The commemoration of Holy Week – the seven days before Easter Sunday – is of extraordinary importance to followers of Jesus, who view it with a sense of reverence, of wonder, of gratitude as the most sacred time of the Christian year.
Editor Don Kirkland on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley from the city of Jerusalem. Prominent in the background is the Dome of The Rock.The custom of singling out these few days in the earthly life and ministry of Jesus as a time for special observance dates back to the later half of the third century.
Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and lasting until, but not including Easter, was as much on my mind during my recent visit to Israel with other Southern Baptist editors as it is today as South Carolina Baptist churches join other believers worldwide in the celebration of Easter Sunday.
As we traced the steps of Jesus during that final week of his earthly life – beginning as he rode on a donkey into the city of Jerusalem as a miracle-working preacher and teacher, and ending with his death by crucifixion, followed by the somber days before Easter – my thoughts centered on the drama and controversy that marked for all eternity our Lord’s last hours.
Prayerfully, I tried to take in with my mind and heart, as well as with my eyes, the traditional site of the Upper Room, where Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as an example to believers then and today, and where our Lord gave the apostles and us, too, a “new command” found in John 13:34 that we “love one another.” This took place on what is known today as Maundy Thursday. The word “Maundy” is derived from Latin words meaning “new command.”
In the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley from the city of Jerusalem, I walked where Jesus knelt to pray that God’s will, rather than his own, would be fulfilled in a testimony to servanthood and sacrifice that has lost none of its power to convict and to inspire believers today.
Gordon’s Calvary and the Garden Tomb are recognized worldwide as traditional sites of the crucifixion of Jesus and of the burial and resurrection of our Lord. Holy Week concludes on the day after the crucifixion as believers reflect on the suffering and death of Jesus as he lay in the grave.
A recent publication by the American Bible Society entitled “The Life of Christ” retraces the events of the final week in the life of Jesus leading up to Good Friday – events filled with both drama and controversy.
It was a time when “last words were spoken, blood and tears were shed, and Jesus’ mission was accomplished.”
All of this was prominent in my thinking during the visit to Israel, as it is today when I ponder events in the life of Christ “moving from the jubilation of Palm Sunday to the horror of Good Friday to the astonishment of Easter Sunday.”
On their recent visit to Israel, Southern Baptist editors visited sites associated with the final days in the earthly life of Jesus, including the room standing on the traditional site of the Last Supper.
Gordon’s Calvary, where many believe that Jesus was crucified.
The Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed before his arrest.