The Meaning of Jesus: Part 2 – The Perfect Storm

The Meaning of Jesus: The Perfect Storm

 

  Perfect-Storm-in-Social-Network-acceptanceIn late October 1991, the sword fishing boat Andrea Gail out of Gloucester, Massachusetts was on a run about 500 miles out into the North Atlantic. Despite a forecast of some dangerous weather ahead, the experienced fishermen headed for home because their ice machine was malfunctioning, endangering their catch. What was forecast to be rough weather turned out to be really a gross understatement. The convergence of three powerful storms – a strong cold front from Canada, a warm nor’easter from the Atlantic, and the remnants of Hurricane Grace—came together right on top of the Andrea Gail, generating winds over 90 mph and waves that may have been close to 100 feet high. The captain, Billy Tyne, radioed in, saying “She’s comin’ on boys, and she’s comin’ on strong.” Those were the last words heard from the Andrea Gail. The Coast Guard would later only find a few pieces of floating debris, and no survivors.

Robert Case, a meterologist, said that the crashing together of the cold front from Canada and the warmer Atlantic storm would have been enough to produce a strong storm, “but then like throwing gasoline on a fire, a dying Hurricane Grace delivered immeasurable tropical energy to create the perfect storm.” Indeed, “The Perfect Storm” became the title of the movie about the Andrea Gail in the year 2000, starring George Clooney as Captain Tyne. Since then, the “perfect storm” has been a popular way of describing the convergence of several factors on a single point to create a powerful event.

Triumphal-entryIn Simply Jesus, the book we’re using for our Wednesday night study, N.T. Wright uses the metaphor of a perfect storm to describe three powerful movements that are coming together as Jesus rides down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem. We often celebrate Palm Sunday as a joyful prelude to the dark days of holy week, but in all four of the Gospels this story acts as something much more. It’s a symbolic even that causes the crashing together of these three major movements, with Jerusalem at the center point of it all.

If we are going to understand Jesus’ cultural context, we have to first understand that Jerusalem was the center of the world, the navel of the earth for all Jews. It was the center because that’s where the temple stood—the place where God was to dwell, the place where heaven and earth came together, the place of sacrifice and forgiveness, the place where pilgrims came for the Passover feast. Three times a year the Jewish people from surrounding areas would come to Jerusalem for festivals. All the hopes and dreams of first century Israel were concentrated in Jerusalem, and it is there that the perfect storm begins to form

It was Sunday, the first day of the Jewish work week, when Jesus and his disciples finished the climb up the hills from the Jordan River valley to Bethany and the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem. They would have certainly not been the only ones on the road as pilgrims from all over the region were making their way to the holy city for the Passover festival, which celebrated the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt during the time of Moses. Jerusalem would swell from its regular population of maybe 40,000 inhabitants to more than 200,000 people during the festival.

Passover was a time of celebration, but it was also a time of high tension in Jerusalem. While the festival celebrated liberation from the tyranny of Egypt generations before, first century Israel was still under foreign domination. The Romans had taken over Jerusalem in 63BC and their imperial policies of taxation and occupation chafed at many Jews. Riots and uprisings were fairly common during the Passover festival, so Rome made sure that there was a military presence during that week, garrisoning more troops at the Antonia Fortress which overlooked the Temple complex.

This was the storm that arrived from the west—the Roman storm. Pilate’s arrival with the legions would thus have caused quite a spectacle as they entered the city from the west: a parade of infantry marching to the beat of drums, cavalry mounted on horses (if you had horses in the ancient world, you had the equivalent of F-16s), weapons, armor, gold standards glistening in the sun. It would have been a spectacle of imperial power and might.

But as Marcus Borg and Jon Dominic Crossan point out in their book, The Last Week, such a parade would also have been a demonstration of Roman imperial theology. For years, Rome had been a republic with an intricate system of checks and balances to insure that nobody could hold absolute dictatorial power. All that changed with Julius Caesar. A great Roman general who won victories out on the frontier, Caesar took the audacious step of bringing his victorious army back to Rome and established himself as absolute ruler, even allowing some people to start thinking that he was divine. Traditional republican Romans, however, were furious and had him assassinated. This set off a bloody civil war which was won by Caesar’s adopted son Octavius after he defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium in 37BC. The victorious Octavius changed his name to Augustus, and declared that his adoptive father, Julius, was indeed divine and that now he, Augustus Caesar, was to officially be known as the “son of god.” If you asked anybody in the Roman empire who the “son of god” was, they would have to say Augustus—after all, that’s what was printed on their coins.

