"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?": Jesus keeps it real.

I really love Holy Week.  So much.  As a kid, I was in the choir at St. Albert's, and Holy Week was so intense.  There were certain colors we had to wear, weird prayers/songs/psalms in the misselette that we had to do that we only ever did on Holy Thursday, or Good Friday, etc. I specifically remember a big-ass fire lit in the middle of the nave on Holy Saturday.  And once on Good Friday, when the mass started at 3, the priest came up the nave in silence and laid himself prostrate, arms out to the sides, behind the altar and at the foot of the crucifix.

The choir director also put on an elaborate passion play that I was in every year.  (I loved that choir director, and she died several years ago.  Here's the new janky version of St. Albert's passion play.) I was just a kid in the crowd for most of the play, but I also got to play an angel several years in a row.  (1) I had the biggest crush on the guy who played Jesus.  (2) We got to wear these white leotards with flowy white skirts and do this silent and beautiful dance to "This is Holy Ground" with all of the lights in the church turned out except for the black lights shining on us.

The acute somberness of it all freaked me out in the best way possible.

I'm saying that facetiously, but also seriously.  I'm grateful that my catastrophically boring experience of religion during my upbringing did not ruin my capacity to really feel Holy Week.


Some favorite readings --

On Holy Thursday, Jesus acts like a straight-up human: "[H]e fell with his fact to the ground and prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'" (NIV Matthew 26:39)  He knows what's coming, and he's like, "Ohmygoodness, is there any way you could make it so that I don't have to do this?"



On Good Friday:

Before the cross is anything else, it is a catastrophe. It is the unjust and violent lynching of an innocent man. It is the murder of God. Jesus is sacrificed by the Father only in this sense: The Father sent his Son into our system of violent power (civilization) to reveal how utterly sinful it is — so sinful that it will murder the Innocent One. God did not will the murder of his Son, he simply knew it would occur.

Also, Jesus acts super human (not super-human) again on Friday, when he can't help but scream out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It's not easy for him to "just trust that God has a plan" for him, that "everything happens for a reason."  He's like, "Holy fuck, why are you letting this happen!?" (It's also a beautiful echo of the tortured and desperate faith expressed in Psalm 22.)




On Holy Saturday:

There are some things we can know on this Saturday. Jesus is dead, to begin with, dead and buried. He said the world was upside-down and needed a revolution to turn it right-way-round and so he was executed for disturbing the peace. He came and said love was greater than power, and so power killed him.

... 

Why should we expect that tomorrow will be any different? 

Seriously, just look around. Does it look like the meek are inheriting the earth? Does it look like those who hunger and thirst for justice are being filled? Does it look like the merciful are being shown mercy? 

Jesus was meek and merciful and hungry for justice and look where that got him. They killed him. We killed him. Power won. 

...

“But in fact,” St. Paul says, everything changes on Sunday. Come Sunday power loses. Come Sunday, love wins, the meek shall inherit, the merciful will receive mercy and no one will ever go hungry for justice again. Come Sunday, everything changes.
If there ever is a Sunday. 

On Easter Sunday:

Sundays have always been important to Black people. Sunday was the only day that slaves were given a break from their unpaid labor to praise God and openly dream of deliverance. Sunday was the only day that shines became pastors, maids became deaconesses, “boys” and “aunties” became “Mr.” and “Mrs.” But Easter Sunday took things to another level. Men and boys rocking pastel colored suits, little girls wearing shiny shoes and white gloves, and church mothers with huge ornate hats proved that White supremacy had not stolen our joy or stripped our style. Easter Sunday was a sartorial testimony to the beauty and power of Black culture.  

...  

Easter calls us to remember the plight of the prisoner. Because of his political activism and message of social justice, Jesus was declared an enemy of the Roman State and sentenced to the death penalty. His crucifixion was a State execution that was both “cruel” and “unusual.” His most important followers, Peter and Paul, were prisoners who died in custody. The story of Jesus is a reminder to challenge state authority, question unjust laws, and offer humanizing mercy to the prisoner. 

The holiday is a testimony to the power of actionable love. Most of us confess love for someone or something: our partners, our friends, our families, our community. But the story of Easter is a reminder that this love is best actualized through the choices we make and the sacrifices we offer. Love of the poor should translate into humane public policy. Love of the Black community should be reflected in investment, both by the State and other Black people. Love of women should lead to the elimination of rape culture. Love must become a verb.

I also really loved the way Tóibín took up Holy Week in this book.  All playful/for-real jabs at hypermasculinity aside, the book takes up Mary's horror in devastatingly beautiful ways:

"[I]f you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.  It was not worth it" (80).

And while we're giving Irish men the mic, this, too.

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured. 

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home. 

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme. 

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells. 

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky 

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.