Friends: Scripture, prophecy, and promises notwithstanding, Jesus was the only participant who understood Holy Week.  Easter blessings to all … He is risen, indeed.  Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #906

March 26, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Missed Signals, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.” – Luke 24:45

Everything that happened in Jerusalem to and around Jesus during Holy Week – what some Christians refer to as the “Easter Octave” which is the eight-day period from Jesus’s arrival on Palm Sunday to his resurrection a week later – was predicted in scripture, was anticipated by Israel, and was explained by Jesus … in His own way.

Still, nobody understood what was going on, really.  Why?

Because Jesus was not what anybody, especially the Jews, expected; Jesus is still not what the world expects or wants.  Mankind generally wants and covets “its own truth,” not God’s.  Israel was looking for a righteous, fearsome, divine warrior king to come and kill the Romans and to declare their kingdom Israel rulers over all the earth.

Instead, this infinitely and mysteriously wise teacher, this worker of miracles, this vexer of the Jewish leaders – with this new language of “God’s Son” – preached not the killing of one’s enemies, but of loving them and sacrificially loving all mankind.

The life and lesson of Jesus, properly understood, is to learn, know, believe, and live in God’s divine love, mercy, grace, freedom, forgiveness, redemption and adoption into the Kingdom of God.  Does this glorify God?  Yes.  But is is also the heavenly blueprint for a thriving and glorifying humanity that exists, acts, and lives as God intended.  The vision of Jesus is the vision of humanity as God created it to be.

Our fallen world does not operate on love, faith, trust, and righteousness.  We live in a transactional world of punishment, retribution, and power of our own sinful making … with the encouragement of Satan, the father of lies against God.

One day yet to come, the character of the Messiah the Jews wanted, will arrive in the thundering return of Jesus the Christ on a white warhorse (Revelation 19:10).  That is when God’s fearsome righteousness will be on full display for all the earth.

But that’s not why Jesus appeared as a man – as a Jew – two thousand years ago.  In God’s timing, it was time for humanity to return to God, and God’s chosen people Israel were unique in their knowledge of and faith in the one true God.  No other culture believed that.  In fact, all other cultures had long since wandered far from relationship with the Creator God.  Only the Jews had the scriptural key to humanity’s saving message of Jesus which would restore relationship with God.

But instead of recognizing, from their own scripture, the promised Messiah in his humility, sacrificial love, and grace, Jewish leaders were blinded to His message and threatened by His presence.  When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, taught the truth, vexed the Pharisees, and gave himself for a sacrifice, it was a message of God’s redemption for all mankind that was too shocking and too difficult to understand.

It was a week nobody but Jesus understood.  Until later.

“Why did it all have to happen that way?” many Christians ask.  Many more people don’t bother to ask the question.  But all the foretold events of Jesus’s life and of the Gospel events of His death and resurrection, were hiding in the plain sight of scripture.  It was God’s plan, and not until it had been accomplished was truth revealed.

The long and short of it is simply this: “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” says Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:26).

And while we are still trying to make sense of it two thousand years later, it is our faith in “Yes, He did” that we live out His mission and signal the world of His love.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures the truth is there whether you believe it or not.