The Life and Preaching of Jesus

from Pheme Perkins, Reading the New Testament, Chapters 3 and 4.

A) The Life of Jesus

Seeking Jesus of Nazareth

How the Stories Are Preserved

Jesus as Teacher and Miracle-Worker

Jesus and His Followers

The Trial and Death of Jesus

Summary & Study Questions

Seeking Jesus of Nazareth

Almost as soon as anyone becomes famous in our culture, whether that person is a political leader, a rock star or a famous athlete, people will start writing books about that person. There will be TV and radio talk shows to further arouse our curiosity. We sometimes find it hard to imagine how the early Christians spread the message about Jesus for several decades before there were any written accounts of Jesus' ministry. Sometimes we imagine that the gospel writers engaged in the same sort of interviewing and research that people do today. So we need to constantly remind ourselves that the gospels are not like a modern biography. Each one tells the story of Jesus differently. Each has a special point of view which often provides us with clues about the particular church or group of Christians that the writer had in mind.

Now you may be wondering whether the gospels tell us anything at all about Jesus of Nazareth. Some people have even written books claiming that they do not. Such people argue that all we learn from the gospels is what each writer thought Jesus was like on the basis of stories that he had heard handed down in his church. They argue that what Christians believe about Jesus is really based on those gospel images of Jesus and that it is not necessary to ask what Jesus' life would look like if it were possible to study it in the way we can the life of some famous person in our own time.

We cannot simply stop with describing what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus without asking how they came to that belief. "Jesus" was not a figure of the distant, mythical past. He was a definite person known by some of the first generation of Christians, someone whose disciples and relatives were known to other members of the Christian movement. What was remembered and said about Jesus could not be {52} completely divorced from the person who had been known to such people. Of course, we know even from our own experience that the same persons and events are not remembered in the same way by all of the participants. We also know that sometimes our understanding of something a person said or did changes radically when we are able to set the person in a larger perspective, perhaps learning something else about the person or seeing how an individual's life turned out. Both of these basic experiences are met with in the gospels.

But scholars can also use their growing knowledge of the world of Jesus to show that the gospels preserve stories and sayings which fit into that world. They can use that information to help fill in the picture of what Jesus was like. They can ask how the people who first heard Jesus' words in Galilee would have understood them. Thus, we are constantly building up a more detailed picture of Jesus and his world. There may always be parts of the picture which are unclear to us because we do not have enough information about Jesus or first century Palestine to fill in the necessary details. But with patient study of literary materials, inscriptions, archeo-logical remains and the traditions preserved about Jesus in the gospels, we can learn a great deal about Jesus of Nazareth.

How the Stories Are Preserved

Jesus' disciples did not use writing to help memorize what Jesus said and did. They traveled about with him, heard him teaching the crowds, asked him questions themselves, and saw him healing the sick. The stories of what Jesus had said and done were then repeated to others. In order to make them easy to remember many of the stories about Jesus follow a set pattern. The sayings of Jesus also fall into patterns which could be remembered. If you were familiar with the basic pattern, then you would only need to remember enough detail about a particular episode or saying to fill in the pattern. When they classify these patterns, scholars call them "forms."

MIRACLE STORIES. One of the easiest types of story to recognize is the miracle story. People are always interested in miraculous events and cures. Here is a story about a Syrian (non-Jewish) healer from Palestine:

Everyone has heard of the Syrian from Palestine, an expert at such things. Whatever moonstruck—rolling their eyes and filling their mouths with foam—people come, they arise and he dispatches them away healthy, when they are free from the terror {53} [ = a demon, thought to be possessing the person] and for a large fee. When he stands by them as they are lying there he asks from whence they came into the body. The sick man is silent, but the demon answers in Greek or some other barbarian tongue. The Syrian levels oaths at him, but if the demon is not persuaded, he threatens and expels the demon.

This type of healing is called an "exorcism" because it involved curing a person thought to be possessed by a demon. A number of such stories were told about Jesus. Here is one from Mk 1:23-26:

And immediately, there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice came out of him.

