st Century. Jesus enters Jerusalem fulfilling the prophecy “behold your King comes...meek and seated on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9). The people wanted a military king, like David, to free them from Rome. When Jesus did not live up to their expectations, they turned against him.  

Has COVID-19 made you examine your expectations of God?

Visitors entering from the north would see upright poles on the top of the small hill known as Golgotha. Prisoners and enemies of Rome were marched through the city from the Praetorium to this location. They carried the cross bar to which they are tied or nailed. Then they were hoisted to the top of the upright to die a slow and painful death by suffocation.

Read  Matthew 27:1-66

Israelites were expecting a warrior king to defeat Rome, but that was not who Jesus was. How would you have reacted?

Would you have shouted ‘Hosanna’ and ‘Crucify’ with the crowd or not?

Take Action:

Sit and meditate on the Cross and Sacrifice of Our Lord. Hold, or look at a cross. Picture the events of Holy Week in your mind, esp. the crucifixion.

Attend a Good Friday service, perhaps streamed online.

Today’s Prayer

Blessed Lord, you died in agony for my salvation—not a victory of armies, but of enduring and everlasting love. Help me to be faithful to your call to follow, not counting the cost, but following faithfully. Amen.

Prayer for Good Friday:

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Burning Bush Moment: Palm Sunday

Since the First Sunday in Lent we have been looking at ‘burning bush moments’ when Jesus’ encounter with someone or some situation dramatically changed the story. Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week when in Christian churches around the world, the final events of Jesus life will be remembered in various way. There will be worship services, music, enactments, videos, sunrise services, vigils, prayers, and other activities.

Probably some participants at these activities will find themselves confronted with a ‘burning bush moment’-a time when God comes close and lives are changed. Maybe it will be you.

What about the men and women who were present during the events of that first Holy Week?

It started out normally enough with Jesus and his followers on the way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. One of the disciples goes to the city to find a room for them to hold the special meal, just like hundreds of others in the city and across Israel. Another disciple borrows a donkey for Jesus to ride. Then the dynamic of the day changes. Other pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem recognize Jesus and start shouting ‘Hosanna’.

Some of us are old enough to remember the song “Hosanna” from Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), which sets the stage for the conflict between Jesus and the Temple authorities. And it seems a revival of the show will be on TV on Easter Sunday. 

As the events of the day and week continue, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and institutes what we now celebrate as Eucharist (Communion, Mass, Last Supper). This is remembered on Thursday of Holy Week during Maundy Thursday services. There will be foot washing ceremonies, rites honoring the sacrament, and probably other remembrances. Many churches will take time to revisit the time in the Garden of Gethsemane when the disciples cannot stay awake with Jesus before he is arrested. The Gospels tell us that ‘the disciples deserted him and fled’. We modern disciples are invited to ‘watch and pray’.

Then we come to the tragedy of Good Friday when Jesus is condemned and crucified. Only the women and John the Apostle are known to be at the cross. After his death, Jesus in buried by Joseph of Arimathea and the women in Joseph’s tomb. Imagine the despair.

Where in those events can we relate to any ‘burning bush moments’?

In the dramatic entrance into Jerusalem, maybe some in the crowd had a glimpse of someone greater than a ‘superstar’. Perhaps in the washing of their feet, some of the disciples felt a nudge of the institution of a new order where the teacher serves the students, where the leader is slave to those who should serve. Could it be that Pilate wanted to believe that more than a man stood before him as he asked, ‘what is Truth’? The Centurion in charge of the crucifixion recognized the ‘burning bush’. He states, ‘truly this is the son of God’. Joseph of Arimathea honors the man he had hoped was more than a man by offering his own grave. Did he have an inkling of the events to come?

Where will you meet Jesus in a burning bush moment this week? Try to take time to notice the “Earth [that is] is crammed with heaven,/And every bush is aflame with God”. Let yourself “see, [and] take off [your] shoes." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning. If you are aware you will see beyond the blackberries in the bush! 

