As an Adventist I believed the ideas of “Holy Week” and “Good Friday” were Catholic. To me, they seemed to be in the same category as Lent and Ash Wednesday. For that matter, Easter itself was mostly Catholic; the daughters of Babylon had adopted sunrise services and ham dinners in a flagrant display of wondering after the beast, honoring “the venerable Day of the Sun”. We, on the other hand, chose like Moses to “suffer affliction with the people of God, [rather] than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25, KJV).
It wasn’t easy being Adventist in a world of Christians besotted with Satan’s deceptions. Our lives were disciplined, austere. We had no burst of Sunday joy at Easter; we had the sober remembrance of Jesus keeping the Sabbath as He lay in the tomb. On Sunday we might have a few colored eggs hidden in the yard and maybe a chocolate rabbit—but we knew better than to give in to the lure of flowers, music, and Sunday dinners to celebrate the day Jesus worked rather than the day He rested.
Now I am horrified when I realize the way I judged Easter as an Adventist. Of course I had no context for understanding what really happened that day Jesus rose from the grave. I believed that Jesus’ rising from death was merely a promise that someday we, too, would rise from the grave—and if we were very obedient and confessed our sins, we might discover we were resurrected to be saved. On the other hand—the chances were good that our resurrection would be for judgment: a time of burning, and then—nothing.
I simply had no knowledge of the fact that Jesus’ resurrection was the way God gives us eternal life. I didn’t know that if I believed in Jesus and His sacrifice for my sin, I would pass from death to life (Jn. 5:24). Moreover, I didn’t know that I was born spiritually dead, by nature an object of wrath (Eph. 2:1-3). I certainly didn’t know that if I repented of my sin and believed in Jesus’ substitutionary death, His resurrection life was the life that would make me alive (Romans 5:9-10; 1 Peter 3:21).
Now that I understand that I was quite literally dead—born with a dead-in-sin spirit—and separated from God. I am overwhelmed that I am now alive because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Holy Week now is not an observance dictated by tradition. Instead it is the week when I remember what Jesus did during the last days as He moved toward the cross. Some of His most memorable teachings and deeds were done during that last week of His ministry. He did these things, moreover, fully aware of what was coming. He did not withdraw or panic.
As an Adventist I learned that Jesus could not see past the “portals of the tomb”. He did not know whether or not He would be successful in His mission. I believed He risked failure, that He could have sinned or even aborted the cross. That belief was a lie.
After His prayers in Gethsemane, “Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’” (Jn. 18:4). Jesus walked right up to the “Roman cohort and the officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees” (Jn. 18:3) and presented Himself to them, knowing in detail everything that would happen to Him.
Jesus went to the cross deliberately. He went knowing He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He went knowing He was the Creator of the men who betrayed Him and who crucified Him. He went intentionally in obedience to His Father and as the fulfillment of the eternal plan of the Triune God—His own plan.
Then came Sunday. Nature was overwhelmed; an earthquake shook Jerusalem for the second time in three days. Mary Magdalene and her companions wept their way to Jesus’ tomb—but it was empty! Peter and John came running and saw the empty tomb, but they returned home. Mary, however, stood weeping outside the tomb. She bent down and peered inside—and she saw two angels dressed in white who asked her why she wept. She turned and saw Jesus, but not knowing it was He, she asked through her tears if He had taken her Lord away.
Jesus revealed Himself to her with one word: “Mary.” Amazingly, Jesus revealed Himself first to Mary and her companions and entrusted these women with the eyewitness account of His resurrection! “Go to my brethren,” He told Mary, “and say to them, ‘I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God’” (John 20:17).
John summarizes Mary’s obedience with one sentence: “Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, I have seen the Lord,’ and that He had said these things to her” (John 20:18).
For all eternity God entrusted a woman saved from a life of sin with the first encounter with the risen Jesus! Mary has shown us the proper response to meeting the risen Christ: we are to announce Him, to testify of His Life, and to tell what He has said.
It is Easter time again. The veil which obscured the glory of the Lord Jesus destroying death and ensuring life for all who believe has been torn away. Easter Sunday is not the object of Christians’ celebration; the Risen Christ is whom we praise!
Resurrection Sunday is now my favorite holiday. God keeps His promises! Jesus is risen from the dead, and because He lives, I now live.
He is risen indeed!
- April 27–May 3, 2024 - April 25, 2024
- We Got Mail - April 25, 2024
- April 20–26, 2024 - April 18, 2024
Colleen,
Bless you for this reflection – it reflects a meditation from a True Christian (albeit in the Protestant Tradition).
Just a minor tweak on Mary Magdalene – one of my special research projects . . .
You wrote: “. . . a woman saved from a life of sin . . .” regarding Mary Magdalene. This notion of Mary Magdalene being a sinner has a disreputable history: (What follows is from http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/marymagda.html with minor tweaks of my own.)
