St. Mary's Church Elizabeth, IL

12/14

Await the Messiah!

Understand who the Savior really is

The Messiah and the Kingdom

Jews at the time of Jesus lived in the expectation of God's ultimate resotration of Isarel.  All Jews understood God to be both Creator and Savior, the ultimate arbitrator of justice for th world.  In the great prophets Israel envisioned "the day of the Lord", when God would act to destroy war and usher a time of peace and plenty.  God would not only be faithful to the promised made to Israel but extend justice to all of creation.  In this new era evil would be destroyed and God's reign would be complete.  Jewish writings began to refer to God's action as the establishment of God's "kingdom".  The prophet Daniel describes a dominion which shall not be destroyed (Daniel 7:14).  The Jewish prayer of the Kaddish (=Holy) concludes with the petition: "May he establish his kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel".

     At the time of Jesus, the intesity of expectation concerning God's kingdom was high.  Apocalypses began to appear, envision the establishment of the kingdom in a wide variety of ways-sometimes with a Messiah figure and sometimes without.  The preaching of both John the Baptist and Jesus easily situate themselves into this Jewish matrix which exprected God to act and act soon.

     Through the horrible persecutions of Antiochus IV and the revolt of the Maccabees (177-164 B.C.E.), Jews had come to the conviction that the heroic martyrs who died for their faith would be raised up on the the last day.  By the time of Jesus there was growin consesus that the establishment of the kingdom would include th resurrection of the dead.  Not all Jews accepted this developement.  The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection because it was not explicitly mentioned in the Torah (Matthew 22:23).  The Parisees, however, promoted the belief in the resurrection.  Jesus agreed with them.

     Thus, in the time of Jesus there is every reason to believe that the majority of the Jews anticipated God to act soon and establish the kingdom.  God's kingdom would involve the destruction of every evil and the resurrection of the dead.  Jews pictured the kingdom in different ways, and some of those ways included an anointed agent of God, the Messiah.  God's kingdom could be envisioned without a Messiah, but a Messiah made no snese without God's kingdom.

Jesus as the Messiah

It was the anticipation of God's kingdom together with the resurrection of Jesus which led the early Chruch to claim Jesus as the Messiah.  One of the clearest things we know about Jesus was that his ministry was to announce the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15).  Jesus preached the kingdom.  His parables described it.  His miracles pointed to it.  He prayed, "Thy kingdom come!"  After his horrific death, his disciples came to beieve that God raised Jesus from dead.  But wha did that resurrection mean?  Why wa it Good News?

     Kingdom provided the answer.  To a Jew of the first century resurrection ws invariably linked to God's kingdom.  Therefore, when Jesus was raised from the dead, it was logical for his follwers to conclude that  the kingdom had begun.  St. Paul argues that the resurrection of Jesus will lead to our own resurrection ad the full establishment of the kingdom (1 Corinthians 15:20-2).  Jesus' resurrection, when united to the Jewish understanding of God's kingdom, led to inevitable conclusion that Jesus was god's agent, the Messiah.  There was nothing in Jewish expectation to suggest that the Messiah would suffer and die, nor that God would raise up one man before the rest of humanity.  These traits of Jesus' death and resurrection were unique to him.  But Jews consistenly connected resurrection and the kingdom, and that connection overrod what was expected and gave the apostles a clear message and obvious Messiah.  Far from the presumption the Jews had one clear view of the Messiah and Jesus did not fit it, the diversity of Jewish expecation allowed the early Church to select Messianic traits from the tradition which conformed to Jesus and to add new aspects which they believed had jsut revealed.  To their surprise God had chosen to raise up a single person before the rest of the just who had died.  Moreover, this person had suffered a criminal's death.  But through his resurrection it was clear that he was God's Chosen One, the Messiah, through whom God would destroy all evil and inaugurate a new creation.  That remains the Good News.  God is fulfilling the ancient promises. God is establishing the kingdom.  God is doing this through Jesus.  That is why we call him the Christ.

Fr. Joachim