Monday 13 April – Jesus the Risen Messiah

DAILY BYTE

You know, he wasn’t the first Messiah to appear and nor was he the last. Around two thousand years ago, Palestine was this bubbling pot of seething resentment. The people chafed against Roman rule, and as a result their religious expectations of God’s impending deliverance were at fever pitch. They were waiting for a leader, a liberator, a person they called ‘the Messiah.’

Scholars count at least six significant characters who stepped up to this Messiah plate in the century either way round Jesus. Six men who people believed in, who promised Israel that soon they would be restored to a Kingdom. Every one of them ended up being killed by the Romans, or by some rival faction. And always what this proved to that guy’s followers that ‘He isn’t it, that means he mustn’t be the Messiah.’

If your Messiah was killed, you were left with two choices: Either you could give up, go home and just quit waiting for the Kingdom, or you could throw your hopes in with yet another Messiah candidate. This happened on numerous occasions. If your leader died, you could still love him, his memory could still inspire you, you could still believe he was alive somewhere held safely in God’s presence, BUT (and this is important) you didn’t follow him anymore!

No one follows a dead Messiah. This is because, as you may well have noticed by now, death kind of normally ends things. Death, in many ways, acts as a full stop on life.

In the middle of all of this came Jesus. A unique teacher that all his followers believed could well be the Messiah, but he was very different from the other Messiah candidates. Firstly, he seemed happy to include all sorts of odd people in God’s Kingdom like Gentiles, prostitutes, Roman soldiers and tax collectors. Secondly, he also totally resisted violence as an option. Instead he believed the Kingdom of God entered earth through love, forgiveness and graceful relationship. In fact, he even ran away from people who tried to seize him and make him king by force.

Yet as unique as he may have been, he ended up just like the rest of the Messiahs. Dead. Gone. Violently wiped from the face of the earth. And like the rest of them, that would of course mean an end to his Messiah-hood. Wouldn’t it?

Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. For some reason, Jesus followers didn’t stop believing that he fulfilled Old Testament expectations of a Messiah. They didn’t give up on him, they didn’t pack up and go home and nor did they sign up with another Messiah.

Why?

Well, because he rose from death. Jesus was resurrected, risen and alive! Through the rest of this week, we will discuss in detail this event which has inspired Jesus’ followers to keep believing in him through thousands of years culminating in billions of people gathering yesterday in worship.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Holy God, Lord of death, life and everything in between. We celebrate the wonderful truth that Jesus is risen and that his Messiah-ship was not extinguished by death. Help us to understand more clearly what this Resurrection means for us through this week. Amen.

FOCUS READING

1 Corinthians 15. 3-8 NRSV

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.