How do you define Messiah? Ha! You’d be surprised.
Remember the movie with John Travolta when he played
the angel Michael? In one scene, as he sat in the kitchen scoffing down sugar,
smoking a cigarette, wearing shabby underwear, he is asked something like this,
“Aren’t angels supposed wear brilliant white clothes doing and saying pure
things?” Without looking up Travolta, as angel Michael replies, “I’m not that
kind of angel.”
Keep that image in mind as we take
our photo gear and travel back into a gathering of the disciples as they ask
Jesus a question, not too different from the one asked above. “Are you the
messiah?” they ask. And the gospel
writers make note that this is asked again and again. I have to assume, all
those disciples, each with a different political and religious agenda, must not
have liked or understood his answer the first, second or third time they asked.
Jesus, though, always answered, “Those are your words.”
Jesus’ reply is his typical
style of throwing the query right back into the questioners’ laps. In order to
get some insight we will have to take a look at what first century Jews thought
a messiah was, and what a messiah was supposed to accomplish.
When we check our photo album
we have lots of shots of angry, sulky, and really violent Jews writhing against
the constant oppression of outsiders ruling their country. For hundreds of
years they have prayed for someone to come and chase the oppressors off and
restore the best of the old times. This would be their messiah and he was seen
either as politically savvy, a mighty warrior, a religious priest, or all three
rolled up in one. Then God would do the rest of the saving. The Essenes wrote
that they were expecting three, count them, three different messiahs that fit
the above bill.
This might be why Jesus was
not answering that annoying question from his disciples. He knew he was not
what they believed a messiah to be. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t a soldier
warrior, and he wasn’t interested in being high priest in the Temple.
When we travel forward in time,
going past Jesus’ ministry to70 A.D., something horrific occurs to Judaism. The
Temple is destroyed, once more this time by the Romans. All Jews at this tragic
point in time, no matter their sect, Sadducees, Pharisees, or Jesus followers (who,
remember, thought of themselves as Jews), no longer had the Temple to glue their
identity as Jews together. This caused
each of the so many differing sects to reinvent themselves, leading to an
explosion of some of the greatest Jewish writings being created - including the
gospels.
By 100 A.D., the extremely
long chain of oral tradition, just like the telephone game, was reinventing
Jesus over and over again by each of the diverse sects of followers of Jesus.
Keep in mind that there was not one cohesive group of early Christians. Oh no.
We can take quick snapshots of a dozen or more Jewish groups who interpreted
Jesus, his ministry and his death, each in their own way.
The oral traditions of all
these different sects of Jesus followers morphed as they were told and then
finally written down, now reflecting their many styles, needs, prejudices and
aspirations leading to a whole plethora of gospels. But, only a few of these
amazing gospels were chosen in 300 A. D. to be in the New Testament. Jesus was
no longer remembered as just a humble healer and a brilliant teacher/rabbi. He
was becoming a complex conglomerate of philosophies. The gospels were creating someone
and something different and unique.
How the early church responded
to Jesus’ death, memorialized him, and remembered his teachings is an exciting
and complex story in and of itself. Interested? Me too, so I am already
gathering materials and making notes for another book, titled “Looking for the
Early Church”. For now, however there is much more to discover as we continue
to look for Jesus.
Questions to Contemplate and Discuss
1.
When you heard the
word messiah connected to Jesus, what was your understanding of that concept up
to now?
2.
Note the three
kinds of messiahs the Jews of the first century were looking for. Why do you
think the disciples kept asking Jesus if he was the messiah?
3.
Many times, Jesus
answered questions by not answering but instead asking a question of the
questioner. By deflecting the question so that the questioner had to come up
with the answer himself do you think this process helped or hindered his
disciplines ability to see him clearly?
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