Today Won't Rob Holy Week
It may be St. Patrick's Day but there's a different reason to celebrate.
Today is a special day to celebrate! So hoist those mugs of Guinness, don that green tie, or make your way to the parade you hear clamoring on the other side of town. Oops. Wait a minute. It may be St. Patrick’s Day but there’s a different reason to celebrate.
March 17 happens also to be the Monday of Holy Week, a special time for Christians to review a play-by-play of the final moments Jesus spent on this earth. For the first time since 1940, St. Patrick’s day coincides with the Monday of Holy Week.
Uh oh. Put down that green beer and take off that ugly tie.
Some Roman Catholic Church leaders have asked for the normal parades and festivities of St. Patrick’s Day to relocate to a better time (not during Holy Week). After all, the revelry of a day named after a saint ought not distract from the reverence of a week set aside for Jesus. Makes sense. So some communities shifted their public St. Patrick’s Day celebrations from Monday to the preceding Friday, March 14.
That leaves today, Monday, March 17 free on the calendar for celebrating the Monday of Holy Week. Okay. Here we are. So what do we celebrate today? Do people know where to look in the Bible to find Jesus on the Monday of Holy Week? Maybe. Try the gospel of Mark, chapter 11, where we find Jesus in Jerusalem on what some call “Angry Monday.”
Jesus enters the temple and angrily turns over the tables of vendors who are selling sacrificial animals and the booths of entrepreneurs exchanging currency for pilgrims traveling from afar. Jesus sees these opportunists as distracting from the temple worship, and he let them know it. The church leaders see Jesus as a rogue Rabbi and a false prophet threatening their self-righteous belief system (not to mention their lucrative religious positions) so they began “looking for a way to kill him” (Mark 11:18).
Hey, maybe it’s not so bad of an idea to move St. Patrick’s Day festivities so they don’t interfere with the reverence of Holy Week. That decision reflects the very meaning of “Angry Monday.” Don’t lose sight of God. Even people so close to the temple they can hear the sounds of worship can lose sight of God. And be afraid, because that makes Jesus angry.
But there’s more. Jesus does not send a bunch of thugs to mess up the money-changers and bust up the animal business and shut down the temple for good. He goes there himself. He. Jesus. The Son of God. The Lamb of God. The one to whom the very Passover celebration points. This is his Father’s house and if he’s going to do anything he’s going to clean it up, not just by shoving over tables and shooing away the cheaters, but by giving up his innocent life like that first Passover lamb long ago in Egypt. And by shedding his blood to deliver from death and judgment those who believe in him.
St. Patrick did a lot of good things, but he can’t do that. Neither can any of us. We can’t give God enough money or exchange our good deeds for eons in heaven or provide enough sacrifices to earn God’s favor. Holy Week begins by reminding us of that, along with the reassurance that we are not sold out by our lack of perfection. Jesus is here. He comes to save us by his sacrificial death for our sins. They are going to kill him.
That makes it okay to be Irish or pretend to be Irish today, even to celebrate either of those two. Because someone bigger than a saint and something bigger than any temple or church organization comes into our lives and costs us nothing yet gives us everything. Jesus and his love.
Have a blessed Holy Week.
PRAYER: Dearest Jesus, I admit that I’m afraid of your anger and wonder if you could ever become so upset with me that you turn away. Calm my fears by your promises. Call me with your grace once more by your kind and loving invitations to believe, to follow, to hear, to repent. As your forgiven follower, then, take me on yet another journey this Holy Week so that I go to the cross and tomb and there die again and rise anew with you. Amen.