Holy Week is a time of reckoning. It is time to take stock. It is a time to re-examine our beliefs. It is a time to organize our priorities. It is a time to re-commit to Gospel values. The course of all these actions will depend on our concept of Jesus.

Some will re-focus on Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. He was the God-man the Father sent to die for our sins. His death would somehow make up for all our sins down through history. The re-newed focus will be on developing a more intimate personal relationship with Jesus. The emphasis will be a solipsistic focus on personal salvation somewhere out there and above here—heaven.

Others, myself included, will come to know a completely different Risen Christ. Anselm’s misbegotten substitutionary atonement theory is out the window. Jesus died because of our sins. We are so much like the apostles. Sometimes we betray Jesus to maintain our comfort zones. Sometimes we run away naked in the night as the soldiers seize Jesus. Sometimes we deny that we know him and we, like Peter, hear the cock crow. At other times, we may take the sword of violence and try to lop off the ears of those who resist our witness. Having once had the opportunity to sit in the Garden of Olives beside a 4,000 year old olive tree (It was there when Jesus prayed before his arrest as a common criminal.), I picture Jesus deep in prayer, deep in anguish, deep in fear, sweating as if he were bleeding. Across the hill, the city gates opens and a crew of soldiers carrying torches is coming toward the Garden. Jesus is about to pay the price for resisting empire, for resisting all that is opposed to the Kin-dom of God. In his weekly column, John Dear says it much better than I can: Continue reading →