BETWEEN EASTER AND PENTECOST: WHAT WERE THE DISCIPLES THINKING?

For starters, remember what the disciples were thinking on Saturday, the day after Jesus’ crucifixion. Undoubtedly, they were devastated, despairing and probably angry.

Many Jews of Jesus’ day were expecting a military Messiah who would fight and defeat the Roman imperialists and make Jerusalem the glorious center of the world. There are hints that the disciples shared that view. Right after Peter declared Jesus to be the Messiah, Jesus promptly started talking about his crucifixion and death. That infuriated Peter. It was totally contrary to his messianic hopes. So Peter immediately rebuked Jesus. On Easter day, as the two disciples walked to Emmaus and Jesus (incognito) walked with them and asked why they were so despondent, they explained that the rulers had killed Jesus .  Then they added: “But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:20). They were still thinking that Jesus  as the Messiah was supposed to be a military Jewish conqueror!  Even after the disciples had met the risen Jesus several times, they still asked him: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?“(Acts:1:6).

Every first century Jew, however, knew that anyone who claimed to be the Messiah and then got crucified by the Romans instead of defeating them in battle was a fraud. Jesus had claimed to be the Messiah.  But he had failed! Therefore  his claims were false. He was a fraud. On Saturday after the crucifixion, the disciples were probably as angry at Jesus as they were anguished over his death.

The Gospels make it absolutely clear that the disciples were definitely not expecting the crucified Jesus to rise from the dead. They dismissed the women’s report of meeting the risen Jesus as nonsense. When Jesus suddenly appeared in their midst, they were terrified, not relieved or joyous.

But Jesus appeared to the disciples a number of times in the next 40 days. Slowly, they began to understand more and more of what the resurrection meant. When doubting Thomas (who insisted he would not believe Jesus was alive unless he could personally stick his finger in Jesus’ wounds) finally met the risen Jesus, he blurted out: “My Lord and my God.“ Jesus was indeed the Messiah – – and more!  At Pentecost, just 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, Peter declared that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

The word “Lord”  used here by Peter is the translation of the Greek word “kurios” – – the word used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to translate the word Yahweh – – the one God!  And that is precisely the word Saul of Tarsus (a highly trained strict Jewish monotheist) used for the Carpenter from Nazareth – – after he met the risen Jesus!

Monotheism was at the center of first century Jewish faith. There is only one God. It is probably because the early Christians were making such strong claims about who Jesus was that the highly trained Saul thought Christians should be persecuted and killed. Then he met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. And he started preaching that Jesus was indeed God. 

In Philippians two, Paul applies to the Nazarene Carpenter words from the mouth of Yahweh who mocks the idols and declares that the idols are nothing. In Isaiah 45:23, Yahweh says: “Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear. “

Paul applies these sharply monotheistic words from the mouth of Yahweh to Jesus: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:9-11)

Listen to the way New Testament scholar N. T. Wright puts it: “Paul knows perfectly well, in quoting Isaiah 45:23,… just how enormous a claim he is making. In that passage, one of the most fiercely monotheistic statements in the Old Testament, YHWH declares that he is God, and there is no other;  to YHWH and him alone every knee will bow and every tongue swear… Paul must have known exactly what he was doing” (The New Testament in its World ,pp. 372 -373.)

Jesus is kurios, Lord, God!

In the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost, the amazed disciples began to see that Jesus was the Messiah – – and much more. They listened as Jesus explained the meaning of the kingdom, helping them see it was not a national restoration of the nation of Israel, but a new gospel, a new movement, that was to be announced to the “ends of the earth” (Acts1:8).

I am sure they did not instantly fully understand all that Jesus truly was and is. But they realized that something utterly unexpected and wonderful had happened. The only way to explain it was to start saying  some amazing things about who Jesus is. And when the Holy Spirit descended on them in power on the day of Pentecost,  they became daring evangelists. Slowly but surely, they came to see that Jesus’ gospel was for everyone: Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. Everyone in the whole world.

As I pen this reflection, I live between Easter and Pentecost. With the early disciples, I stand in  amazement at what the resurrection means about who Jesus really is. Sometimes, as I ponder the utterly astounding Christian claim that Jesus the carpenter is truly God, one with the Creator and Lord of the universe, I feel that I can partly understand how the disciples in the first days after Easter struggled to understand. Can we really believe that the carpenter from Nazareth was God in the flesh? No other major religion makes anything like that kind of claim about its founder.

But the resurrection of the crucified Jesus – – as N. T. Wright  shows powerfully in his book  The Resurrection of the Son of God---is an historical fact. Jesus was alive again on Easter morning.

And that changes everything!

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