Easter reflections, part 1

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and the Easter season is upon us. It comes and goes pretty quickly, doesn’t it? Whereas in December, when we spend about a month gearing up for and celebrating Christmas (the birth of the Savior, or at least that’s what we’re supposed to be celebrating), Easter time is comparatively short. What’s more, Easter coincides with Spring Break at school and the NCAA basketball tournament, so perhaps it is easy to get distracted.

But when you think about it, from a Christian perspective, Easter is the most important holiday of the year. The birth of Jesus—that is, the incarnation of God Himself into human form—is remarkable and certainly warrants its due at Christmas, but Easter marks the event that in a sense defines Christianity itself. Without too much exaggeration, the resurrection of Jesus can be called the single most significant event in history, in that it validates the claims, teachings, and predictions of Jesus. Chief among these claims is that He is God’s Son, and that eternal life rests in us believing in Him.

I have determined this Easter to read and contemplate the Passion narratives in the Bible. When I have done this in the past, one thing that has always struck me is that the story contains details that I think we sometimes overlook. At least I do. Maybe I’m reading so fast that I mentally skip over phrases or sentences that are packed with significance. One example is the simple sentence “Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him flogged” (John 19:1). This snippet appears in the other gospel accounts as well. I’ll tell you, there have been times when I have been three or four verses down the road when I stopped and said to myself, “Whoa, wait a second. Did that just say that Jesus was flogged?” Without getting into all the gory details, flogging was an intensely brutal practice. By flying right by this short verse, I think we can miss the significance of how much Jesus suffered on our behalf.

Here’s another example of what I mean. It appears in the last part of John 19:15, which says:

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

Again, in the past I have blown right by this verse without giving it too much thought. But as I contemplate it now, I find the reply of the chief priests to be shocking. The chief priests were the Jewish religious leaders of the day. And remember, they were trying to kill Jesus because of blasphemy—Jesus was claiming to be a king, claiming to have the rights and qualities of God. In other words, in the eyes of the chief priests, Jesus was claiming equality with Yahweh, the Creator God of Israel from the Old Testament. That God was the true king. Yet what did the chief priests say to Pontius Pilate? They said, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Let me express it this way. One might have expected the chief priests to say something like, “You know, this guy is claiming to be God, and as you are aware, Mr. Pilate, our ancient Scriptures tell us that the God of Israel is the one true God, the one we are supposed to love with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. God is our king, not this guy.” But instead they denied their God altogether, and swore allegiance to Caesar. Caesar! The unclean, Gentile, secular overlord of captive Israel! Wow. Now, I am aware that the Jewish leadership had in many ways strayed from their responsibilities of being the guardians of the Jewish belief in Yahweh. Yet when I ponder the chief priests’ cold, public denial of their God, and enthusiastic declaration of allegiance to Caesar, I find it shocking.

Much is made of the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus during the Passion story, and rightly so. Much can be learned from it. But much can be learned from the chief priests as well. You see, the chief priests were supposed to be the “guardians of the truth,” the ones pointing others to God, but instead they had devolved largely into advocates of rote tradition and religious rules. In doing so, they had actually fallen far away from God, as witnessed by their response to Pontius Pilate. Men who purportedly viewed God as the only king actually said, “We have no king but Caesar.”

Can harboring such an attitude happen to Christians today? Sadly, I believe it can and does. One of my prayers this Easter season is that I would not slip into habits of practicing religious rules and traditions, but rather that I would understand, acknowledge, and proclaim who God really is—and what He did by sending His own Son to earth. His Son, King Jesus.