Non Cognoverunt Eam

Holy Week 2014

THEY DID NOT KNOW IT, but this was going to be one bad week.

The Christian faithful and non-believers alike often question the variances in the accounts of Jesus’ passion and death as written in the four canonical gospels. Those that seek to undermine the Christian faith label them ‘inconsistencies', which call into question the veracity of the written accounts and aim to discredit the historical authenticity of Jesus’ last days on earth. Believers, also, often wonder why the four accounts of Christ’s Passion are occasionally different in the details. Although, for us, faith unites these discordances in the sure belief that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead to bring us salvation.

The truth is not, as our detractors would like us to believe, that the gospel writers are unreliable at best and fabricators of works of total fiction at worst. If the early Fathers of the Church had wanted to propagate a lie about the death and resurrection of Jesus, how difficult would it be to make sure all the stories were the same in every detail? After all, it is these same Church Fathers who formed the New Testament as we know it today.

Indeed, the differences in the details of Jesus’ death and resurrection are our guarantee of authenticity because they reflect one of the fundamental facts about Christianity as a new religion in fulfilment of Judaism: No one was expecting it to happen this way.

The gospel accounts are recollections that are endeavouring to make sense of the life, ministry, and death of Jesus in the context of His resurrection. If the disciples had understood the plan from the start, no doubt their recollection of events would be precise to every detail that points to Jesus being, in fact, true God made man, born to live and die among and for His creation so that those formed by God’s Word could achieve the status of Sons of God, capable of for all eternity gazing upon the glory of God in His heavenly kingdom.

Rewind to the Passover of AD33. The disciples had no idea of the events they were about to be caught up in. For all the miracles, the teachings, the words of Jesus – both veiled and direct – about Himself and His mission, and despite the abundant vault of Hebraic prophecies about the Messiah, none of them knew that they walked by the side of God Himself or could conceive of God’s plan to unite all men to Himself through such a shameful death. 

The disciples believed that their master was the Messiah, the chosen one of God; and their concept of the Messiah was already radically different from what most of the Jews were expecting. The vast majority of Jews were expecting a warrior-messiah, who would free them from Roman occupation. The disciples, on the other hand, believed that their master was a more pacifistic messiah, somewhat religio-political, sent to renew Judaism from within. They were not expecting, nor would they have believed the messianic story which was just about to unfold in the death of Jesus.

We begin Holy Week with the disciples on quite a high note, as their master is hailed “Son of David” and the one who “comes in the name of the Lord”. They couldn’t really have asked for a better reception. They were fearing that the Jewish authorities might try to arrest Jesus as soon as He set foot in Jerusalem, for some of the really amazing miracles he had performed in the weeks prior and the way Jesus had confronted the Pharisees about, among other issues, breaking the law of rest on the Sabbath. So, they were most pleased by the turnout of the crowd of supporters who gathered to greet Jesus, and they hoped that this would stop the religious authorities from doing anything too drastic. And so the disciples busied themselves with preparations for the Passover Feast without much of a care in the world.

Everything was looking rosy until Jesus started doing things to sabotage Himself. It started with the (quite violent) clearing of the Temple – sending the money-changers and pigeon-sellers packing. Jesus seemed different, agitated almost. The next day, when Jesus was on his way back to the Temple, he cursed a fig tree because he couldn’t find any fruit on it. The tree instantly withered. It was the first time Jesus had done something like this – using His miraculous powers for no observable benefit. Something was definitely troubling him.

In these days, the disciples witnessed a Jesus who was far more harsh in his dealings with the chief priests, elders, Sadducees and Pharisees; far more direct in his assertion of His status and impending death; far more prolific in his teaching and provocative in his speech, as if there was some great urgency to his message.

Today, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week might seem a bit uneventful compared to the Thursday and Friday, but in AD33 they were a frenzy of activity that left the disciples worried and not quite sure what to think. 

Is it any wonder that they so vehemently denied Jesus’ accusation that one of them would betray him? They could be pretty certain that the Jewish authorities would now arrest Jesus, but this is something that Jesus seemed, Himself, to provoke. The disciples didn’t want it to happen and didn’t want to be blamed for it either.

Is it any wonder that they fell asleep when Jesus prayed at Gethsemane? They had no idea what Jesus was going through; that he was knowingly facing an imminent death, a death He Himself had engineered so as to fulfil the will of the Father. 

The disciples were troubled, confused, mentally exhausted and spiritually ignorant of their master’s true identity and purpose. Is it any wonder, then, that they dispersed into hiding and deserted their master when he was arrested and the crowds rose up to condemn him to the most horrifying and shameful public execution?

Brothers, we are indeed fortunate that we are living today, when the full revelation of Christ’s life, death and resurrection can be laid so clearly before us. We know the whole story. What is left for us but to believe, even in this most improbable of stories: that God would humble Himself not only to live among us as a man like us, but to accept with such deep love for us the scorn of the world, being despised, rejected, tormented, tortured and murdered, at the hands of men whom He Himself had created?

In the words of the Apostle Paul:

“The Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, but we are preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and wisdom of God.”
[1Cor.1:22-24]

As we are called, so let us witness, this Holy Week, the folly of the Cross: this ultimate contradiction that through submitting to the seeming failure of a humiliating death, God has gained for us the ultimate victory.