The rise of Augustus was heralded as the dawn of a new age. The whole world was being renewed. A new phrase was born, “novus ordo seclorum,” a “new order of the ages” (a phrase that was, interestingly, borrowed by the founding fathers of the United States and put on both the Great Seal and the dollar bill). For Rome, the accession of Augustus signaled that history had turned a corner. Here was the one the world had been waiting for, and carved in stone everywhere around the empire were inscriptions like, “Good news! We have an emperor! Justice, peace, and security and prosperity are ours forever! The son of god has become the king of the world!” Augustus also declared himself “pontifex maximus” or the “chief priest” of the Roman imperial religion. Not only was he a god, he was the god’s chief priest as well! The same was said of Augustus’ successor Tiberias, whose coins depicted him in priestly garb. It was one of these coins that Jesus was shown in the temple when the Pharisees were asking him about paying taxes to Rome.

 Rome was represented by Pontius Pilate on that Sunday. The job of the Roman governor was to keep the peace, administer justice, collect taxes, and stop any unrest from happening. He was also bound to maintain the cult of the emperor—the imperial religion. A few years prior to this, Pilate had caused a riot when he set up Roman standards in the Jerusalem temple—putting the symbols of Roman religion in the midst of the holiest site in the world for Jews. The people launched a mass protest in the theater in Caesarea, and when Pilate threatened to kill them all, the historian Josephus says that they all flung themselves on the ground and bared their necks to the soldiers, saying that they preferred death over the violation of their laws.

Pilate relented in that case, but this incident reveals the convergence of the Roman storm from the west with an equally powerful storm from the east—the storm of Jewish hope contained in the story of Israel. While the Romans believed that their history had peaked with the arrival of Augustus, the Jews believed that their own long story was going to come to its climax at any moment now—the story of Abraham and Moses, of David and the other towering figures of their history. Where the Roman storm emerged from a story of power and glory, the Jewish story emerged from a story of slavery and exile. The Romans looked back to see where they came from. The Jews were looking forward to see where they were going and who would finally deliver them.

The Jewish story found its theme in the Exodus, where 1500 years before the time of Jesus Moses had led his people out of slavery in Egypt across the Red Sea and through the desert to the promised land. The Passover feast was the annual retelling of this story, and on that Sunday in Jerusalem it was about to be told again. God had led his people to the promised land, and they enjoyed prosperity and peace under King David, God’s anointed king.

 But Israel’s story, unlike the story of Rome, wasn’t marked by conquest, military might, and security. David’s own sin and the sin of a succession of kings from his line caused a deep downward spiral toward idolatry and apostasy. The result was that God’s glory left the temple, as Ezekiel describes in chapters 10 and 11. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586BC, the temple leveled to the ground, and most of the people were dragged off into exile in foreign lands. Most of them would never return. It was like Egypt all over again. It was the end of the world as they knew it, and they were enslaved once again. “By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion” wrote the Psalmist… “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

After 70 years, however, the Persians conquered the Babylonians and many of the Jews were allowed to come back to Jerusalem to rebuild both the temple and the city, but things were not the same. New foreign powers rose up to dominate Israel—the Greeks, then the warring empires of Egypt and Syria that were left after Alexander the Great died unexpectantly.

There was a brief glimmer of hope when some Jewish rebels under the leadership of the Maccabees revolted against Syria in the 2nd century BC, which ushered in about a hundred years of self-rule. But then the Romans came and took over. Even though they were in the land, the people of first century Israel believed they were still in exile.

And yet in the midst of this state of constant exile, there arose a hope that a new Exodus, a new return from exile was not far off. There was hope that a new king would arise, a promised Messiah, who would lead the overthrow of the foreign powers and usher in a new age of prosperity, independence and peace. This messiah, it was thought, would be a human being appointed by God (some even thought it was two messiahs – a military one and a priestly one – one to destroy Israel’s enemies and another to re-start the temple). He would be David, Moses, and the Maccabean rebels all rolled into one, and he would change everything. He would cleanse the temple and make it possible for God to once again return in glory.

Indeed, that was the ultimate hope—that God would return, restore his people to power and glory, and establish his kingdom on earth as in heaven, with the contact point between the two being the Holy of Holies in the Temple. It had been empty for some time, but God was coming back as he promised through the prophets like Isaiah. “No king but God!” was the revolutionary slogan of those who were waiting to overthrow Rome.

The problem, however, was that like the two systems of theological expectation we talked about last week, the people of Israel in Jesus’ day had a similar problem with their understanding of what God was up to—it was an edited version. Remember last week we talked about the continuum and the fact that we generally expect people to fall somewhere along it, left or right? Well, the same was true in Jesus’ day when it came to the expectation of what God’s coming would happen and what it would mean. In fact there are several different groups mentioned in the Gospels that all had their own expectations of how God would return.

