Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week

AJ Levine’s work is a gift.

Her perspective as an expert New Testament scholar who is drawn to the stories of Jesus and their influence on the world offers brilliant insights for those who claim the New Testament as holy. Interestingly, she’s Jewish, so she doesn’t claim the texts in the way that her seminary students or her audience of church folks do, but she’s able to offer vital insights to the context of Jesus’ life and ministry. Sometimes her audience is decidedly academic (I used “Short Stories by Jesus” about the parables with a group a few years ago and it was very good, but a heavy read), but for the last two books that Cokesbury has tenaciously marketed, she’s expanding her audience more explicitly into everyday church folks. The first is an Advent book “Light of the World: a Beginner’s Guide to Advent,” (2019) which I’ve used and loved and required no supplemental material to be used well.

This book at question here (from 2018), is also a wonderful resource - so wonderful, in fact - that I built an all-church study around it during Lent of 2020. Our lead pastor preached a “holy week in slow-mo” series, which I hope will end up in the rotation of Lenten options for future years as well. And we convened extra small groups to read and reflect on this text together. I didn’t love the DVD or study guide materials that I previewed online (unsurprising), so I wrote discussion questions and provided some extra practical application questions for our small groups.

The book offers 6 chapters, and there is plenty (plenty) to discuss, even though Levine doesn’t expressly get into atonement theory or the significance of Easter. That’s no reason to stop you from getting into those things with your groups though! Our study offered a little bit for everyone: a basic but not simplistic view of the events and stories of Holy Week, some creative use of scripture, some brilliant notes on Jewish and Temple culture of the time, the opportunity to reflect on how we’ve encountered God in Holy Weeks past, and some short academic excursions that were enough for those who enjoy that to chew on each week.