Holy Week undressed

From the anointing at Bethany to the cross at Golgotha. Eighty-eight verses across two chapters; one architectural arc; the discipleship the gospel has been describing now lived out against the empire's machinery.

Pre-session video

This is the penultimate session of the course. Mark 14v1–15v20 runs from the anointing at Bethany through the Passover meal, Gethsemane, the arrest, the trials before the high priest and Pilate, and out to the mockery and the way to Golgotha. The next session — Session 16 — picks up at 15v21 with Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross to the place of the skull. Holy Week is being walked here, slowly and unflinchingly, with the disciples falling away one by one and the women keeping watch.

Three things to watch for

The first is the framing women. The session opens with the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus at Bethany (14v3–9) and closes Holy Week toward the women at the cross and the empty tomb in Session 16. The Twelve named men do not stand the test of these chapters; the women, named and unnamed, do. The woman at Bethany breaks the alabaster jar and pours nard over Jesus' head; the disciples object; Jesus defends her with the line that wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her. The anointing names what is coming; her gift is also her witness.

The second is Gethsemane (14v32–42) and the prayer at the heart of it. Jesus is distressed; terrified; on the ground; asking that the cup might pass from him. Mark does not soften this. At the centre of the prayer is the Aramaic Mark preserves: Abba, Father. The intimate-familial form an adult son uses for his father. Not Daddy — that twentieth-century reading has been corrected; the philological work has long since shown that Abba is the warm-familial adult form rather than childish baby-talk. The intimacy is real; the terror is real; Mark wants us to hear the actual word Jesus prayed in.

The third is the political shape of the trial and the mockery. The Sanhedrin gathering at night, the false witnesses, the temple charge that does not stick, the swift handover to Pilate, the crowd, the choice between Jesus and Barabbas — the apparatus of empire and the religious establishment closing around one man. Mark is not writing court transcripts; he is writing the gospel. The mockery — the purple cloak, the crown of thorns, the reed sceptre, the hail-king-of-the-Jews — is the empire's parody of the kingship Jesus has redefined throughout the course. The empire mocks the kingdom it does not understand.

Exegetical key video

Practice for the week

Three to choose from, or write your own. Watch with Jesus through one watch of the night this week — an hour or so of stillness in which you keep awake while reading and praying through the Gethsemane scene slowly. Or: sit with the woman at Bethany who broke the alabaster jar; ask what you are holding tight that should be poured out, and what gift of yours might be witness as well as cost. Or: pray the Lord's Prayer this week with Abba instead of Father at the opening, slowly, as an adult son or daughter speaking to a parent they love.

Materials for this session

Facilitator brief, participant workbook, and slides are available to facilitators and pilot participants on request; final downloadable versions will appear here once permissions on the scripture text settle.