The “Hold to the Rod” series is about faith-based living and/or putting spiritual principles into practical use. The name comes from a chapter in the Book of Mormon, in which an Old Testament-era prophet named Lehi (a contemporary of Jeremiah and Ezekiel) had a dream-vision filled with metaphor. Central to this dream was the image of an iron rod, which could be clung to and followed to allow an adherent to walk the path to God without faltering. There are many things that can tempt us to let go of the rod, wander off the path it marks, and end up in dangerous places where we can do real harm to ourselves and to others. Talking about those dangers (and how to keep moving in the right direction) is important.
-LD
The greater Christian world calls the coming week Holy Week, or the week leading to Easter. It’s a big deal, and lots of people have lots of things they like to do in marking the period. An assortment of once-a-year observances are getting ready to start, taking a variety of forms depending on your denomination.
It is important, though, to keep the lessons of the week from getting lost under layers of Latin and tradition. Sort of the way Easter itself labors under the weight of bunnies and eggs and chocolate. It’s easy to bury the actual teachings and learning of the week under a layer of calcified tradition, checking worship boxes instead of actually contemplating anything.
Obviously, the focus of the week is Jesus Christ. He starts a series of capstone acts this week, ending his mortal ministry with the ultimate sacrifice. Holy Week tracks that really closely.
I think though, that as much as Holy Week seeks to dig deep into the lessons of Jesus’ teachings and actions of the last week, there are stories that can get missed when you do that. And they’re much more human stories, and probably much more relatable to us in our own lives. Christ commands us to be perfect, but the getting there is helped quite a bit by watching other people try it, and learning from their mistakes, right?
In that vein, I want to approach Holy Week from a semi-tangential angle that I hope will be a source of inspiration and reflection for my fellow online Christians. I want to track Jesus’ own timeline, but more than that I want to focus today on how it looked for the people who were there. I will touch on the “neutral” Jews in Jerusalem, and I want to give a little extra attention to two very important but very flawed men who were actually there: Peter and Judas.
To frame it, let’s track through the week and try to see the events as they saw them, and consider how and why they reacted as they did.
First, let’s stipulate to three basic ideas that get illustrated in the gospels repeatedly:
One, that the apostles often failed to grasp the meaning of what Jesus was doing, at least at first. They clearly realized that he was divine, but his point was often a mystery to them initially.
Two, they recognized going into holy week that martyrdom was on the table. They knew there was a reckoning coming with the authorities in Jerusalem if they went there.
Three, all 12 of the original apostles were good men at the start, and that Jesus would not have purposefully ordained snakes or weaklings to apostolic office. Neither Judas nor Peter were destined to make the choices they made.
Whether you agree or disagree with those statements, they’re the lens through which I want to approach today’s conversation. So even if you’re skeptical, stay with me and think with me. You don’t have to agree, but if you slam into my comment section with “corrections,” you’re missing the point. Think and reflect, and learn something for yourself. Whatever that thing is, it’s probably for you and you alone.
Anyway, with those three stipulations in mind, a lot of other things in Holy Week start teaching deeper lessons.
Now to the week, and what it looked like as it went down, particularly through the eyes of Peter and Judas.
Lazarus Saturday
Eastern Christianity observes this as an actual holy day, and it’s an intriguing preface to Holy Week itself, coming in John 11. We lose track sometimes of the chronology of things in the New Testament. The interweave of the gospels and how we study it can turn Christ’s mortal ministry into a series of disconnected vignettes rather than a cohesive narrative. So casual churchgoers can miss that the story of Lazarus directly precedes Christ’s travel to Jerusalem. It may not have been the day right before, but it probably wasn’t more than a few days prior--just enough time passes between this miracle and Christ’s arrival at Jerusalem that the story must have been known; Christ told his disciples not to tell anyone, but the story had to have spread like wildfire regardless. You can’t keep something like this quiet. Lazarus was dead four days, and then alive. Everybody in Bethany knew it. You can’t keep that a secret.
And there’s an important exchange in here that bears noting. Check John 11: 7-18.
Note that the disciples know it’s extremely dangerous for Jesus to get this close to Jerusalem. And Thomas, missing Jesus’ point (an example of stipulation one, above), is apparently convinced that Jesus is getting ready to martyr himself, and more importantly he’s ready to go down with his Master.
Thomas being quoted here gives us a glimpse into the mindset of the disciples as a whole. There’s a sense that sooner or later there’s going to be a reckoning with the authorities in Jerusalem, and they could all end up dead.
But in the immediate, Jesus heads to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead. And with that miracle completed, Jesus heads pretty much directly for Jerusalem.
Palm Sunday
The triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus was popular (his teachings bring peace! He heals the sick! He raises the dead!), and had enough rising fame that big crowds met him at the gates and heralded his arrival. And this wasn’t just normal Jerusalem. It was just-a-few-days-before-Passover Jerusalem. The city was packed with visitors and celebrants. And Jesus rolled right into the middle of it.
It’s not hard to imagine the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees viewing this as the last straw. Reports would be swirling that Jesus had raised a man from the dead, and he was being celebrated by the crowds in the street. It’s easy to see, from a secular power view, that he was a threat with a growing mythology, whose followers would do anything he said. He had to be eliminated.
