The greeting struck me as peculiar. “Happy Holy Week” is more than a little strange. Something didn’t smell right.

Preying on Praying

Only a person ignorant or defiant of the heart-wrenching events of Jesus’ last days — Peter’s deceitful denials (“I do not know the man”) in the High Priest’s courtyard; the self-serving betrayals and abandonment of Jesus’ closest ‘friends’ and students; Jesus braiding a whip and driving out the money-changers in a fit of rage, turning over the money-changers’ tables for making his Father’s house into a den of robbers; Judas Iscariot, the apostle entrusted with the group’s purse, exchanging intelligence identifying Jesus’ whereabouts; an apostle drawing a dagger at his arrest, cutting off the High Priest servant’s ear, followed by Jesus’ rebuke of the way of violence; the release of one Jesus (Jesus Barabbas), the nationalist insurrectionist prisoner awaiting execution in place of the other (Jesus of Nazareth) in whom Pilate finds no guilt); Jesus’ final meal in an upper room of an unidentified dwelling; the invitation to “Take, eat. This is my body, broken for you” — would wish Christians a happy Holy Week.

Mark Twain Advice

I feel a bit like Mark Twain the day he responded to a sanctimonious businessman notoriously for his unscrupulous business practices.

“Before I die,” said the shyster, “I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud from the top.”

“I have a better idea,” said Twain. “You could stay home in Boston and keep them.”

The Way to Easter

You can get to the Easter Bunny without walking through the events of Holy Week, but you can’t get to Easter without walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It’s all there in Christian Scripture. It makes no difference how many Bibles you have —”I have many you” have” or how much you love it — “It’s my favorite book”— if you’ve never opened one.

Rev. Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, host of Views from the Edge, author of "Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness" (2017 Wipf and Stock Publishers), 49 two to four-page meditations on faith and public life, Brooklyn Park, MN, April 4, 2024.