Monday of Holy Week 2017
Entry into the City, John August Swanson, 1990. Monday of Holy Week 2017 John August Swanson’s wonderful painting “Entry into the City” captures in its large scope, multitude of images and characters, and in particular the setting sun amidst the dark and roiling clouds, much of the pathos of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of the last week of his life on earth, the week we call Holy Week. Swanson’s painting will form the focus of this year’s Holy Week reflections. In their book The Last Week (2006), Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan think it is probable that there were two processions into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday – one of the regnant Roman power and the other of Jesus enacting his upside-down kingdom. Whether or not this happened on the same day so as to provide such a poignant point-counterpoint event may not be as probable as Borg and Crossan suppose. But both processions did occur and it is fi...