“He Gave His Very Self for Us”

Reflections on Holy Week in Jerusalem

It has been an honor unimaginable to be a faith leader here during Holy Week in Jerusalem. I marched and sang with thousands down the Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday waving an olive branch and then later in the week joined in a Lutheran prayer service and procession through the Old City to Gethsemane on Maudy Thursday. I was honored to represent both St. Andrews Scotts Memorial Church and Global Ministries at this holy service.

The next morning, Sad Friday, I joined with hundreds of others in the Cathedral of St. George the Martyr ‘s Way of the Cross Good Friday Devotional Walk. St. Andrews were readers for Stations 3 and 8: Jesus falls for the first time and the Daughters of Jerusalem. I read the scripture for Station 8, turning to each and every woman I could make eye contact with and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.” It was powerful to read this scripture at this humble station marked only by a plaque on the wall in Jerusalem while women throughout Jerusalem and Palestine are weeping still for the brutality of the occupation.

On Saturday I took a rest and enjoyed hanging out with fellow ministers and ecumenical accompaniers. Even got my hair done and bought an Easter sparkly skirt so I would look more put together for Easter Sunday. 

On Sunday I was up before the dawn to welcome the sun at St. Andrews with about 20 people. This lovely service was followed by breakfast and our morning worship at 10:00 AM. We welcomed a hazy sunrise and later cracked eggs together to unseal the tomb of Christ to celebrate his resurrection from the dead.

There was a lot of walking and climbing of small mountains, hills and stairs throughout the week which proved challenging for my right foot which still is hurting from my walk in the desert with my new hiking boots. The week was tiring, exhilarating, and theologically challenging. It was also amusing to be one of three visible clergy women in Jerusalem.  My picture was snapped by hundreds who were not used to seeing women priests. Even my hairdresser and grocer treated me differently while in my clergy uniform or white robe.

At one time during the Palm Sunday procession a Catholic priest asked to have his picture taken with me for an “ecumenical moment.” This sparked a small brush fire among other Catholic priests who then all wanted their pictures with the Protestant woman minster who some called “Mrs. Priest.”  Still others refused to take communion at St. Andrews because women were serving at the table.  And some wanted to know what denomination I came from. Depending upon my mood or level of  tiredness or wickedness I would answer something about pilgrims, abolitionists, followed by first to ordain women and gays.

One time I mentioned marriage equality to some young French Catholic women who were politely horrified and proceeded to tell me this was not God’s law. Being the good reform minister that I am I queried them about how do we know what are God’s laws versus human laws and more importantly by what authority should anyone forbid love.

In another conversation on Easter Sunday, a polite Palestinian man on a bus said the important thing is that “We are all saved in Christ.” My male colleague overhearing the tail end of the conversation quipped, “George W. Bush was saved.” This brought a nervous smile to the man’s face as I think he recognized this might not be enough. I added, “If we are born again in Christ or saved then our actions towards each other should reflect God’s love and justice.” I couldn’t tell if this clarification helped deal with the Bush issue or not. We ended by exchanging blessings of peace.

These mild theological skirmishes were nothing compared with the larger theological issues I dealt with while processing with my fellow Christians on “Sad Friday.” The biggest issue for me was the atonement theology expressed in our refrain, “We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you; Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”

Station 8

We said this refrain at each station. I found myself substituting other words for “by your holy cross” with words like “by your loving kindness” or “your persistence for justice” or even by “your love until death.” It is not the cross that redeems the world, not the blood sacrifice of the lamb of God. This is not the God I worship and this is not the way I view this murder. I do not believe in a God who demanded that his son be sacrificed for our sins so we can be forgiven. I follow a God whose son died because he was charged with insurrection and called for the establishment of God’s kin-dom on earth. I follow the one who overturned the tables in the Temple and who healed on the Sabbath, who ate with tax collectors and allowed himself to be anointed with expensive perfume by a woman. I follow the One of the towel and basin, who washed the feet of his friends and who said, “Love each other as I have loved you.”

So as moving as it was to be part of the Good Friday walk in Jerusalem, it was also challenging spiritually. For me, the cross is not something to be venerated. It is not life-giving but one of empire’s preferred tools for persecution. My faith finds an anchor more in these words that we say at St. Andrews as part of our communion liturgy: “He emptied himself of self and filled himself with others. Through his life and sacrificial love, he graced our lives with healing and hope, with compassion and power, and gave his very self for us…”

And so the question or the invitation is, how do we give our love? How do we live lives resurrected in God's grace that knows no bounds, whose love is eternal and present always? 

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