This story is told in a much more direct and dramatic way than the report about the Syrian exorcist. But you can see that it has the basic features of an exorcism: (1) demonstration of the symptoms of the illness, here of possession; (2) verbal conflict between the demon and the exorcist; (3) demon departs from the person with some form of violence. Miracle stories then conclude with some indication that the person has really been healed. In Mk 1:27, for example, the people begin to talk among themselves about the event:

And they were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves saying, "What is this? A new teaching! With authority he commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him."

In the story about the Syrian exorcist, the main point of the man's activity was to get money from the people he cured. Many people were suspicious of persons who claimed to have powers of healing. They thought that such people were working with the demons, or they thought that people like that were "getting rich" with fake cures. You can see that the second charge does not apply to Jesus. He was teaching in the synagogue according to Mark's version of the story when he was interrupted by the possessed man. He was not looking to make money. You also notice that as the miracle story was told among Christians, it had a double purpose. For those who didn't yet believe in Jesus, it might persuade them that he had to be "from God." For those who did believe, the demon's reaction to Jesus is really a very "religious" one. The demon knows Jesus' true iden- {54} tity. It also knows that Jesus' ministry is going to break up the power of demons. Jesus is not working with them but against them.

You can see that the earliest Christians retold stories about Jesus' miracles as part of their desire to convince people that Jesus was a person sent by God. They may have made collections of miracle stories about Jesus to use in missionary preaching. Some scholars have suggested that Mark used such a collection in composing the opening chapters of his gospel. You will notice that in Mark we even find two versions of the same miracles. Jesus feeds a large number of people (Mk 6:30-44 [5,000 people]; 8:1-10 [4,000 people]). Jesus also works two miracles in which he calms severe storms at sea for his disciples (Mk 4:35-41; Mk 6:45-50). You might think that Jesus simply did the same thing more than once. That is not impossible. But it creates a problem. If you look closely at each of the double stories you will notice that the disciples are just as bewildered the second time around as they were the first. They would not seem to have learned anything. That is why many scholars think that the double stories are really two different versions of a single incident. The gospel of John, which does not seem to have used the gospel of Mark, has its own versions of the feeding and storm stories (Jn 6:1-13; 6:16-21) .

Scholars have suggested that the early Christians had a collection of Jesus' miracles with these two stories in it. Mark may have known two different versions of the collection and used them both for his gospel. John had a slightly different version of the same collection. Matthew and Luke each appear to have had Mark's gospel available when they wrote their gospels. But Luke leaves out the section of Mark that contains the duplications. Matthew, on the other hand, takes the second storm story in which Jesus rescues the disciples by walking on water and adds another episode. Peter asks Jesus to make it possible for him to walk on water. But as Peter begins to do so, his faith in Jesus wavers. Jesus must rescue him from sinking. This episode leads Jesus' disciples to worship him as "truly, Son of God," (Matt 14:28-33) .

Matthew's addition tells you something important about how the gospel writers treated their material. They did not simply copy what they had in front of them. They were able to expand stories and add new ones so that the church of their time could see how the story of Jesus applied to them. In Matthew's case, Peter was the founder of the church. Throughout the gospel, Matthew shows Peter being prepared for this role of leader. Here, Peter has to learn an important lesson about faith. Some scholars have pointed out that Matthew's church was passing through a time of turmoil. Christians would have read this story of Jesus and Peter as addressed to them. Jesus would guard and protect the church as long as Christians kept up their faith in him. {55} PRONOUNCEMENT STORIES. Other stories were told about Jesus in addition to miracle stories. A popular type of story was the "pronouncement story." Stories of this type were often told about famous teachers in antiquity. They begin by creating some form of "tension," perhaps a question by disciples, a paradox posed by opponents or even a problematic situation. The wisdom of the hero is demonstrated when he or she resolves the situation using an appropriate saying or pronouncement. Naturally, the saying that forms the resolution of the story might well be independent of its setting. Sometimes such sayings are proverbial and might have been used in any number of contexts. The pronouncement story often serves to show the superiority of its hero over others, since he or she is able to "master" the situation.