We can easily focus on directly evil men like Caiaphas, who were all about hanging onto power. But the Sanhedrin can’t have been entirely composed of schemers. I suspect, and this is a place for contemplation, that there were Jewish leaders in power who, rather than dislike Jesus, simply believed (or feared) he was wrong. These people would be unwilling to seek Jesus, and unwilling to ask and consider. Why?
Simply put, if they decided he was right and signed up for what he was selling, and then he was a false messiah, they’d be doomed for following him. That’s really risky.
Alternatively, if he was the real messiah, then they’d somehow just know, right? He’d make himself known unmistakably. Did not Jehovah of old do burning bushes and fiery columns and manna from heaven? Surely there would be miracles. Raising someone from the dead is a cool story, bro, but it’s also awfully sensationalistic. Almost too sensational to be believed.
Are we like this in our own lives? How might we be like this sometimes? Are we waiting for a sign, so we don’t have to do the work of exercising faith? Do we tend to want to just point to something outside ourselves and say “see?” and expect that that will be enough? In so doing, are we quietly sanctioning the suppression of real divine truth? Something to think about when we think about Palm Sunday.
Now put yourself in the shoes of the apostles. Peter and Judas and the whole crew are there, seeing Jesus roll into Jerusalem and be celebrated (cue “The Boys Are Back In Town”). But they also know he’s got enemies. How would you feel?
Consider Peter: This is it! Jesus is the son of God, and everybody’s going to know it, because Jesus is here! #winning!
Consider Judas: Is this it? Jesus is the son of God, and everybody needs to know it. Is this enough? #nowwhat?
Monday
Monday doesn’t have an “official” name, though Holy Monday is floating around out there. Mostly, there are two big moments that happen here, and they expand on a notion of powerful people with a vested interest in the status quo.
First, the cursing of the fig tree. Matthew 21:18-22. This stretches across Monday and Tuesday, but the lesson is important.
How does this relate to the Jewish authorities and what is Christ teaching? Faith must bear fruit. Do Something! Or what good are you? You can look like a beautiful tree, but if you bear no fruit, what use are you to anyone? What use are you to God in his work?
Can this apply to the non-evil Pharisees? Certainly. They thought they were righteous, and could justify it to the letter. And they weren’t bearing bad fruit--they were bearing no fruit at all.
Can this apply to the apostles? Certainly. They were following him, and trying to teach his ways to others, but everybody needs a reminder now and then.
How often are we like this? Probably more often than we’d care to admit.
Second, the cleansing of the temple. This is straightforward and we know this story, too. Jesus entered the temple, where merchants had set up tables to change money and sell animals for sacrifices. He then proceeded to whip them all out.
Why would this commerce be a problem in Jesus’ eyes? Sacrifice becomes less personal and less meaningful when you can get somebody else to handle the details for you. The lesson of the temple sacrifices was recognition of and reverence for a saving atonement, not checking a box. When lots of people become interested in the convenience of checking a box, though, they create an easy entry for those in search of a business opportunity. And Jesus wasn’t having it.
Both the events of today, but especially the cleansing of the temple, make this particular Monday an inflection point in Christ’s mortal ministry. He had nothing good to say about Pharisaic religionism from the get-go, and he was always ready to denounce poseurs and fakers. But this is the first time he directly cursed something (the fig tree), and the temple encounter is the first time he actually picked up a weapon and, in the parlance of the midwest, “got after it.” That had to be remarkable to every observer, especially the apostles.
Speaking of the apostles, we also like to believe Jesus did this alone, and the narrative (and an ever growing pile of illustrations) supports that. But let’s keep in mind that Jesus had disciples with him almost everywhere this final week. He was a rock star in Jerusalem. He rolled with a posse. If he was just one man picking a fight in the temple, wouldn’t he have simply been beaten to death right here? It’s not too far afield to believe that his disciples followed his lead here.
Is there any reason to believe that Peter and Judas weren’t with Jesus along with the rest of the apostles during this event? No. And let’s be real. The four top apostles were fishermen. They were blue collar workers. Do we really believe this is the first time they’d have been in a brawl?
What would this have done in the eyes of the Jewish leaders that weren’t enemies of Jesus, but were trying to be neutral and sought to maintain the status quo? It would have been easy to see this as something extremely irreverent, perhaps blasphemous. If box-checking and outward appearances of righteousness were most important to you, you might be very uneasy about a movement led by someone who physically manhandled people out of the temple.
The cleansing of the temple is a big deal, and I think it’s a critical moment for both Peter and Judas. Even if they weren’t there, they’d have surely heard about it immediately, and this moment would almost certainly have been a hinge point for both. It represents a dramatic escalation of Christ’s activities against the Jewish status quo, and the apostles would have needed to grapple with that. And Jesus didn’t leave them much time to form their opinion. Things were getting real now, and personal commitments would naturally be examined.
Consider Peter: Action! Yes! This is the wakeup call the Jews need! It’s Messiah Time!
Consider Judas: Dude, hold up. What did we just do? This is the temple, guys.
For Part Two, click here.