Interpreting Easter

Jesus took his disciples up to Jerusalem. He expected the Reign [of the Messiah] to break in through Divine intervention and not through his own actions, and yet he was willing to use the political symbolism of that coming by entering the city in the manner of the ancient festal advent of the Davidic King and to establish himself upon the Mount of Olives from whence the final battle traditionally was to be launched by God. The denouement of these expectations was rapid, and Jesus submitted to his fate rather than to act without assurance of divine favour. His last words still ring across all the later interpretations to suggest the agony of a man uncertain as to whether the hope on which he staked his life had been in vain.

(Feminist theology quote: Rosemary Radford Ruether, `Messiah of Israel’, 194-5.)