Entering the Passion of Jesus Quotes

“The prophet Micah (6:8) summarizes what God wishes for humanity with three commandments: “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Isaiah 56:1 offers two commandments, “Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.” Finally, the Talmud cites Habakkuk 2:4, “Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.” This is the verse Paul cites in Romans 1:17 and Galatians 3:11, and the Epistle to the Hebrews 10:38 alludes to it as well.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Judas, too, is in the image and likeness of the divine. He is not a demon, although he may seem to us to be one. He is a human being. And we cannot afford to demonize human beings. Judas calls us to conscience.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“The question of paying taxes is a valid one today, particularly for people living under occupation or under an unjust regime. It was a valid one in ancient Israel as well—how much does one go along with the emperor, and when must one resist?”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“We need personal prayer—to sustain us, to help us find courage, to lament. Jesus provides the example that in cases of extreme concern, of course, we pray for ourselves.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Jesus is not suggesting we serve simply by writing a check, or even by stocking a food pantry. As the women who anointed his feet made direct physical contact with him, so he wants his disciples to make direct physical contact with others. Service is up close and personal; service is something others can see and appreciate; service means getting down off one’s high horse and manifesting meekness and humility. It teaches us that we are not the important ones: the ones we serve are the ones who are important. And we, in turn, might receive that same service when we need it. The foot washing may be a singular event, but its meaning should permeate one’s life.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“And so we ask about our own responsibilities. If the governing authority is the Nazi Party, is it “lawful” in terms of what God would want to pay our taxes? Do we support the dictator? support unjust policies? Do we pay attention to where our tax dollars are going, or do we insist on such a “separation of Church and State” that we do whatever the government tells us, with “church” only being about the correct belief that gets us into heaven? Jesus tells us that how we act on earth makes a difference. He poses the question to us: what belongs to God, and what belongs to Caesar?”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“The Incarnation teaches that the divine takes on human flesh, and so that human body is of value. When we look at the face of our neighbor, or at our own images in the mirror, we see the face of the divine. And so, do we care for our bodies? This is Lent, the time when Christians around the world participate in acts of self-denial. Perhaps this is a time when those who enter into Lent start to think more seriously about how and what and with whom they eat.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Jesus’ words, citing Zechariah, do even more. They anticipate a time when all peoples, all nations, can worship in peace, and in love. There is no separation between home and house of worship, because the entire land lives in a sanctified state.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“In John’s version of the Temple incident, Jesus anticipates the time when there will no longer be a need for vendors, for every house not only in Jerusalem but in all of Judea shall be like the Temple itself. The sacred nature of the Temple will spread through all the people.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Jeremiah and Jesus indicted people then, and now. The ancient Temple, and the present-day church, should be places where people not only find community, welcome the stranger, and repent of their sins. They should be places where people promise to live a godly life, and then keep their promises.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Jesus continues, “But you are making it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13). Here he is quoting Jeremiah 7:11: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” A “den of robbers” (sometimes translated a “den of thieves”) is not where robbers rob. “Den” really means “cave,” and a cave of robbers is where robbers go after they have taken what does not belong to them, and count up their loot. The context of Jeremiah’s quotation—and remember, it always helps to look up the context of citations to the Old Testament—tells us this. Jeremiah 7:9-10 depicts the ancient prophet as condemning the people of his own time, the time right before Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple over five hundred years earlier: “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“The Triumphal Entry cannot be separated from the cross, and the cross cannot be separated from the call of justice. And that call cannot be separated from risk, personal, professional, permanent.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“from loneliness, from poverty, from oppression. We are all in need of some form of salvation. Indeed, the idea of salvation for most of the Scriptures of Israel is not about spiritual matters, but physical ones: the Passover, the setting of the Passion narrative, is about salvation from slavery. God hears our cries. And the stories remind us that people, still, cry out to be saved. Will our cries be heard by others? Will we hear the cries of others? Will God act? Will we?”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“But the Psalms not only ask for salvation; they also show that salvation is in a sense already present. We don’t have to pin all our hopes on a hero and invest all our yearnings toward some future date. This is the day for rejoicing; any time the psalm is sung, this is the day. The kingdom of heaven is present here, if we just pay attention.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Inheriting the earth, for the psalm and for the Gospel, requires being humble, not in the sense of lowly, but in the sense of being able to listen to others, to share resources, to prioritize community rather than authority, to serve rather than to be served.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“During Lent you have the opportunity to think about your life alongside the life of Jesus, inviting inward transformation and then outward action.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Holy Week is a time to think about risk, because that’s what this whole Passion narrative represents.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“The Passion narrative asks much of us, and it also, through Jesus’ example, gives us the knowledge that we can do what we are asked, and the assurance that we will succeed.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Lent is also a period of atonement, which is a time to repair past wrongs. We might think of the term “atonement” as meaning “at one-ment,” being at one with one another, being reconciled. One way of understanding the cross is that it represents atonement between humanity and divinity, in that Jesus takes the responsibility for the sins of human beings and cancels them out with his death. But the Passion narrative should also prompt us to think about reconciliation in our own lives.”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week

“Jesus is about to give up his life, which requires determining what a life is worth. And that means we all have to determine what our own lives are worth. What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? What are our values, and have we lived up to them?”
― Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week