Jesus’s actions don’t make any sense this week. Time doesn’t make any sense this week. What I’m trying to say is: Holy Week makes no sense, at least not logically.
On Sunday, Jesus throws a parade even though he knows how the story will end.
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Jesus carries on as if nothing is happening.
On Thursday, Jesus tells his disciples to impose on a homeowner with a too-late request to use his lodging for their Passover dinner. On Thursday he is betrayed.
And on Friday, death hits close to home—for Jesus’s friends and for us, to be sure, but death this week hits close to home for God.
But today there is a parade, perhaps to distract us from trying to bite off more of the somberness of Holy Week than we can chew. I can only imagine the disciples, whispering to each other and giggling as they try to figure out which donkey they are supposed to untie. Now, if you were going to steal a donkey, would you calmly walk up, untie it, and lead it away? Probably not. Stealing a donkey isn’t like swiping some dates from a vendor’s stand in Jerusalem. Stealing a donkey isn’t like stealing a loaf of bread that can easily fit under one’s cloak. Donkeys are also not quiet animals, and they bray for lots of reasons and—so far as the donkeys I have met go—for no reason at all. The disciples were all ready for their Zoom meeting, situated their computer in front of a bookshelf or a plant to make it look like their surroundings were more professional than what most homes are able to offer, and, just when they were about to pull it off: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ98SJrJfps Jesus was ready for the donkeys’ protest and the protest of their owner: “If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” Would we? Would we send the animals just because someone else needed them? Would we send medical supplies? Food? Toilet paper? Often times, it seems like Jesus gets the leftovers from our days and weeks. Leftover time, leftover money, leftover forgiveness, leftover kindness, leftover memories of a once upon a time redemption that feels like fake news in the face of our daily realities.
But is Jesus ready for our protests about Holy Week? It feels like Lent is going to go on forever. Pastor and author Angela Denker notes the way that COVID-19 seemed this year to be a package deal with our Lenten journeys. She says, “Coronavirus came to America around the same time as Ash Wednesday, a day when we still allowed people outside our homes and families to touch our foreheads and mark us with a symbol of sin, death, and resurrection.” As the numbers of infected, affected, and the deceased mount, all that is unwell in the world seems to tell a bigger truth about this Holy Week. Dear Jesus: Give it up. Now is not the time to celebrate. Lent is winning. Lent happened to us this year, whether we wanted it to or not. Those in Italy, whose outbreak occurred while most of us were going about our daily business warned us: it is coming for you, just as the ashen crosses reminded us that death comes for all of us. Now is not the time for a parade, Jesus. Now is not the time for Easter. Don’t make me laugh Jesus. This is serious.
Don’t make your disciples steal a donkey, sniggering in the back alleys of Jerusalem as it brays its way to the mount of Olives. Don’t climb on that donkey like you don’t know what is going to happen. How can you even listen to the shouts of Hosanna? We are not ready for joy.
By Friday night, the disciples are probably watching the events play out in their heads, looking back to see if there was any way they could have anticipated what was going to happen, much like the world now looks back on January: could we have done something to prevent it? Who will we be on the other side? Will things ever be the same again? As if in an old movie, the disciples watch Jesus waving to the crowds, as they lay down their palms, their cloaks, and their hearts for the man who will lay down his life. Jesus’s participation in the celebration doesn’t make any sense. It is the wrong time and the wrong place for a parade.
And still there is a celebration. And still there is laughter. But why? Did Jesus simply miss the mark here? Did God Incarnate miss a divine memo about the somberness and the stone-cold reality of what awaited him? Is Jesus simply trying to distract us from what is really going on?
Is Holy Week just a distraction from a global pandemic? Is it just a means to forget our pandemic-imposed Lenten weight of the world? How can we be socially distanced yet so interconnected that our social gatherings, our economies, and our health depend on one another?
No, Holy Week is not a distraction. It is the point.
The laughter of Holy Week is a protest to every joy-robbing scheme that sin, sickness, or the devil could conjure. The whispering disciples, the braying donkey in the back alleys of Jerusalem, the shouts of Hosanna, the laying down of palms, cloaks, and hearts, the joy of Palm Sunday is real. It is real because it happens in the face of everything that would say no to joy. The joy of Palm Sunday is a no to anything that claims to extend the weight of Lent beyond its bounds. The joy of Palm Sunday is a resounding “no” to the distance COVID-19 threatens to put between us. The laying down of our palms, cloaks, and hearts is a joyous event because Christ gathers them up. Jesus’s determination to steal some donkeys and throw a parade are a reminder that joy is at the party even in the midst of fear, uncertainty, and even death. Jesus’s commands to the disciples are as though to say, “I demand that you laugh” despite all of the retrospective protests that joy was somehow out of place the week Jesus died. While some communities will celebrate Easter when they can gather together again because the midst of COVID-19 hardly seems like an appropriate time to celebrate, let us not forget to celebrate this week, because it is a week for parades at the wrong time and in the wrong place (socially-distanced by 6ft or more, of course). Holy Week is an invitation to celebrate even if we may not feel like it.
It is hard to feel like celebrating when everything is cancelled. Angela Denker writes, “When Coronavirus came and began to steal lives around the world, it stormed into churches, jump-starting an outbreak in South Korea, and canceling Mass even at the Vatican. When Coronavirus came, we had to look in the mirror to remember who we were.” But the mirror reveals not only who we are, but whose we are.
“Who is this?” ask the tumultuous crowds in Jerusalem. It is easy to get wrapped up in excitement of the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the experience of Passover, the sights, sounds, and smells of the city hustling and bustling, with people in too-close quarters sharing air. There were no supermarket announcements reminding celebrants to stand six feet apart. With streets barely wider than the social distance we keep, the crowds in Jerusalem are gathered up into the shouts of “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” without knowing who they announce. These parades would have happened whenever a Roman dignitary came to town. When someone important comes, the crowds gather for the spectacle. But this was the first time they shouted Hosanna. Most of the government officials ride horses fully armored, but this guy comes wearing a pauper’s tunic. And still they say, “Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” They stop only after to say, “Which Lord? Caesar? Is it the Lord Caesar that takes and takes and then demands more of us until we have emptied ourselves? Is it Lord Caesar that demands piety to him to unify the empire? No,they say, it is the prophet from Nazareth. He is a different sort of Lord. This is a different sort of parade. The parade will soon give way to protest and the cries to crucify, as external events threaten to dampen the Passover holiday, just as COVID-19 threatens to dampen our Easter celebrations.
But Holy Week is a protest to Lent exceeding its bounds. Just as the spring flowers in Valpo threaten to bloom in the face of a global pandemic, just as the tree buds burst forth in green to lift their protest, as people sing songs from balconies and give away their gifts and talents for free, as people offer to buy food for those confined to their homes to protect them from the virus, we contribute our metaphorical donkeys because the Lord needs them.
And so we celebrate, not because of who we are when we face the bitter reality of the brokenness of our world, but because of whose we are. Whose are we? We belong to the Lord, the giver of life, who emptied himself of all that belongs to God so that he might give us all that belongs to him. It is the Lord who gives his life and throws a party on the way to the cross—the worst possible time for a party. Yet, Jesus demands that we celebrate. He demands it because the life he saves is not his: it is yours.
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