Here is one of many such stories about the Cynic philosopher Diogenes. The Cynic philosophers wandered from city to city in a coarse cloak with few possessions. They often chastised their hosts and audiences for concern with luxury, bodily pleasures and all the cares that make life difficult for people. The Cynic, who lives without such possessions and cares, is the one who is really "free." Here, Diogenes has suffered a fate feared by many in antiquity. He has been captured by pirates and is about to be sold into slavery:

[Speaking to his fellow captives] . . . then he [ = Diogenes] said this in sport and ridicule: "Stop pretending ignorance and crying over your imminent slavery, as if you were really free before you fell into the hands of pirates and were not slaves to even worse masters. Now perhaps you will get moderate masters who will cut out of you the luxury by which you were ruined, and who will instill in you perseverance and self-control, the most honored of good things." As he went through these things, the buyers stood and listened, amazed at his freedom from emotion. Some also asked him whether he was skilled at anything. And he said that he was skilled at ruling men. "So, if any of you needs a master, let him come forward and strike a bargain with the sellers." But they laughed at him and said, "What free man needs a master?" "All," he said, "who are base and who honor pleasure and despise toil, the greatest incitements to evil."

You can see that the Diogenes story is meant to demonstrate the superiority of the Cynic teaching. Like the pronouncement stories in the gospels, this one is part of a longer exposition of Diogenes' adventures.

Often pronouncement stories in the gospels preserve points of Jesus' {56} teaching that had become critical for the later development of the community. Here is one in which the "hero" is a pagan woman, who asks Jesus to perform a miracle for her:

THE SYROPHOENICIAN WOMAN [3-1]Mark 7:24-30:Matthew 15:21-28:And from there he aroseAnd Jesus went away from thereand went away to the regionand withdrew to the districtof Tyre and Sidon.of Tyre and Sidon.And he entered a house andwould not have anyone knowit; yet he could not be hid.But immediately a womanAnd behold a Canaanite womanwhose little daughter waspossessed by an uncleanspirit, heard of him, andcame and fell down at hisfeet. Now the woman was aGreek, a Syrophoenician byfrom that region came outbirth. And she begged himand cried,to cast the demon out ofher daughter."Have mercy on me, O Lord, Sonof David; my daughter is severelypossessed by a demon."But he did not answer her a word.And his disciples came and beggedhim saying, "Send her away for sheis crying after us."He answered, "I was sent only tothe lost sheep of the house ofIsrael."But she came and knelt before him,saying, "Lord, help me!"And he said to her,And he answered,"Let the children first be"It is not fair to take thefed, for it is not rightchildren's bread and throw it toto take the bread ofthe dogs."children and give it tothe dogs." {57}

But she answered him,She said,"Yes, Lord; yet even the"Yes, Lord; yet even thedogs under the tabledogseat the children's crumbs."eat the crumbs that fall fromtheir master's table. "And he said to her,Then Jesus answered her,"For this saying, you may"O woman, great is your faith!go your way; the demon hasBe it done as you desire."left your daughter."And she went home and foundAnd her daughter was healedthe child lying in bed andinstantly.the demon gone.

Make a careful comparison of the two versions of this story. In Mark's version, the woman's "saying" wins her case. Matthew has Jesus comment on her faith. Look back at Mt 14:31. Jesus chides Peter for being a person of "little faith." By praising the woman's faith, Matthew makes her an example for all Christians. You will also notice that she has to overcome more obstacles in Matthew than in Mark. Jesus ignores her. The disciples want to get rid of her. And Jesus insists that his mission is only to the Jewish people, "the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

The expansion of the obstacles in Matthew shows us the role that this story came to play in early Christian communities. Jesus' mission had been to Israel. But the early Christian missionaries quickly found converts among non-Jews as well. When we study Paul's letters, we will see that they had to struggle with the question of whether Gentile converts would have to become Jews. Finally, most of the leaders of the church agreed that Gentiles could be part of the community without becoming Jews, "children of Israel." In that context, a story of Jesus' healing the daughter of a Gentile takes on new life. It shows that even a Gentile was capable of showing the kind of faith in Jesus that would lead to salvation. Matthew's gospel is written from the perspective of a strong Jewish Christian tradition. Many scholars think that at the time Matthew wrote his church was undergoing a transition from evangelizing Jews to preaching among the Gentiles. (See the strong affirmation of that mission in Mt 28:16-20). This story would support that mission.

