Video for April 17th, 2025, Easter
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
The events of Holy week begin with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Right at the start of this most solemn week we have a mystery. You may remember for the entirety of Jesus ministry he battled a misinterpretation of what being the Messiah meant. In their desperation for liberation people hoped that he would turn out to be a military king to liberate them from Roman oppression, restore justice and their national sovereignty. Every time his ministry developed a bit of momentum, with crowds gathering he would withdraw to diffuse things. After the feeding of the five thousand in John’s account he writes, “after the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.” This withdrawal was a constant frustration for his disciples who were clearly well trained in marketing. Its probably the reason that Judas eventually betrayed him. He hoped that by so doing he would force Jesus’ hand.
And yet, mysteriously, when he entered Jerusalem in this final week, he does so in ways that play into precisely the fervour he had spent three years avoiding. Zechariah 9:9, a well-known prophesy says, “Rejoice greatly, Daughter of Zion! Shout Daughter Jerusalem! See your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey”. There is even a forerunner in the story of King Jehu in 2 Kings 9: 14 where army commanders strew their cloaks in front of him after he is anointed King. Neither of these images would have been lost on the crowd. They say as much as they wave their palm branches and recite kingly psalms at the top of their voices as he comes in. The Pharisees know exactly what is going on, demanding that he command his followers to be silent.
Jesus makes his arrival in Jerusalem a sort of publicity stunt so there can be no doubt that it’s him who is crucified on Good Friday. The accounts are all slightly different, even difficult to harmonise, which is what you would expect of eye-witness testimony. A put-up job would be much more coherent, especially as it portrays those who would go on to be the pillars of faith as such disloyal idiots. Silly claims that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, or that it was a case of mistaken identity are much less credible when he was seen by virtually the whole population of the city. When it comes to the resurrection, there are only a small number of possible explanations, each of which is much less plausible than what actually happened, that Jesus really did rise from the dead.
I was fascinated to read a survey the other day about faith (or lack of it) in Gen Z. This is the generation born between 1997 and 2012. When I became a Christian 45 years ago, the questions were all about proof: is it true? Over the next few decades that changed to, does it work? More recently, I thought it had settled at a subjective, does it feel good to me? But the survey showed that for this younger generation some of the classic questions about Christian faith are not as important objections as they once were. For Gen Z (apparently) the most important objection to faith isn’t suffering, or the existence of other religions, or even the churches attitude to LGBTQ people. The most important was what they saw as lack of evidence for the claims Christians make about God and the historical facts about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.
It’s striking that the accounts of Holy Week in the Gospels are written with a view to their truthfulness being verifiable relatively easily. We can have confidence that when we claim week by week the Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again there is plenty of evidence that that is indeed what he did and will do. We can live our lives in faith and trust in this world shattering, life transforming event.
A very Happy Easter.
+Richard