The Personal Nature of Holy Week

 HOLY WEEK IS PERSONAL.

This is Holy Week. Depending on your background and upbringing, this may mean different things to you. Perhaps you think of this week as a time of reflection, to remember the self-sacrifice of Jesus and to act accordingly. Perhaps you think of it in relationship to community – a shared celebration honoring new life, the return of flowers and plants and wildlife. Perhaps you only think of this as a time of year – when seeds are sown and tended in hope that there will one day be a harvest of reward.

No matter what you may believe about Holy Week, there is one thing that all the forces of darkness and evil that undeniably exist in this present world do not want you to realize. Evil doesn’t care if you celebrate the seasons. Evil doesn’t even care if you celebrate community. Evil will even let it go if you celebrate a good man with good ideas that changed the world.

What evil doesn’t want you to know is that Holy Week is PERSONAL.

Evil doesn’t want you to understand the fact that if you were the only person in existence, Holy Week still would have happened. Even if you were the one who took a “good man” and put him on a cross. Even if you were the one that pounded nails into his hands and feet and then stood back to watch as his life slowly and excruciatingly faded from his body.

In reality, you did.

Whether you want to acknowledge you are that bad or not, you did. I did. I stepped back in time and took a hammer and drove spikes into the kindest, most powerful, most humble man who ever walked the face of the earth. I screamed for his death. I spat in his face and pulled out his beard. I ripped open his back with an ugly tool of torture.

I drove the nails into his flesh. I watched him struggle for breath until he breathed no more.

So did you.

This seems a savage idea to share during a time of celebration. And if you’ve never considered it before, you probably won’t believe it at first. You had nothing to do with his death. You would never treat someone the way Jesus of Nazareth was treated by his own people and by the oppressing Roman Empire.

It doesn’t change the fact you did it.

That’s why I say that this week is personal. Go back to that alternate reality again, the one where you are the only human being ever created. The one Jesus came to and gave you your sight, your health. He provided the food you needed. He sheltered you and protected you and taught you how to live in such a way that would bring you blessing and peace.

And then you killed him in the cruelest way imaginable.

You think that’s not possible? Think again. You absolutely would have done it, just as they did. Nothing in you is different than what was in them.

But this personal story doesn’t stop there. You see, there was another side to the proverbial coin. Jesus came to you knowing you would kill him. Knowing you would take everything from him. He knew you would despise him and hate him for loving you. He knew EVERYTHING.

And he still came. Because he knew there was a greater plan at work. A plan for him to secure the power not only to heal you and provide for you and teach you and love you, but a plan for him to make you like him. To take your stony, dead, cruel heart and make it soft, and warm, and alive. To give you a heart like his.

He looked at your face, so dear to him despite the contempt written all over it. He saw what you could be if he took the blame for all your evil on himself. If he made himself the sacrifice, the payment for a debt you had incurred that you could never repay. And he loved you… YOU… so much that he was willing to take your scorn in order to save your eternity.

Holy Week is personal. It’s personal because he made it personal. He made a move you can’t deny or ignore, not if you want to settle the matter of your emptiness and futility. Not to mention your eternal existence. He wants you safe with him. He wants to give you ultimate peace that passes your understanding of the word “peace.” He wants to show you himself, reveal to you his wonder-working power to do what you cannot even fathom in your present state.

Have faith that he can change your heart. Have faith that his power – a power not only willing to go to the grave, but to come out of it again – that he can do THAT with your heart. He’s done it before. I’m here to testify! If you do not know what it means to have your heart come alive, you are missing the best thing that has ever been offered to you. It’s worth more than all the money you can earn, all the status and pleasure and comfort and safety you can scrape up for yourself. Infinitely more.

Come to Jesus. Let this Holy Week be your time to look at Jesus in a personal way. Not just to see the depth of your trespass against him, but to see what he did for you in return. He waits, for now. Come before your life or this age passes away and the invitation has expired.

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” – 2 Corinthians 6:2

Good Friday?

On this morning, only a couple thousand of years ago, a man waited below the house of the high priest in Jerusalem.

A prisoner. Surely many prisoners had been housed in that dungeon, dreading the moment they were handed over to Rome for execution. Some may have deserved their fate, some may have been victims of a corrupt system governed more by rule-following and prestige than by their law they claimed to love so dearly.

But this prisoner was different. He was truly innocent, not only in matters of the law, but in all matters. He was the perfect Creator of the universe, captive only to his love for his people and to his promises made from the beginning of time.

But why do we call this day Good Friday? The day our Lord was betrayed by friendship’s kiss cannot be good. The morning after a night of slandering, the morning dawn brought cruelty in the form of beatings, mocking, and a sentence of death can't be good. Those who had followed him and praised his teaching and even watched him raise the dead to life … now scorned him. Disowned him. Left him alone without a single soul willing to stand up for him and risk the same fate. How can it be good that he suffered, and that he suffered alone?

His disciples couldn’t even stay awake to pray with him the night before such an evil, terrible day. 

So why in the world would we call this day “good”? What could be good in such tragedy and betrayal? How could we celebrate a day that found humanity at its worst, violently attacking and killing the very being that gave them the breath of life and formed their bodies within their mothers’ wombs?

We call it good because it is our only hope. We call it good because there is no other way, not by sacrifice or self-discipline or scientific exploration or by the pursuit of world peace … THERE IS NO OTHER WAY we could be saved from our sinful souls.

It is a good Friday when I know that cross, meant for shame and torture and death, is a glorious trophy to exchange one day for a crown I don’t deserve. I can call his suffering and death good because he endured every single moment until it was finished … for me. Because he loved me. In my sin and ugliness and weakness and failure, he loved me.

And we can call it good because it wasn’t just one person he loved, but every one of us. His sacrifice was accomplished ONCE FOR ALL. Anyone who will turn from their sin and look to his cross for forgiveness and new life may come and receive freely the abundant gift of eternal life. No questions asked. No qualifications or conditions. The price has been paid. Cursed humanity has been ransomed.

Only come. Receive. Have faith.

And Friday is good only because of one enduring, eternal truth. Friday is good because Sunday is coming. Death didn’t keep him. The grave was forced to give him up. Friday is good because it was the only way we would know that our Savior is strong enough to take on the enemy we could never, ever conquer on our own.

Jesus is alive.