HELLO!

On Wednesday April 1^st the last of two sessions focusing on Jesus’ Last Week will come to life in the Sams Room at 11 am. If you missed the first session, we talked about Palm Sunday to Wednesday, do not let that prevent you from this conversation about Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Everyone is welcome. You don’t need to have the book, to have read the book, to participate. I summarize the chapters, then ask those who also read the book to offer their highlights, and then I open up the dialogue to questions and comments.

In The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem authors Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan set out to explore the last week in Jesus' life against the backdrop of Roman imperial control. Their purpose is not to attempt a historical reconstruction of what has become known as the "Passion" or suffering of Jesus, but to probe the things Jesus was passionate about. The text they use is the Gospel of Mark, the earliest to be written, the most succinct, and the one with the most time markers for the week's events.

Borg and Crossan discuss the Roman Empire, it’s domination system in Jerusalem. Jesus was sharply critical of the temple and its collaboration with the domination system. Jesus brought hope to peasants who desperately needed a way out of their misery. The passion of Jesus for the kin-dom of God was a threat to those atop the domination systems. Borg and Crossan conclude, "Good Friday and Easter, death and resurrection together, are a central image in the New Testament for the path to a transformed self. The path involves dying to an old way of being and being reborn into a new way of being. Good Friday and Easter are about this path, the path of dying rising, of being born again."

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have given we Christians insights into Jesus that expand upon what popular culture and conservative Christianity typically offer us in Holy Week: chocolate easter eggs on one hand, and a predestined death by Jesus for humanities’ collective sins on the other. Here Jesus’ death is put in the context of his life, which is a fearless and courageous conviction God comes to us in the sick, the poor, the stranger (Matthew 25). The Romans killed Jesus because his followers said he was Lord, not Caesar. And Jesus’ resurrection gave his followers the “turn around”, move from Peter’s three-time denial to all eventually dying as martyrs for the same cause, God’s love, as their saviour.

We walk in their footsteps. Peace, Kevin

PS Today the choir and I offered a Holy Week service at Glasgow Hall on Baker Street. The residents looked very moved by the singing. Eric Jordan, who worships with us every Sunday, came to tell us his wife Barbara (who lives in Glasgow Hall) is not well and asked me to join he, Barbara and his daughters later. We prayed together. As I was leaving, I saw this Jesus doll, given to Barbara by a caregiver. The daughters took this photo of Eric, the doll, and I. Please keep this family in your prayers.