SAYINGS AND PARABLES. While some of Jesus' teaching is preserved in stories about him like the pronouncement stories, much of it is preserved in sayings and stories which are reported as direct instruction {58} to the crowds or to disciples. Here too we find a number of different types of saying. We also find allusions to the Old Testament, to what appear to have been folklore themes and to common proverbs. We also find that Jesus' stories and sayings often come down to us in a number of different versions. Sometimes there are sayings of Jesus which are reported in other early writers that are not in the gospels. For example, Acts 20:35b; 1 Cor 9:14 (indirectly), and 1 Thess 4:15 all refer to words of the Lord which are not in the gospels. Lk 1:1-4 and Jn 20:30 both refer to the fact that the evangelists are conscious of selecting their material from a larger pool of available traditions about Jesus. These traditions may have circulated in both oral and written form.

Parables

One of the most popular forms of Jesus' teaching remains the parable. Jesus' parables range from very short, "one-liner" comparisons and analogies to miniature stories in which one or more characters take part. One of the best known short parables is that of the shepherd who goes in search of a lost sheep:

PARABLE OF THE LOST SHEEP [3-27Matthew 18:12-14:Luke 15:3-7:What do you think?So he told them this parable,If a man has a hundredWhat man of you,sheep, and one of them hashaving a hundred sheep,gone astray,if he has lost one of them,does he not leave thedoes not leave theninety-nine on theninety-nine in themountains and go in searchwilderness and go afterof the one that wentthe one which is lostastray?until he finds it?And if he finds it,And when he has found it,truly I say to you,he lays it on his shoulders,he rejoices over it morerejoicing.than over the ninety-ninethat never went astray.And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them,"Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost." {59} So it is not the will of Just so, I tell you, there will be

my Father in heaven that more joy in heaven over one sinner

one of these little ones who repents than over ninety-nine

should perish. righteous who have no need of

repentance.

Gospel of Thomas 107:

Jesus said, "The Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble, he said to the sheep, "I love you more than the ninety-nine."

Once again we have two versions of the parable in the synoptic gospels. If you look up the context of the parable in each of the gospels you will see that Matthew has Jesus address the parable to disciples, especially to those who are going to be leaders of the community. They must care for all members of the community and not despise the "little ones." Luke has Jesus address the parable to hostile Pharisees who were critical of his associations with sinners. They thought that the messiah should be sent to the "righteous of Israel," those who were really looking for God's salvation.

You will also notice that Luke's version of the parable has an additional scene between the parable and the application of the parable to the audience. The shepherd collects his friends for a celebration. Again, if you were to look carefully at the parables in Luke 15, you would notice that the chapter has three parables about things which are "lost": a sheep, a coin and a son (the prodigal son). Each one ends with a celebration and rejoicing, doesn't it? The feast of celebration is critical to the action of the prodigal son. It looks as though Luke has used that theme to structure the whole chapter. Go to the beginning of the chapter. There, we find a meal as the context in which the criticism of Jesus has been raised. You might say that it is the reverse of the "celebration" of repentance and forgiveness being called for in the stories.

We can also use non-gospel tradition to provide us with an additional clue that the story of the lost sheep circulated in the oral tradition without the second part. A version of this parable has come down to us in a second century collection of sayings of Jesus, the Gospel of Thomas. This version lacks some of the urgency conveyed by the gospel versions. It also avoids the troubling problem of whether the shepherd was so concerned about the lost one that he actually left the other sheep exposed, since it doesn't refer to the mountains or the wilderness. And it seems to feel the need to explain the special relationship between the shepherd and the lost sheep by making it the best one in the flock. Such shifts easily can occur in a story {60} as it is handed down in the tradition. But whatever the shifts, the Gospel of Thomas version confirms the view that the story originally had a simple structure of seeking the sheep, finding and reaction. The Lukan calling in neighbors and the application of the lesson to the audience are expansions.