“As a follower, Mary was one of many women that accompanied Jesus during his travels, most of whom are believed to have been wealthy. During his journey, he was visited by two women, the unnamed sinner in Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany, both of whom anoint his feet and dry them with their hair, similar to the way Magdalene anointed him shortly after his death.. In 591, Pope Gregory the Great stated that all three were in fact one woman, Mary Magdalene, and this is how she became labeled as a prostitute, or the unnamed sinner. However the Second Vatican Council removed the prostitute label, and in 1969 after much debate and Biblical evidence that there was more than one Mary and that Mary of Magdalene and the unnamed sinner were two different figures”, Pope Gregory in 591 was quietly repudiated. Mary Magdalene was thus retrospectively cleared of all charges of sin. However, the damage had been done over the centuries and has proven difficult to eradicate.
The Eastern Orthodox Church has always given her the title “Apostle to the Apostles” meaning that she was the first human being to be given the supreme joy of announcing Jesus’ Resurrection to the world. Also, they have never regarded her as a “sinner” as did the Latin West at and after 591.
For some years after the Resurrection, she and her husband – St John the Evangelist (Married at Cana) led the Church in matters of Liturgy and Spirituality – in the Via Sapienta, the Via Meditatio and the Via Contemplatio. All the highest developments in these fields in the Church’s history can be ultimately attributed back to her. All because Jesus gave her the privilege of being the Apostle to the Apostles.
She and John co-wrote the Gospel of John and it went out under his name – that is why the stories of (1) her wedding in Cana (Jn 2:1-11) and (2) her encounter with the Risen Lord (Jn 20:11-17) are only reliably found in John. [Mark 16:9ff also mentioning this encounter-incident is not found in the most reliable early Greek mss.]
The Holy Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Holy Pascha) has always been precious to the Church in some way or another since the beginning. And Jesus’ Resurrection became the new and greater Exodus (Luke 9:31 usually rendered “departure”) – this time from Sheol, which both warranted and even commanded a new celebration in the life of the New Covenant Community namely the weekly Lord’s Day and the annual Holy Pascha (itself celebrated on a Lord’s Day).
On Holy Pascha itself, let us all greet each other in exultation with “Christ is risen!”, and we reply with fervor: “Truly He is Risen!”
John, I understand that the authorship of John is disputed among more liberal scholars. Nevertheless, the traditional view that the apostle John wrote the gospel remains the view that I hold. I quote below from Andreas Kostenberger, the senior research professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Southeastern Baptist and Theological Seminary:
“In several publications, I have surveyed the external and internal evidence with regard to Johannine authorship. I have documented that the Church, from the second century until around 1790, has universally held that the apostle John wrote the Gospel that bears his name. When the apostolic authorship of John’s Gospel was questioned, and the tide turned against Johannine authorship, this occurred not because the evidence supported a different outcome, but because in the wake of the Enlightenment scholars reacted against traditional ecclesiastical dogma, and Johannine authorship became one of the many casualties of critical scholarship.
“One important internal datum from the Gospel is that “the disciple Jesus loved” (i.e. the author of the Gospel; compare John 21:24 with 21:20–23) is consistently paired with the apostle Peter (see John 13:23–24; 18:15–16; 20:2–9; 21:1–8, 15–23). This clearly points to the apostle John, as it is this disciple who is consistently paired with Peter elsewhere in the New Testament (cf. Luke 5:8–10; 22:8; Acts 1:13; 3–4; 8:14–25; Gal. 2:9). Also, note that John the Baptist, who in the other Gospels is called “John the Baptist” or “the Baptist” or “Baptizer,” is called simply “John” in this Gospel—which is possible because the apostle John remains unnamed.
“Now Witherington (BAR 32/2 [2006]: 24) believes the author of John’s Gospel cannot be John the son of Zebedee because the sons of Zebedee are mentioned in John 21:2 (and Bauckham says the same). I would respond that, in fact, this reference considerably narrows the pool of candidates for “beloved disciple,” who is mentioned later in the same narrative (John 21:7) and hence must be one of the 7 disciples referred to in John 21:2 but was obviously not Simon Peter, Thomas, or Nathanael, so that he must have been either one of the sons of Zebedee (but not James who was martyred early) or one of the two other disciples not mentioned by name.
“As I have demonstrated in a recent essay, most likely “disciple whom Jesus loved” should be understood as an expression of authorial modesty, similar to the word “I suppose” in the last verse of the Gospel (John 21:25). This, as well as the author’s practice of talking about himself in the third person singular or first person plural, is in keeping with first-century historiographical practice. There is therefore no reason to overturn the long-standing belief, held by the Church through most of its history, that the author of John’s Gospel was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee” (http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/who-wrote-johns-gospel/).
There is no biblical data to suggest that Mary Magdalene married John at the wedding of Cana. That event, in the context of the gospel of John, was the setting for the first of seven signs announcing the identity and Messiah-ship of the Lord Jesus.
As far as Mary Magdalene being a sinner goes, we know that all humanity is born dead in sin, “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). Whether or not Mary Magdalene was the same woman as the one caught in adultery (and I acknowledge that claim is disputed), she was a sinner whom the Lord Jesus chose to send as the first to announce His resurrection. To send a woman as His witness was iconoclastic, in any case!
I believe we cannot make church traditions the grid through which to understand the Bible. Rather, the Bible stands as the grid through which all traditions must be evaluated. What the Bible does not tell us about its own stories we cannot safely embellish with traditions which change the understanding of the biblical text.
Nevertheless, thank you for reading the blog!