Disciples, Apostles, and Saints!
The story of Jesus’s final week is packed with activity and teaching, making it a goldmine for those looking to learn from him. There are significant differences in each of the gospels, but there are common themes we raise up in our liturgy, particularly at the end of the week. We remember the last supper, the betrayal, the praying in the garden, the arrest, persecution, trial, and then the long walk to the crucifixion, the hanging there, the dying. We then hear about Jesus being removed from the cross, placed in a tomb, and left for dead.
The rest of the week is just as important, through many of these stories are covered toward the end of the liturgical year. After the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday, Jesus goes to the Temple and flips tables. He comes back the next day and teaches at the Temple, humiliating the religious leaders, and wowing the crowds. On Wednesday, he stays back in Bethany, where a woman anoints his feet with oil and wipes them with her hair while the disciples argue over whether this was a waste of expensive oil.
As we’re in Year A, which is mostly Matthew’s gospel, we don’t just miss out on all of the great teaching that happens at the Temple, but chapters of teaching of the disciples that comes at the last supper. Confounding parables that are dark and kind of disturbing, but which culminate in a moment of deep reversal in chapter 25, when he names the real stakes. When you have treated the strangers in need around you with dignity, you have treated Jesus with dignity. And when you have denied your neighbors dignity, you have denied it to Jesus. That is the source of judgement in the end. This is the last teaching of Holy Week in Matthew. His final theological teaching before the Temple authorities and the Roman army strip him and others of dignity.
With love,
Drew+