Instructions for Disciples

In addition to the parables, many of Jesus' sayings take the form of "rules" or instructions about the life of discipleship. These were often gathered together by the tradition or by the individual evangelists into collections of related material. Naturally, instruction on prayer plays an important role in the life of the community. Matthew and Luke each contain a section of Jesus' teaching on prayer, which includes the Lord's Prayer. Matthew's, from the Sermon on the Mount, explains how Christian piety differs from that of Jews and pagans (Mt 6:1-18). Luke has the teaching on prayer result from the disciples' observation of Jesus at prayer and their desire to be taught about prayer (Lk 11:1—13). Compare the two versions of the Lord's Prayer. You can see that Matthew's has been "filled out" to provide the parallel phrasing that would make it appropriate for communal worship:

THE LORD'S PRAYER [3-3]Matthew 6:9-13:Luke 11:2-4:Our FatherFather,who art in heaven,who art in heaven,hallowed be thy name.hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come;Thy kingdom come.thy will be done,on earth as it is in heaven.Give us this dayGive us each dayour daily bread;our daily bread;And forgive us our debts,And forgive us our sins,as we also have forgivenfor we ourselves forgiveour debtors;everyone who is indebted to us.And lead us not intoAnd lead us not intotemptation,temptation.but deliver us from evil,Jewish Kaddish Prayer:

Magnified and sanctified be His great name in the world that He created according to his will. May He establish His Kingdom in your lifetime; in your days; and in the lifetime of the house of Israel, even speedily at a near time. {61} Mark 11:25:

And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also, who is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses.

The first part of Jesus' prayer focuses on the coming of the kingdom of God. It reflects a Jewish prayer (the Kaddish prayer). The second half speaks directly of the needs of those who are to be Jesus' disciples. They must be preserved from "temptation," that is, from the "testing" of God's people that might lead them astray from God's will. The bread petition reflects Jesus' more general teaching against anxiety (cf. Mt 6:25-34; Lk 12:22-34; 16:10-13). Jesus links God's forgiveness with our treatment of others. This point is emphasized in Mt 6:14-15. Although the gospel of Mark does not contain the Lord's Prayer, it does contain another saying of Jesus which makes the same point (Mk 11:25). The addition that is made in Christian liturgies, "for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever," appears in an early Christian writing from the end of the first century, the Didache, as "for thine is the power and the glory forever." This document instructs Christians to recite the Lord's Prayer three times a day. Matthew includes prayer in a triad of pious practices: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. The Gospel of Thomas preserves a saying on true piety that takes this triad and adds to it the question of dietary food laws:

And his disciples questioned him and said, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?" Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered." (Gos. Thom. 6)

Jesus' rejection of Jewish concerns about kosher food laws is preserved in the synoptic tradition in Mk 7:14-23 (cp. Mt 15:10-20) .

Gos. Thom. 6 makes use of a form of saying that is sometimes referred to as a judgment saying. The passive verb represents God as the author of the action. Whatever is hidden now will be revealed in the judgment. Mk 4:21-23 combines that saying with a saying about a lamp, which occurs in many forms in both the canonical gospels and in the traditions outside the gospels:

And he said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For there is nothing {62} hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. Let him who has ears to hear hear.

The saying about the lamp probably existed in proverbial form such as we find in Mt 5:15a, Lk 8:16 or 11:33, to the effect that no one lights a lamp and puts it under a vessel or a basket. The gospels use this proverb to warn the disciples that they must not hide what they have received. The element of warning is intensified by incorporating the saying into a context of judgment sayings.

In addition to proverbs and judgment sayings, there are sayings which are described as "legal sayings." Although most of these sayings are not "laws" in our sense of the word, they are intended to set forth the way in which Jesus' disciples are to live their lives. The one which has been most frequently embodied in the legal system of Christian countries has been Jesus' saying against divorce (e.g. Mt 5:31-32; 19:3-9, in the context of a debate with the Pharisees). Jesus rejected the rather liberal standards for divorcing a wife in his time as contrary to the intention of God in creation, though he knows that the law of Moses does allow for divorce so long as the husband follows the proper legal procedures and gives his wife a divorce decree. Some Christian sects have even taken other sayings from the Sermon on the Mount as strict rules of conduct. The prohibition against swearing oaths in Mt 5:33-37 they take to mean that they cannot swear an oath of allegiance or an oath in court. Of course, if people always told the truth directly as Jesus commands, then the use of oaths to back up a person's word would not be necessary.