New Beginnings

Today is Palm Sunday. In many churches we’ll hear 2 Gospel readings. The triumphant entry into Jerusalem will be read at the beginning and then the story of Good Friday later in the service. In the short space of an hour we will walk with Jesus from the height of acclamation to the depths of rejection and death.
Throughout this coming week, many of us will attend special services so that we can enter more deeply into the mystery of Jesus’ final week. With the disciples, we will share in the celebration of the institution of Communion on Maundy Thursday with the commemoration of the Last Supper and on Good Friday they may be Stations of the Cross or a time of meditation and quiet to draw near the Cross and marvel at the lengths God’s love takes. Then on Sunday we will all celebrate the New Beginning of the Resurrection.
For Jesus’ disciples the first Holy Week must have been very emotional and confusing. Jesus enters Jerusalem to the shouts of ‘Hosanna’ and all looks wonderful. But then…He gathers them for a Passover meal, which he transforms with new words. “This is my body…This is my blood of the new covenant” He tells them. They must have been confused. Even more shocking to them is his arrest. They are afraid and flee into hiding.  Even though Peter bravely follows the crowd to the courtyard, he cannot acknowledge that he knows Jesus. Instead he denies the relationship and “goes out and weeps bitterly”. We’ve seen that when Naomi returned to Bethlehem she was convinced that she was useless and that God hates her. “Call me Mara,” she says, thinking she has come back home to die.

For Dorothy and her friends there is a similar journey of rejoicing and let down. They return to the Emerald City after obtaining the witch’s broomstick as demanded by the “Great and Powerful Oz” only to discover that he is just a country fair huckster whose balloon was blown off course to Oz. Then he sneaks away in the balloon, leaving Dorothy behind. Dorothy’s despair is overwhelming. After Glinda appoints the Scarecrow to rule the Emerald City, the Tin Woodman as king of the Winkies and the Lion to the Forest as King of the Beasts, Dorothy asks, “How will I get home to Kansas?”
None of these people knew that just around the corner was a new beginning. The disciples in hiding with their Master arrested, Dorothy left behind by a charlatan, and Naomi welcomed by her old friends all thought that their dream was over. They all thought that they were stuck forever in the nightmare of betrayal, lies, and death that they saw in front of them.
However, God never ceases to act. In Isaiah 57:14, he commands, “Build up, build up, prepare the road! Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people." A new beginning was actually just around the corner for each of these characters.

For the disciples the Resurrection was only 3 days away. “Didn’t you know your Silver Shoes* have magic power? They will take you anywhere,” Glinda tells Dorothy. “Just knock the heels together three times and say where you wish to go.” Naomi did not know that she would be the great-great grandmother of the King of Israel, even as she rejoiced in the birth of a grandson. “They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.” (Ruth 4:17-18)

A new beginning is also just around the corner for you and me, even when we feel like we’ve reached the end of our rope or find ourselves at a dead end. Has this Lent been a time of discovering bumps in your journey? Then there is probably a new beginning in the future-a resurrection coming. There is a sort of joke about the man walking along the edge of a cliff. He slips and falls, but manages to catch hold of a branch anchored in the side of the hill. He starts calling for help and finally hears a voice saying. “Let go, I’ll catch you.” “Who are you?” “God,” comes the answer. After thinking about it, he calls out, “Is anyone else out there.” Often we’d rather not let go and fall into the arms of God, but like for Naomi, Dorothy and the disciples, a new beginning can come when we reach the end of the rope and then let go.
I hope you will have the chance to take advantage of some time with God this Holy Week so that you’ll find a new beginning in the Easter season. We'll start a new adventure together after Easter.
(This cake picture was too great not to share-it shows the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and each layer represents a character! Besides, it shows that everything can have a sweet ending.)
*Frank L. Baum's actual book has  Dorothy wearing Silver Shoes. Hollywood changed them to Ruby Slippers.