The Pharisees, for example, believed that God’s coming was dependent upon strict adherence to the law of Moses and prophets. If only everyone would keep the law to the letter, then God would return. That’s why they were so fussy about things like Sabbath and food laws. They wanted to make sure that everything was perfect, and if it was, God would bless and support the law and the people by coming back. God’s return would prove them to be the insiders and everyone else to be outsiders.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the political and social elites of Jerusalem. They maintained the temple and were closely allied with the priestly class that was appointed by Rome. The idea of God’s return was dangerous for these elites because such loose talk might lead to revolution and the end of their importance.

The Zealots thought that God’s return was going to support their cause of revolution against Rome. They anticipated a warrior God who through his anointed leader would expel the Gentiles from the land. God’s return would mean political independence for Israel and put them on the world stage.

The Essenes, on the other hand, thought that the whole project in Jerusalem had gone awry. The temple was useless and corrupt, they believed, so they went out into the desert to establish a spiritually and ritually pure community—a kind of ancient Jewish monastery, if you will. God’s return would mean that they, the “sons of light,” would be vindicated as the true worshippers of God and the others cast out as blasphemous sons of darkness. They copied the Scriptures, in their caves the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

Each of these groups anticipated God’s return, but they envisioned that return as underwriting their group’s aspirations and expectations. They wanted a divine hurricane, in other words, that would simply reinforce their overheated high pressure system. Each understood God and God’s intentions differently. And none of them were right.

Plenty of prophets, including John the Baptizer, had warned that when God comes it will be entirely on his own terms and with his own purpose. This God won’t stay on the continuum—his purpose is out here. God is returning, but it will not be in the way that you expect, nor will it be the God that you expect—the one that’s made in your own image.

No, there was a different vision of God and God’s return—a third storm—that was coming. And it was coming in the form on a young prophet riding down a hill on the back of a donkey. The Gospel accounts of Jesus—his teaching, his healing, his actions—all point to the fact that Jesus believed that as he came to Jerusalem, he wasn’t just announcing that God was coming. In fact, he was embodying the return of Israel’s God to his people in power and glory.

Read the Gospels closely and you’ll notice that everywhere he goes Jesus acts as though he’s in charge in a way that only God could be in charge. He heals people, he demonstrates authority, and, most tellingly, he forgives sins. These were things that were only supposed to happen in the temple. These were things that only God could do. Joe will talk more about this in a couple of weeks.

For now, the critical thing for us to get our minds around if we’re really going to understand the meaning of Jesus is that he believes and lives and acts as if he is embodying God’s return to his people, but it will not be in the way that any of them thought or expected. Notice that as Jesus rides down the Mount of Olives, the people are shouting Hosanna, but notice what else Luke tells us—

“As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Picture from Dominus Flevit)

When was God coming? They wondered. Well, here he comes, riding on a donkey, just like the prophet Zechariah said he would. Jesus weeps even while he enacts the words of the prophet (Zechariah 9:9-14):

 Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

  Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;
   triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
   on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
   and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
   and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
   and from the River to the ends of the earth…

Then the Lord will appear over them,
   and his arrow go forth like lightning;
the Lord God will sound the trumpet
   and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.

Here’s that third storm—the whirlwind from the south, God coming as king. This is God’s moment, cries Jesus through his tears, and you’re looking the other way. The other storms will eventually roll over each other—the Jewish wind from the east rises up against the Roman wind from the west and Jerusalem is crushed, it’s temple destroyed. Hopes and expectations are dashed. Rome will eventually fall, too, and the center of power shifts to another empire and another. Those storms will continue to rage.

They rage in our time, too. The storms of nationalism, religion, politics, and greed are just of few of the weather systems that are constantly smashing into each other. Sometimes, in fact, they combine—when religious expectation combines with nationalism, for example, we wind up with a civil religion that isn’t that much different from the cult of the empire. That can be a destructive storm on its own.

But the king who rides a donkey, is also the king who stills the storm and tells the wind and waves to be quiet.

The central point that the Gospel writers want to get across to us is that in Jesus, God is becoming king. His kingdom, however, is not of the type that this world knows or expects, nor is it merely a heavenly kingdom. It’s a kingdom that envisions the world through the lens of God becoming king. To know the full breadth and depth of what that means, we need to first understand what Jesus meant when he talked about God. Sounds like a silly question, but it’s clear that people in Jesus’ own day had a lot of their own ideas about God, and that’s still true today. Jesus reveals to us the God who is becoming king, and next week we’ll dive into the Old Testament to get a clearer picture of God and God’s mission that is being fulfilled in Jesus. For now, if you remember nothing else from this look at Jesus and his first century world, just remember this: the story of Jesus is the story of how God becomes king. The implications of that fact are larger than we imagined. Stay tuned for more!

The Andrea Gail got caught in a perfect storm that the captain underestimated. Jesus rides into a perfect storm on purpose. In him God returning as king, and his kingdom is coming with him. You can almost hear him say it: “She’s comin’ on boys, she’s comin’ on.”

 Are you ready?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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