Jesus' legal sayings do not represent a system of law to replace the law of Moses by which Jews lived their lives and governed themselves under Roman supervision. Rather, they seem to be a challenge to the type of person who thinks that the will of God is perfectly embodied in the law. Such a person might presume that as long as "it's legal" in the Mosaic law, it represents the will of God. But Jesus keeps insisting that the law cannot come close to the real perfection of God or the change of heart demanded of those who live for God alone.

SAYINGS COLLECTIONS. Naturally, as the early Christians handed down the various sayings and parables of Jesus, they also made collections of them just as they did of the miracles of Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas, which in its present form stems from a second century gnostic sect, seems to be based on just such a collection of sayings. It's not even a gospel in the way we think of a gospel because it does not narrate the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, the concluding days in Jerusalem and the death and resurrection as the gospels in the canon do. Gos. Thorn, appears {63} to preserve a collection of sayings that circulated in the eastern part of the church in Syria, which was an area of strong Christian churches in the early centuries.

Long before Gos. Thorn, was discovered, scholars had proposed that there was a collection of Jesus' sayings and parables that both Matthew and Luke had used to supplement the teaching material that they found in Mark. This source was called "Q" from the German word for source, "Quelle." They reached the conclusion that this source had to have been a written collection of sayings because of the close verbal overlap between the material common to the two writers. At the same time, differences in their versions and in the order of material in their respective gospels make it unlikely that Matthew copied the material out of Luke or vice versa.

You have already seen some examples of Q material in the parable of the lost sheep and in the Lord's Prayer. If you look back at those passages you can see what we mean by common source material. In general the Lukan form of the Q material is less elaborately reworked than that in Matthew, so we will give the passages commonly assigned to Q in their Lukan version. Jesus is pictured in the Q sayings as the Son of Man who comes to bring the end-time salvation. Satan will be defeated, judgment is coming and the faithful perseverance of the disciples of Jesus will win them salvation.

Many scholars think that this collection of sayings was shaped by the earliest Christian missionaries in Palestine and Syria. Their way of life was much like that of Jesus himself. They traveled from village to village announcing that the kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus, the Son of Man, who is coming in judgment, had demonstrated the defeat of Satan's kingdom in his exorcisms. His disciples are continuing Jesus' summons to Israel to repent.

You can also see that all of our reports about what Jesus said and did have been handed down within the context of a believing community. Neither the gospel writers nor their sources were engaged in "investigative reporting." The stories about Jesus, the collections of his miracles and his sayings are all intended to awaken and nourish faith in Jesus as the one sent by God to bring salvation.

Jesus as Teacher and Miracle-Worker

All of the traditions about Jesus emphasize two aspects of his ministry: teaching and healing. Mk 1:21-28 combines these two features of Jesus' ministry in an opening scene at the synagogue in Capernaum. While Jesus is teaching the people, a possessed man begins to cry out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God" (v. 24). We have seen that that is quite a theological insight for a demon. The crowd reacts in amazement at Jesus' teaching and his authority over the demons. Mark suggests that Jesus' reputation as a healer drew people to him from all over.

Of course, as we have seen, Jesus was not the only person in his time reputed to work miracles (see Mt 12:27). Sometimes, as in the case of the Syrian miracle worker that we quoted earlier, such persons were accused of being in the business to make money from those who were gullible. Neither Jesus, nor his disciples, are ever accused of profiting from the power to heal. Pagans often sought to be healed by going to a temple of the healing god Asclepius. In the reports attached to famous shrines, we sometimes find the motif of doubt and conversion to belief in the god. Here is an example of such a story:

A man who could move only one finger of his hand came to the god as a supplicant. When he saw the votive tablets in the sanctuary he did not believe the cures and made fun of the inscriptions. In his sleep [in the sanctuary] he had a vision. It seemed to him that as he was playing dice in the room under the temple and was about to throw, the god appeared, jumped on his hand and stretched out his fingers. When he had stepped off, he saw himself bend his hand and stretch out each finger on its own; when he had stretched them all out straight, the god asked him {66} whether he still did not believe the votive tablets, and he said no. "Because you had no faith in them, though they were worthy of belief your name in the future shall be Apistos [ = 'without faith']," said the god. When day came he emerged from the sanctuary cured.

