Insights: Easter. William Barclay
of Jesus. For me Barclay really strikes a chord when he highlights Jesus’ capacity to forgive, above anything else.
‘Jesus said many wonderful things, but rarely anything more wonderful than, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Christian forgiveness is an amazing thing . . . There is nothing so lovely and nothing so rare as Christian forgiveness.’
Without doubt Barclay is an exciting bold mix of heart and mind. Jesus said the greatest of all the commandments is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. In Barclay we see a man who takes that commandment seriously.
Barclay is essential reading. He was way ahead of his time and is still utterly contemporary. There couldn’t be a better time to read everything he’s written and I recommend beginning with the Insights series – you won’t be disappointed.
DIANE LOUISE JORDAN
Introduction
Most of us know the basics of the Easter story, but the details and the characters of this drama are surprising.
Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on a donkey which, as we all know, showed that he came meek and lowly. Yet in those days, as William Barclay points out, ‘when a king went to war he rode on a horse, when he came in peace he rode on a donkey.’ In one simple gesture, Jesus upset the expectations of the people, who were hoping for a warrior king, yet he also struck fear into the hearts of the ruling establishment, who saw him arriving as a king. Insights such as these turn the familiar story into something much more challenging and revealing.
In the Bible, each of the four gospels has its own description of events. In Insights: Easter, we have selected passages from each – and from the Acts of the Apostles and the First Letter to the Corinthians – to create a gripping account of a tense drama played out by a cast of fascinating characters. Pontius Pilate has to play his cards carefully in a dangerous political game, with his Roman masters on one side and the Jewish authorities on the other. Judas, who betrays Jesus, can be seen as either evil personified or as deserving our understanding. Why was Joseph from Arimathea called the ‘secret disciple’? Who were the Sanhedrin, and why were they so against Jesus? Was Thomas’s doubt a sign of weakness or strength? Who was the mysterious young man who appears in Mark’s gospel, but in none of the other gospels, on the night of Jesus’ arrest?
William Barclay offers explanations for all of these and more in Insights: Easter. Each story is animated with anecdotes and enlightening comments, all written to help us to understand the Bible in new ways. There is, of course, insufficient room in this book to cover Barclay’s full commentary on each gospel’s version. If you want to read more about the Easter stories, you can find them in Barclay’s New Daily Study Bible series, in the following volumes: Matthew vol. 2, Mark, Luke and John vol. 2. Barclay’s full commentary on the Acts of the Apostles describes what happened to the early church. These are all available from Saint Andrew Press.
The coming of the King
Mark 11:1–6
When they were coming near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and to Bethany, Jesus despatched two of his disciples, and said to them, ‘Go into the village opposite you, and as soon as you come into it, you will find tethered there a colt, on which no man has ever yet sat. Loose it and bring it to me. And if anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord needs it,” and immediately he will send it.’ And they went away and they found the colt tethered, outside a door, on the open street, and they loosed it. And some of those who were standing by said to them, ‘What are you doing loosing this colt?’ They said to them what Jesus had told them to say, and they let them go.
WE have come to the last stage of the journey. There had been the time of withdrawal around Caesarea Philippi in the far north. There had been the time in Galilee. There had been the stay in the hill country of Judaea and in the regions beyond Jordan. There had been the road through Jericho. Now comes Jerusalem.
We have to note something without which the story is almost unintelligible. When we read the first three gospels we get the idea that this was actually Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem. They are concerned to tell the story of Jesus’ work in Galilee. We must remember that the gospels are very short. Into their short compass is crammed the work of three years, and the writers were bound to select the things in which they were interested and of which they had special knowledge. And when we read the Fourth Gospel we find Jesus frequently in Jerusalem ( John 2:13, 5:1, 7:10). We find in fact that he regularly went up to Jerusalem for the great feasts.
There is no real contradiction here. The first three gospels are specially interested in the Galilaean ministry, and the fourth in the Judaean. In fact, moreover, even the first three have indications that Jesus was not infrequently in Jerusalem. There is his close friendship with Martha and Mary and Lazarus at Bethany, a friendship which speaks of many visits. There is the fact that Joseph of Arimathaea was his secret friend. And above all there is Jesus’ saying in Matthew 23:37 that often he would have gathered together the people of Jerusalem as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings but they were unwilling. Jesus could not have said that unless there had previously been more than one appeal which had met with a cold response.
This explains the incident of the colt. Jesus did not leave things until the last moment. He knew what he was going to do and long ago he had made arrangements with a friend. When he sent forward his disciples, he sent them with a password that had been prearranged – ‘The Lord needs it now.’ This was not a sudden, reckless decision of Jesus. It was something to which all his life had been building up.
Bethphage and Bethany were villages near Jerusalem. Very probably Bethphage means house of figs and Bethany means house of dates. They must have been very close because we know from the Jewish law that Bethphage was one of the circle of villages which marked the limit of a Sabbath day’s journey, that is, less than a mile, while Bethany was one of the recognized lodging places for pilgrims to the Passover when Jerusalem was full.
The prophets of Israel had always had a very distinctive method of getting their message across. When words failed to move people they did something dramatic, as if to say, ‘If you will not hear, you must be compelled to see’ (cf. specially 1 Kings 11:30–2). These dramatic actions were what we might call acted warnings or dramatic sermons. That method was what Jesus was employing here. His action was a deliberate dramatic claim to be the Messiah.
But we must be careful to note just what he was doing. There was a saying of the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 9:9), ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ The whole impact is that the King was coming in peace. In Palestine the donkey was not a despised animal, but a noble one. When a king went to war he rode on a horse, when he came in peace he rode on a donkey.
Nowadays the donkey is an animal of amused contempt, but in the time of Jesus it was the animal used to bear kings. But we must note what kind of a king Jesus was claiming to be. He came meek and lowly. He came in peace and for peace. They greeted him as the Son of David, but they did not understand.
It was just at this time that the Hebrew poems, The Psalms of Solomon, were written. They represent the kind of Son of David whom people expected. Here is their description of him:
Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son of David,
At the time, in which thou seest, O God, that he may reign over Israel, thy servant.
And gird him with strength that he may shatter unrighteous rulers,
And that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that trample her down to destruction.
Wisely, righteously