A third of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, a quarter of the Gospel of Luke, and nearly half of the Gospel of John focus on the Holy Week, the final days leading to Jesus’ death. Jesus’ forever existence led inexorably toward this week. Eternity pointed toward these few days. Peter described them in this way: “God chose him as your ransom long before the world began.” (1 Pet. 1:20 NLT). Paul wrote similarly: “In Christ, he chose us before the world was made.” (Eph. 1:4 ERV). Before our world and our stories started, Father, Son and Spirit were planning this Holy Week. In it, we see what mattered most to Jesus. We see the way of Christ most clearly. If something was said or done by Jesus during Holy Week, mark it. Highlight it. Circle it. It’d been planned forever.
During Holy Week, Jesus spent time primarily with the elite league in the religious world. These were the people with the greatest devotion to God, the greatest education regarding God, and the greatest connection to God. Yet, tragically, they were also the people who lived and loved halfway. You’d expect the very best from these people. What Jesus got was the very worst.
Much of what Jesus does during Holy Week orbits around a single topic: the liberation of love. Jesus reveals in these closing days how spiritually minded people and religiously oriented institutions have held love hostage. God’s own people have bound mercy so that it only needs to be given to those whom they deem deserving and in ways they deem desirable. God’s own people limit love based on issues of class, color or creed. But during Holy Week, Jesus liberates love from the confines of those calling themselves consecrated. He illuminates the privilege and power and prejudice which have led to compassion being held captive. Jesus fights against those who fetter love based on things like success, sexuality and skin. In these final days, Jesus models the life we are truly called to live: all in.
On Sunday, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. He rides into the city not on a war horse but on a mule. He travels not in hubris but in humility. Not in might but in mercy. Jesus believes, contrary to the call of religious zealots, that enemies like the Romans who ruled Jerusalem could be shown kindness rather than be killed (Matt 21).
On Monday, Jesus overturns tables in the temple. He protests because the pious in power have created a worship system in the temple that privileges themselves and disadvantages people of different races (Mk. 11).
On Tuesday, Jesus speaks out against religious leaders who foster inequity (“they love seats of honor”) and injustice (“exploiting the weak and helpless”). The Christ condemns the way they apply love liberally to themselves but withhold it from those of other classes (Lk. 20)
On Wednesday, Jesus’ labor to liberate love from the biased hands of religion is met with the ultimate resistance. To better enable their incarceration of love, they now incarcerate love’s incarnation, Jesus himself (Matt. 21).
On Thursday Jesus washes the feet of his followers, showing that no degree of love is too great. No one is too lofty to act in the lowliest loving way. And no one is too lowly or lost to receive the loftiest loving act. Jesus loves to the end (Jn. 13).
On Friday, Jesus continues his revolutionary revelation of liberated love–he loves all by giving all on the cross (Lk. 23). No class, creed or color will escape the crucified grasp of our Savior’s outstretched arms.
On Saturday, political and faith leaders set guards over Jesus’ tomb. This is another, futile, step to incarcerate love’s incarnation. (Matt. 27)
And on Sunday, Jesus explodes from the tomb, proving that no prejudice, power or position seeking to shorten love’s reach has any hope at all of success. (Lk. 24).
The Holy Week centers on this inescapable theme. In his closing days, Jesus offered his life to liberate love from the hands of people and institutions that had satisfied themselves with an anemic and inert love. Freed by the sacrifice of Jesus, love was now empowered to once again flow unhindered and abundant, creating a heavenly community where all were invited in.
It was during Holy Week that Jesus affirmed that the life of faith is founded upon two pillars: loving God and loving neighbor (Matt. 22). Love of neighbor was especially important in Jesus’ teaching, because God’s people had twisted this call in order to justify their limited love.
For example, in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus notes, “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies!” (Matt. 5:43-44 NLT) The first part of Jesus’ quote, “Love your neighbor” comes from Lev. 19. The second part of Jesus’ quote, “Hate your enemy” comes from common commentary on the first quote. It was a way for pious people to determine just who “neighbor” included (and excluded). And, by Jesus’ day, the conventional wisdom in religious circles was that neighbors did not include enemy. That is, neighbors only included people who did not mistreat you but did treat you in the way you treated them. If someone mistreated you, if they were an enemy, they no longer counted as “neighbor” and you were free to hate them. In other words, love had limits. To please God, you only had to love halfway.
Jesus, however, lifts love beyond these limits: “But I say, love you enemies!” Neighbors included enemies. Neighbors included even those most difficult to love. No one was excluded from the label of neighbor.
This desire of religious people to limit neighbor and thus to restrict love had racial and ethnic biases grounding it. Later, Jesus is confronted by a devout man who wants to test Jesus. He asks, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him to love God and love neighbor. The man pushes: “Looking for a loophole, he asked, ‘And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?’” (Lk. 10:29 MSG). It becomes clear that the man’s image of neighbor is limited by racial and ethnic biases because Jesus goes on to answer the question by telling a story in which a person ethnically and racially different from the man is far more “neighborly” than even the most pious Jew.
Jesus’ point is that everyone is our neighbor and thus everyone is to be loved. Jesus broadens “neighbor” to include the world. Bob Goff in Everybody Always writes this:
“Each of us is surrounded every day by our neighbors. They’re ahead of us, behind us, on each side of us. They’re every place we go. They’re sacking groceries and attending city council meetings. They’re holding cardboard signs on street corners and raking leaves next door. They play high school football and deliver the mail. They’re heroes and hookers and pastors and pilots. They live on the streets and design our bridges. They go to seminaries and live in prisons. They govern us and they bother us. They’re everywhere we look. It’s one thing we all have in common: we’re all somebody’s neighbor, and they’re ours This has been God’s simple yet brilliant master plan from the beginning. He made a whole world of neighbors. We call it earth, but God just calls it a really big neighborhood.”
Our love often only goes halfway. That’s why Jesus spent time in Holy Week shoring up the biblical teaching on neighbor-love. And that’s why Jesus spent time in Holy Week teaching far beyond neighbor-love. While gathered with the Twelve in these final hours, Jesus spoke these words: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (Jn. 13:34 ESV) The old commandment was “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Lev. 19:18). This new Holy Week commandment was “Love others as I have loved you.” Jesus raised the bar in his Holy Week “new command.” He wanted us to see that love has no limit–we love as the Messiah has loved us. A church succeeds only to the degree to which its love mirrors the limit-breaking, boundary-crossing, bridge-building, open-handed love of Christ.