This story illustrates the theme of faith, which plays an important role in Jesus' miracles. Jesus, too, is able to cure persons who are paralyzed as several stories about him suggest (Mk 2:1-12; 3:1-6). In the gospels, we frequently find faith in a different location in the story. Instead of Jesus using the miracle to convince someone who does not believe, Jesus only performs the miracle after he or the disciples (by trying to push the person aside) have challenged the person's faith (Mk 2:5; 5:34; 5:36; 7:27-29; 10:48-52) .

The emphasis on faith in connection with the miracles of Jesus was one way in which the tradition could make it clear that Jesus was not some sort of "magician" or "money-seeking wonder worker." Even so Jesus had to reject two different types of "crowd reaction" to his abilities. One was the desire to set him up as some sort of mass leader and wonder-worker (Jn 6:15). The other was to credit Jesus' miracles to some clever manipulation of demonic or at least dubious powers (Mk 3:20-22; 5:17). Even in our own day, versions of these views are represented in attempts to discredit Christian belief in Jesus. Certainly, Jesus' miracles did bring him popular attention as Mark suggests. But the gospels also show a certain reserve in their narration of the miracles that is unlike other accounts of miracle-working.

Scholars suggest that this reserve may go back to Jesus himself. Because miracles are ambiguous, they have to be set within a larger context. Jesus, unlike other miracle-workers, sees his exorcisms as signs of liberation and hope. Casting out of demons shows that God's kingdom is present (Mt 12:28). Other sayings attributed to Jesus speak of a vision in which he sees Satan falling from heaven (Lk 10:18), his kingdom falling apart (Mk 3:24-26), and his house being robbed (Mk 3:27). Another way of connecting the miracles and Jesus' coming to fulfill the Old Testament promises of salvation is to connect them with the promises in Is 35:5-6 that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the dumb speak. Mt 15:30-31 uses this Isaiah passage as a summary of Jesus' healing activity. All of these themes are represented in the miracles of Jesus (dumb, Mt 9:32-34) ; deaf and dumb, Mk 7:32-35; blind, Mk 8:22-26; 10:46-52; Mt 9:27-31; Jn 9:1-11; lame, Mk 2:1-12; Jn 5:1-9) .

Of course, Jesus' miracles are not limited to those which can be linked to Old Testament prophecies. But by making the connection between the {67} two, it was possible for Jesus and his disciples to insist that the time of salvation had come. The limitations and evils that held people in bondage were no longer insurmountable. People could experience the saving power of God in their lives. They are not "trapped" in a world dominated by evil. As the early Christians retold these stories about Jesus' miracles, they showed that the miracles pointed to Jesus as the one who embodies God's power just as we have seen the demon in the Markan story hail Jesus as the "Holy One of God."

Jesus as Teacher

Jesus' teaching also called upon the hearer to recognize that God was bringing forth a new time of salvation. Some people may have thought that Jesus was like one of the scribes, a person who was going to engage in interpreting the law. But Jesus breaks with their tradition of interpreting the law so that it could be lived in this age by proclaiming that salvation and healing and even human need take priority over such important obligations as observing the sabbath (Mk 2:23-28; 3:1-6). Some people apparently expected Jesus to be like the Pharisees or other pious laymen, who went beyond what was required of the law in their personal lives. Jesus is criticized for not observing ritual washings before meals (Mk 7:2) and for not teaching his disciples to fast (Mk 2:18). Neither practice is required by the law. Nor were Jews, in general, required to avoid contact with fellow Jews who were sinners, though Jesus was criticized for failing to do so (Mk 2:15-17; Lk 7:34). Mk 7:15 preserves a saying of Jesus which shifts the focus away from external purity rules to the inner dispositions of a person, "There is nothing outside a person, which by going in can defile, but the things which come out of a person are what defile." Such debates suggest that some considered Jesus to be a teacher who sought to expand the sphere of observance of the law and personal holiness. Yet, his teaching and conduct sometimes conflicted with what people expected from such teachers.

