The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem

by Marcus J. Borg

When this happens, we forget that Jesus’s passion was not just the kingdom of God. It was also the kingdom of God. They go together: it is never kingdom without God, and it is never God without kingdom. It is a deeply religious vision of life under the lordship of God as known in Jesus, which is the same as life under the lordship of Christ.

It also involves loyalty and commitment to God’s passion as disclosed in Jesus, a passion for compassion, justice, and nonviolence. Compassion—love—is utterly central to the message and life of Jesus, and justice is the social form of compassion. To put the same thought in different language, love is the soul of justice, and justice is the body, the flesh, of love.

The personal and political meanings of Holy Week are captured in two nearly identical questions. The first is one that many Christians have heard and responded to: Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior? It is a crucially important question, for the Lordship of Christ is the path of personal liberation, return from exile, and conscious reconnection to God. The virtually identical but seldom asked question is: Do you accept Jesus as your political Lord and Savior?