Year C 2025

Luke22:14-23:56

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Gift of Seven Days

Today we begin the strangest and most meaningful seven days of the Christian year. These seven days changed the world. Through the suffering of the cross, Jesus dies for our sins so we can inherit eternal life. This can be hard for us to understand, the world does not understand. Therefore, these seven days have been the topic of a million publications, countless debates and thousands of films. These days have inspired the greatest painters, the most skilled architects, and the most gifted musicians. To try and determine the impact of these seven days on our world is impossible. Even harder would be to try and account for the millions of men and women who have been transformed by them.

What does all this mean? In just a couple of minutes, we will hear the gift of this Holy Week that changed everything for you and me in Luke’s version of the passion story. To set the stage for the gospel reading, let’s hear again the events of those seven days as they took place so many years ago. On Sunday, the first of the seven days, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to the shouts of Hosanna, fulfilling an old prophecy of Zechariah. On Monday, he walked into the Jerusalem temple overturning tables where Roman drachmas were being exchanged for Jewish shekels. Roman coins were not allowed in the temple as the image of Caesar was a violation of the second commandment. But the Temple leaders were using the commandment as means to cheat the people and make the temple a place of profit rather than a place of prayer.

On Tuesday, Jesus taught the people in parables, warned them against the religious leaders, and predicted the destruction of the temple. On Wednesday, the fourth day, the gospel writers are silent. Perhaps it was a day of rest and prayer for Jesus and his worried disciples. On Thursday, in an upper room, Jesus celebrated his last Passover meal with his disciples and gave it a new meaning. No longer would his followers remember the Exodus from Egypt in the breaking of bread. They would now remember his broken body and shed blood. Later that evening after Judas’ betrayal, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus agonized in prayer at what lay ahead for him.

On Friday, the fifth day, following his arrest, imprisonment, desertion, false trials, denial, condemnation, beatings and sentencing, Jesus carried his own cross to “The Place of the Skull,” where he was crucified with two others prisoners and died. On Saturday, the sixth day, Jesus lay dead in a tomb bought by a man name Joseph and those who had prepared his body rested according to the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day.  Now, let us now hear this story of the greatest love that changed the world. The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

This isn’t the end of the story because God declared Jesus innocent when the dawn breaks on Sunday, the seventh day, his passion was over, the stone had been rolled away. Jesus was alive. He appeared to Mary, to Peter, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and to the 11 disciples gathered in a locked room. His resurrection is established as fact. And we are left with no doubt about the power of God, working through the death of Christ. The cross is a mystery but most of all it is a gift.