Smoodock's Blog

As we continue into the fifth chapter of N.T. Wright’s book, Simply Jesus, we come to the hurricane that would complete our metaphor, the perfect storm. Keep in mind that we’re drawing our metaphor from a real storm that crashed into the Massachusetts coast line in October of 1991. It was comprised of a cold front coming in from the west, while at the same time a large high-pressure system came in from the north. Finally, to the south a low-pressure system, Hurricane Grace, a dangerous Nor-Easter, came up the Atlantic to complete what we’re calling the perfect storm. That very real storm completely destroyed the Andrea Gail, 500 miles off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, reducing the fishing vessel to nothing more than “light debris.”

So, in the context of our metaphor, the western cold front that was Rome positioned itself in Jerusalem together with the high-pressure system of Jewish national hopes, and just as in our original perfect storm, the third element, making the storm complete, would be a wind “of a different order altogether,” so it was, as Jesus entered the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem amid the joyful shouts of Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!—meaning “Save now, Son of David!” The chant was a call to Jesus, the Son of David, to save his people from the Roman scourge.

God came to the children of Israel in the wilderness and made a covenant with them. In fact, the text reveals that Moses and Aaron and his sons and the 70 elders went up the mount and saw God and ate before him (Exodus 24:9-11). The texts also reveal that, after the Babylonian captivity, God promised to return to them:

Behold, I will send My messenger, and He will clear the way before Me. And Jehovah, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Angel of the Covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He comes, says Jehovah of Hosts (Malachi 3:1; MKJV).[1]

The voice of him who cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of Jehovah, make straight a highway in the desert for our God… and the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Jehovah has spoken (Isaiah 40:3, 5).

In the context of the first century AD, the Jews expected their God to return to them in a manner, they perceived would be glorious, and that glory would be seen by all mankind, vis-à-vis a vision similar to what Moses, Aaron, Aaron’s sons and the 70 elders witnessed, while they were on the mount (Exodus 34:9-11). They weren’t expecting God in flesh (John 1:1, 14). They expected God to come gloriously, as they perceived he did in Moses’ day. They expected God to come and make a New Covenant with them (Jeremiah 31:31), and they presumed this meant the Lord would destroy their enemies through the Messiah, a Moses-like figure (Deuteronomy 18:15-19).

In the context of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the people’s chanted “Hosanna” Son of David, a cry to save them now, not from sin, but from the Roman scourge. The fact that, immediately after entering the Eastern Gate, Jesus went into the Temple, cleansing it by casting out everyone doing business there, only fueled the high-pressure system of Jewish national hopes. However, the power and glory, Jesus expressed, was of a different kind of wind.

In the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Simon Zelotes, one of the Twelve, put it to Jesus, after he entered the Eastern Gate, amid shouts of Hosanna:

“There must be over 50,000 screaming love and more for you.
And, everyone of 50,000 would do whatever you asked them to.
Keep them yelling their devotion, but add a touch of hate at Rome.
You will rise to a greater power; we will win ourselves a home.
You’ll get the power and the glory, forever and ever and ever.
You’ll get the power and the glory, forever and ever and ever (repeated to the end of the song).

The problem is, no one, not even Jesus’ disciples, understood what power and glory actually means to Almighty God. When the Jews of the first century looked for the return of their God, and when modern Christians look for the return of Christ, they have the wrong idea about God’s power and glory. Men believe that power and glory are expressed in violence on the battlefield, on the sea and in the air, in being victorious over one’s enemy. However, true power and glory isn’t expressed in places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in bringing one’s foes to their knees. The power of God during the first century AD was expressed in the body of a man, Jesus (Matthew 28:18; cp. Luke 4:14). It was the weakness of God (God in flesh; John 1:1, 14) that overpowered men, because the Lord’s Almighty power is expressed best in weakness (2Corinthians 12:9; 13:4).

_____________________________________

[1] Most translations have messenger of the Covenant, some with caps, others not. Nevertheless, this does refer to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. We know this, because, when Jacob was blessing Joseph’s sons, Jacob said: “May God, before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walked, the God who fed me all my life to this day, the Angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads…” (Genesis 48:15-16). Notice that the only God Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew was the one Jacob called the Angel. Therefore, this Angel is the God of the Mosaic Covenant.