I find it usually happens if I wait too long to eat lunch. Sometimes it happens when I come home late from work and there isn’t dinner ready. When I’m tired and prolonged hunger sets in I get hangry, hungry and angry. These are the moments that I’m not pleasant to be around. Perhaps the hangry pains happen to you, too.
In the Mark 11 passage of the days leading up to Holy Triduum we see Jesus also experiencing hanger. After his triumphant entry into Jerusalem he spends the night in Bethany. After waking up he and the disciples head back to Jerusalem. It says that he was hungry (as I imagine anyone would be traveling) and he goes to the fig tree to find food, but instead curses it because there is only leaves! With the pains of hunger, Jesus enters the temple with intensified emotions. It is in the temple that Jesus is angry at the money changers for making God’s house a place of merchants instead of prayer. So he flips the tables in his irritation and cleanses the temple.
I love Holy Week because we see a very real and authentic Jesus, a very human Jesus. He has needs like we do (hunger!) and gets upset like we do (flipping the tables) and expresses to God that if there is any other way for this week to end that God make it happen and prays “But not my will, but yours be done.”
Holy Week challenges our impulses of a sentimental Jesus and instead we are welcomed to experience this Divine/human full of a range of emotions. Our savior knows what’s it’s like to be human and to be in need and upset and I find that incredibly comforting.
