Op-ed by Rev. Napoleon Harris V
For Christians all over the world this week is Holy Week, not just because of what God did in antiquity, it is holy because of what God is doing today. By divine providence there is a consecrated convergence of Holy Week, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Black Maternal Health Week. This providential convergence is a prophetic call to the church and our collective conscience to sit with Jesus at the cross and experience the ugly brutal exploits of injustice. We cannot experientially grasp the power of The Resurrection without first acknowledging the injustice of crucifixion.
Too often, believers rush to the triumph of Easter Sunday without pausing to ponder at the gory shadowed foot of the cross. We celebrate the empty tomb while emptying Jesus’ suffering of meaning. This constructs a theology that craves crowns but loathes crosses, chases miracles but dodges the marginalized, glorifies power but turns a blind black eye to pain and holds contempt for the contents of the Kingdom of God. This is imperial theology. It is not of God and it is not the Gospel of Jesus, the melanated, colonized, reforming Jew who was targeted, tortured, humiliated, and lynched by a murderous empire because He dared to stand against injustice.
Rightly observed, Holy Week is a confrontation with the same limited, non-God-honoring, patriarchal, oppressive pathology that crucified Jesus and diminishes the voices of those who suffer today.
Holy week begins with resilient resistance baptized in hope and ends with Resurrection re-deployment in service to God’s just desires for the world. Hosanna! Is the soundtrack to Palm Sunday. Hosanna is a cry of protest not praise it means save us! Jesus entered Jerusalem to the sounds of people under occupation, poverty, and systemic suffering. Their cry then is our cry now. Save us from dishonesty. Save us from a fluctuating economy (that at its best isn’t a measure of what’s best for most of us). Save us from gun violence, greed, hatred, and despair. Save us from a world that denies our dignity. Hosanna! Save us!
Jesus Christ wearing a crown of thorns
[Image by vectorportal.com]
This week, we are invited to sit at the foot of the cross resisting the urge to turn away from Christ’s suffering, letting it compel us to stand in solidarity with victims of sexual assault. Because they, like Jesus, were stripped of their clothes, dignity, safety, and their voice by those who refused to honor the divine within them. Jesus was brutalized by idolatrous individuals who exalted their own power and desire over God’s will. Jesus’ suffering was spiritual, physical, emotional, communal, and systemic. Survivors of sexual assault know this path. As they walk it Jesus walks with them. To truly have fellowship with Christ and share in his sufferings we must stand in solidarity with survivors too.
Likewise, we must also turn our holy attention to black women. Black Maternal Health Week invites us to consider that black mothers are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Their pain is ignored, their voices dismissed, their bodies policed, and their health is underfunded.
These are not just episodes of medical negligence or medical anomalies; they are acts of cultural and structural violence, a moral emergency, and crucifixion by a different name. When black women are denied fair, culturally responsive healthcare, it is an affront to the Gospel. Jesus stands with black women and we must too.
I am convinced that the convergences of this week are consecrated and not coincidental. This moment is calling us to action. The marginalized voices crying “Hosanna, save us” are meant to be heard, felt, and responded to. Holy Week is calling us to observe it differently. We must abandon imperial theology and stand at the bloody foot of the cross. There we will see Jesus not clothed in power, but stripped naked, suffering, and abandoned. Etched into His sweaty, bloody brow are the faces of survivors, black mothers, the poor and the forgotten.
Let’s stand with the oppressed because Jesus is there, calling us to stand with Him, in defiant hope. Let’s believe, as the early church believed, that Resurrection is a movement — not a magical phenomenon — that requires participation. It requires that we organize to demand our local leaders fund justice and equity so that our policies reflect the compassion of Christ. Let’s insist that our local leaders allocate resources, create policies, and prioritize the most vulnerable. Then and only then can we fully experience the miracle of Easter in our sanctuaries, our streets, our spirits, and in our systems.
Easter Resurrection is God’s response to violence, feelings of abandonment, and despair. It is God’s veto against injustice and heaven’s vote of affirmation for life and justice! God is able to raise Cleveland higher, but the work starts with us standing at the cross with those who are suffering. This is the holy work of Holy Week.
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Rev. Dr. Napoleon Harris V is senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland.