Several hundred, some may say several thousand, years worth of anticipation hung in the air. Like summer humidity that sticks to your shirt the second you step outside, you couldn’t avoid it. Not today. Not on Passover week.
A guy claiming to be the Messiah, or, at least, who people said was the Messiah was nothing new. There had been tons of guys going around saying that they were the One; saying that they were going to show Rome what’s what. So a messiah making his way to Jerusalem was about as common as a singer-songwriter making their way to Nashville.
But this guy was different. There was a good deal of discussion over whether he was the right kind of different. It wasn’t so much that he talked like he was the Messiah. Word had it that he tried to keep a lot of that talk and even tales of his miracles under wraps. But those stories still got out: dead men walking, the blind seeing, demons plunging a herd of pigs over a cliff, and thousands fed with a lunch meant for a kid. It is hard to keep those type of things hush-hush.
His name certainly carried great weight. Yeshua, which translates to Joshua or, as the Greeks put it, Jesus. The Lord saves. Sure tons of people gave their boys this name. What parent doesn’t want their child to be the redemption of his people. You have to name the kid to fit the bill. Poindexter isn’t going to quarterback the state championship team and Biff isn’t going to find the cure for cancer. Joshua, like Messiah talk, was nothing special. But it seemed special. At least with him.
