Holy Week
 

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, started Holy Week, the week leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

This week I am musing my mortality and what we Christians believe God did for us through His son, Jesus.

I think about the amazing events almost two thousand years ago when God willingly let us kill him in a particularly brutal fashion and what it might mean.

To me, it means that whatever life throws at us, we still need to hold true to what we know is right...and it will be ok. Even if we are killed for those beliefs, God will not abandon us.

I also think that part of the message is that if we are not careful and simply follow the crowd of our popular culture, we can forget our own humanity and go from cheers (Palm Sunday) to murder (Good Friday) in a horrifyingly short time.

And finally, the truth, the Gospel, that death is not the end.

Well, that's a refreshingly forthright declaration!

I'm a preacher's kid. Holy Week is some I feel viscerally every year. Now my boys are teenagers, and I wonder what it means to them. They come voluntarily to chuch, so I'm encouraged that they have found something that keeps bringing them back.

I don't know why, but holy week for me has become a time for me to reflect on my beliefs, and revise them. I think it's my catholic upbringing making me think about god during that time.

I myself am far from catholic. I still (currently) believe in god, but my mind is open to different ideas.

I'm God-curious, and this is one of the parts of the Christian faith that I honestly don't understand. I am asking this not in an attempt to put anything down, and I ask with the utmost respect, but could someone explain how or rather why God sent Jesus down to us to be tortured by us.

How did this atone for our sins? I really don't understand. It looks like we were unpleasant sinners, God came down to try and show us the way, and we tortured and murdered him. Understandably, he rose again, and left us. Would someone mind explaining this to me?

Well, I tried to explain my own beliefs above; that it was done in part as an example for us to hold true and that God would not abandon us. I also believe it was the ultimate act of love for His creation, to actually come and be part of it.

A more traditional answer is that Jesus was a living sacrifice, in the long tradition of living sacrifices, and that his personal sacrifice was so perfect (unblemished, good, holy), that there never need be another.

The traditional answer always left something to be desired as far as I was concerned, hence my further thoughts on it.

Thanks Lebell, I appreciate your answer to a question that's bugged me for ages. I kind of like your interpretation too, that God came down to see what His creation was like from the inside, so to speak. I just wish we'd been nicer to Him while he was here.

One of the most incredible displays that I've witnessed of religious traditons occours in New Mexico. I was there on vaction during Holy Week a few years back and every year, people would walk the route between Santa Fe and Chimayo ( a town about 30 miles away?) during that time. They would end up in an old Catholic church to hold Good Friday mass.

I forget (or more aptly, the bourbon would not allow me to remember) what this journey is called and what the history is behind it. Perhaps someone here could take it from here...

I belive its called Semana Santa


or maybe thats spanish for easter :confused:

Semana Santa literally is "Holy Week".

zen_tom,

Jesus dieing is a "new Covenant". It replaces the old Covenant, also a blood sacrifice that was supposed to happen when Abraham was supposed to have sacrificed Isaac, his only son (in Genesis, around chapter 22). God saw that he was willing and stopped him, but still gave him the prosperity that he promised. Thus Jesus was part of his way of showing that there will be a new Covenant with his people, where the old laws are replaced with the new words of JC, of loving thy neighbor. This God, instead of requiring the sacrifice of someone else's son, provided his own as the sacrifice, making it all the greater, like what Lebell said. Hence the "this is my blood, the blood of a new Covenant" line at Mass. This part gets confusing for people, whereas with the old Covenant, God was vengeful and downright mean, with the new Covenant, God became or perhaps revealed himself as, a God of Love. And that is why JC had to die, to seal the sacrifice, hence the "Lamb of God" moniker.

Also the New Covenant is where God the Christ teaches us to "turn the other cheek" when someone has caused you pain, trouble or whatever. A totally new view from the Old Testament's view that was an "eye for an eye". It was now time to build a new World based on the way of Peace. It was God's plan to let his Son be the final ultimate sacrifice to help save the world from more blood being shed. Interesting that Jesus was afraid & even asked for The cup to "pass from his lips"...he was human at times too. But he trusted God's plan in truth faithfulness. He did take away the sting of death. I always want to remember the empty tomb. And no - his followers did not take the body away. It would have signalled the end, not the beginning.

Wow! Thanks a lot for this thread. I was brought up without any sort of religious influence, and so I have a lot of questions.

I don't intend on "finding God" or anything like that, but at least now I get a bit of understanding as to why Jesus was sacrificed and why the Anglican Church the Beaver troop I work with didn't want us there last week! ;) Thanks.