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When the first Christians started talking about what had happened to them at the first Easter their news shook Palestine to the core. It was so enormous they even coined their own expression to describe it “to euanggelion” (yes, that’s Greek). It means the good news not simply any good news. And when they spoke about the gospel they weren’t talking about a set of beliefs, as we might today, they were referring to actual events that had taken place. Happenings they had seen with their own eyes and could verify from first hand experience.
In his write-up of Jesus’ life, Luke links this with the moment when Jesus went to a synagogue and read the scripture. He started by reading “The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to herald good news to the poor, to release captives … and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”. Now as a scripture reading there was nothing particularly unusual about it until Jesus said “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”
That certainly put the cat among the pigeons. The passage was part of a longer prophecy foretelling a time when salvation will arrive. This salvation will invade planet earth and joy will be the order of the day. Jesus was explicitly claiming to be the fulfilment of that very prophecy which any trained Jew knew referred to God’s Messiah.
Words, of course, are cheap. Anyone could say what Jesus said but the awkward fact about Jesus’ life was that he lived up to his claim.
Then when Jesus rose from the dead his claim to be the Messiah became irrefutable. He was “designated Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4) so the early believers announced this joyful news with boundless enthusiasm.
Jesus had, of course, raised people from the dead without attaching any claim to be the Messiah (Mark 35:33-43). But when he was raised from the dead himself that was a very different matter. This was a vindication of the prophecies he had fulfilled in his lifetime and verification that he was who he claimed to be.
No small wonder the early Christians were thrilled to talk about it – it really was something to shout about.
And still is.
