Suffering and Holy Week

In a couple readings this week, I looked at different ways to interpret and perform Holy Week Liturgies.

Marjorie Proctor-Smith, in one of the readings, noted the importance of rejecting modes of conveying the suffering Christ which have traditionally been used to support abuse and subjugation of women. In forming liturgy “it is necessary to envision redemption in terms of resistance rather than suffering.” (Proctor-Smith, 103). We too often talk about the suffering of Jesus in ways that glorify suffering or lead to unhealthy, paralyzing conceptions of guilt. Especially for women, suffering stories have been used in damaging ways, in ways that keep all of us in complicity with abuse. The story of Christ’s crucifixion can be interpreted as a “rising above,” a defiance of suffering, as opposed to a framework which has been used to justify spousal abuse and has led pastors to use Christ’s suffering to compel women to return to abusive husbands. She also makes particular note that Jesus suffers only once and does not have to return to the crucifixion again and again. The importance of this should be used as a compelling reason for women to be able to say “no” to their suffering and remove themselves from the circles of violence (Proctor-Smith, 103). She offers to us a view of Jesus bound with the feminine and multiple examples of feminist prayer. While appreciating the very real history of oppression of women in Christian circles and he need for differentiation from a God which has historically been presented as male and as in play in the lives of male figures, I would wonder to what extent the presentation of God as feminine might also be alienating to others or to those of us who desire to remove ideas of gender from the holy. Are there ways to open Jesus to be seen as feminist-friendly in ways that can embrace wherever one is on a gender continuum or that can reject the idea of “feminine” and “masculine” stereotypes? Indeed she makes note of Sophia-Jesus (Proctor-Smith, 98) and ways to view Jesus as embracing the feminine and masculine, but I still feel like this presentation still gives merit to gender stereotypes. I would like to see examples of liturgy that can embrace masculine, feminine, and other perceptions of gender that are more fluid. Speaking to the needs of those who desire to view God in different ways is important and perhaps her God was, in particular, to find uses for the feminine and that can empower feminist ideas, but for my own needs and perspective, I would like to find ways to think of God outside of gender or in ways that see gender more fluidly.

While Proctor-Smith engages the need of churches to be sensitive to a history of oppression and abuse of women, Henry Knight, in the other text I read, notes the importance of creating liturgy and language that can remove us from uses which have been anti-Semitic and disrespectful to our Jewish brothers and sisters, but also complicity in the Holocaust by many Christians. We need to acknowledge Christianity’s part in the treatment of our Jewish friends and how some forms of liturgy can contribute to that damage. He invites us to create liturgy that can bring us past this. His two major scriptural examples were that of Jacob and Jesus. He implores us to use a midrashic way of viewing scriptural stories and invites the lens of seeing ourselves as Jacob, limping home and aware of the strained relationships he has created with his brother, his wives, and his God. As Jacob is understands and acknowledges his flaws, he limps back home to begin the work of repairing these relationships (Knight, 8). This paradigm requires a level of honesty with the history of our tradition, which has been anti-semitic in many of its forms and especially in its presentation of the crucifixion narrative. Knight sees Christ’s suffering on the cross (as well as the suffering of Job) as inherently wrong; Jesus, I think most of us would agree, should not have suffered such a horrible death, nor should he have been put to death at all. We can, however, see this act as one of solidarity. As Christ suffers on the cross, so did many suffer under the Nazi regime. As Christ died for no good reason, so did millions of innocent Jews (Knight, 117). Knight challenges us to abandon traditional paradigms regarding the crucifixion and “say that it is a moral and spiritual outrage to justify anyone’s suffering, whether the most despicable human being or the Messiah himself, for some transcendent reason” (Knight, 109). Justifying suffering fails to acknowledge the horror of the Holocaust. Lifting up the midrashic and PRDS methods, Knight invites us to find lenses that can allow us to find the white fire, the greater, more transcendent meanings of the text and move past more pshat understandings, however important that level is, with a beautiful example of Good Friday Meditations that can offer a more enriching and sensitive presentation of the passion narrative (Knight, 121-125). I would wonder, in light of his proposed paradigm with which to view the crucifixion, if Knight would also offer a correlative Easter/Resurrection midrashic understanding that can incorporate continuing lessons.

Both Proctor-Smith and Knight offer new lenses with which to view Holy Week narratives and ways of framing our sacred stories which are sensitive to those who have been hurt by some historical uses of those stories. In further delving into the different lenses from which liturgy can be seen and the marginalized groups who have suffered from damaging uses of our religious material, we can widen our own interpretations and formations of worship in ways that can be both culturally sensitive and create paradigms designed to resist future oppression. We can continue Jesus’ challenge to radical inclusivity and love.

Marjorie Procter-Smith, Praying with our Eyes Open: Engendering Feminist Liturgical Prayer (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 89-113.

Henry F. Knight, Celebrating Holy Week in a Post-Holocaust World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 1-21, 101-127.