The Easter enigma (12 days and counting…)
So, how to go about approaching the Easter story on its own terms, and not within the
context of a (either believing or skeptical) modern agenda? Is the Easter story simply an odd tale about
a random, freakish “miracle”? If that
was the case, it becomes difficult to see the story as having any lasting significance;
what would be the point? Strange things
may happen, but what do they mean and why should anyone care?
The clue to
the meaning. The clue as to what
the Easter story meant to its authors – those who came to believe the “idle
tale” of the women that Sunday morning and record the tale in their Gospels – is
the fact that the followers of Jesus
continued to refer to him as “Messiah”[1]
after he had been crucified. Before
we go any further, it’s important to notice that the word “Messiah” signals our
departure from the 21st-century western world into the world of first-century
Judaism in Palestine and the wider Roman world of the Mediterranean. Now that we have travelled back in time, let’s
ask again – how is the question of Jesus’ status as Messiah a clue to the
meaning of the Easter story? Well, there
is a two-part answer to this question – 1) in most ways, the followers of Jesus
closely resembled the many other
messianic movements within the Judaism of the first century and 2) there is one
thing that distinguished the
Jesus-movement from every other messianic movement within second-Tempe Judaism[2]. The fact is, Jesus was far from being the first
person to be hailed as the Messiah by a group of faithful followers and who
ended up being killed by Israel’s enemies.
We tend to think of Jesus as being a unique phenomenon, but for those of
his contemporaries who had any historical memory, he was simply the latest example in a long succession
of would-be Messiahs who failed in their mission to rescue Israel and ended up
losing their lives in the attempt.
Without fail, each time a Messiah was killed, his followers dispersed
and his movement disappeared (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.36-37).
Unique,
unlike everyone else. At first
blush, this seems to be the story of the Jesus-movement as well. However, there is something that marks out
the Jesus-movement as being absolutely unique among all second-Temple messianic
movements. This something is the clue – not
only did the followers of Jesus not disband after his death, but they also continued to speak of Jesus as
being Israel’s Messiah. This fact
doesn’t strike most Christians as being significant, since many Christians are aware
neither of how Jesus’ contemporaries would have perceived him nor what his
followers hoped he would do. Since the
term Messiah/Christ has come to mean something radically different to modern
Christians from what it meant to ancient Jews, many Christians don’t make a
link between Jesus’ resurrection and his followers’ claim that he was the true
Messiah of Israel. (This is largely because
much Christian theology has ignored the Jewish context of Jesus and the New
Testament and has adopted different categories of thought in order to
articulate Christian thought).
What’s in a
title? Simply put, many Christians
believe that the claim that Jesus was the Messiah is a claim that Jesus is the
one who can grant people access to a good afterlife. However, first-century Jews expected that the
Messiah, once he finally arrived, would be the true king of Israel who would
liberate his people from their enemies and establish a world-wide kingdom of
justice and peace and usher in the “Age to come”, the time when all the desires
of the Creator of the world would become reality (we’ll unpack this dense statement
tomorrow). For the followers of Jesus,
as for all second-Temple Jews, a dead
Messiah was a non-Messiah; this is why every messianic movement both before
and after Jesus dispersed following the death of the Messianic pretender – except, of course, for the Jesus-movement. The followers of Jesus of Nazareth continued
to speak of him as Messiah after his death and eventually wrote stories about
his life, death and resurrection (= Gospels).
It should now be clear that the evangelists didn’t write their Gospels simply
because they believed that Jesus was an interesting personality whose life-story
deserved to be recorded. Once again,
none of the many failed Messiahs who led revolts against Rome had their “biographies”
written by their followers. Of course
not – a would-be Messiah who died in the attempt to liberate his people was an embarrassment
to his followers, not someone whose life-story should be recorded.
Plot twist. So, this is the kind of story that Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John are telling – the story of the Messiah. Granted, this is the story of a long-awaited
king who died (not part of the expected scenario) and rose again to life and
rules his kingdom, not from Jerusalem, but from “the right hand of God”
(whatever that means; stay tuned). By writing
the story of Jesus as the story of the Messiah, the Gospel-writers are tapping
into a whole nexus of history, national experience and Scripture – the ancient
history and the ancient texts (Hebrew Bible) of the Jewish people. In Israel’s Scriptures, the arrival of the
Messiah hails “the end” of the world as we know it – and the beginning of the “world
to come”. This creates more questions as
to why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote their stories the way they did. Not only do they write about things happening
to Jesus (as Messiah) that no one expected to happen to Israel’s ultimate king,
but they also write a Messiah-story knowing full well that the world – as far
as could be observed – continued to rumble along as if nothing at all had
changed…
Tomorrow, we’ll take a closer look at the story of Ancient
Israel and the Jewish hope for the coming of the Messiah, the context within
which the New Testament Gospels interpret the resurrection of Jesus.
(I’ve attached links below to the Easter narratives in the 4
New Testament Gospels)
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