In other respects, Jesus may have appeared to be closer to the prophets. He often spoke directly of the will of God for the people. Some of his puzzling actions and sayings have also been compared to the prophets— for example, the saying in Mt 8:22 (Lk 9:60), "Let the dead bury their dead." Such disregard of filial piety would have been shocking to anyone, Jewish or pagan, in antiquity. If we look back at the Old Testament, however, we find two examples in which the prophet is commanded to break with burial rites. Jeremiah is told not to take part in mourning because an age is coming in which burial will be neglected (Jer 16:5-7). Ezekiel is told not to observe the usual rites when his wife dies (Ez 24:15-18), as a sign {68} of how the people will behave when Yahweh brings judgment on them by destroying the temple and permitting the death of many of the young. Jesus' command to a would be disciple, then, can be understood as a prophetic sign that the kingdom is at hand. The usual conventions of piety and behavior are broken because God's salvation and judgment are coming into the experience of Jesus and his generation.

The idea that Jesus' presence and actions show people that they are facing an "exceptional time" is also evident in the responses given to the charges of breaking the sabbath, "so the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath" (Mk 2:28). It is used in the collection of sayings that defend Jesus and his followers for not fasting (Mk 2:19,21-22). Other "prophetic" elements in Jesus' teaching are more difficult to establish in their original form as they have been recast in the gospel traditions in light of later events. Jesus appears to have made predictions about the impending destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (Mk 13:2; 14:58). He may also have predicted his own suffering and death in a saying that linked his fate with the death of John the Baptist (Mk 9:12-13). But the elements in Jesus' ministry that would have most reminded people of the prophets would have been linked with the immediacy of the kingdom of God, the sense that people now stand at a time of God's salvation/judgment.

The radical character of some of Jesus' sayings can only be understood when we recognize that they do not stem from a world which "goes on as usual." They are not calculated to assure success in an on-going pattern of human relationships. Instead, Jesus speaks of a "new age" which reverses the values of the old one. This reversal is evident in the activities of healing and liberation for the sick, poor and oppressed, which are associated with the Old Testament (as in Lk 4:18-21). It is also evident in the sayings that speak of changing evaluations of persons and status, "becoming like a child" (Mk 10:15) or the "first" as servant of all (Mk 10:43). And it is evident in the call for a radically different way of relating to others as in the sayings about non-retaliation and love of enemies (e.g. Lk 6:27-36). We cannot simply take Jesus' sayings as though they describe the way in which we think people are likely to act. They are a summons to changing our hearts in light of the coming of the rule of God.

Jesus and His Followers

Everyone knows that Jesus was accompanied by a group of disciples. The gospels preserve stories about how some of those people came to follow Jesus (Mk 1:16-18 [Simon Peter and Andrew], 19-20 [James and John, sons of Zebedee] and Mt 4:18-20,21-22; Lk 5:1-11 combines the call of Peter with that of James and John but omits Andrew; Mk 2:14//Mt 9:9//Lk 5:27-28 [Levi, in Mk/Lk, Matthew, in Mt]; Jn 1:35-50 has an independent tradition about an unnamed person, Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip and Nathanael). Most people are also familiar with the fact that Jesus had a special group of disciples known as the Twelve. Mk 3:16-19 lists their names as Simon Peter, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot. But the gospels mention other persons who followed Jesus around as well. Mk 4:10 speaks of "those who were about him with the twelve." Lk 8:1-3 speaks of Jesus preaching accompanied by the twelve and some women whom he had healed and who contributed to the support of the group. Jn mentions two disciples of Jesus whom he does not name, Nathanael and a disciple called the "Beloved Disciple," who was the source of the community's tradition (Jn 1:35-36,45; 13:23; 18:15; 19:26-27,35; 21:2,7,20,24). The circle of Jesus' followers seems to have been larger than the special list of "twelve."

The importance of the number "twelve" can be found in the twelve tribes of Israel. A saying in Mt 19:28//Lk 22:30 speaks of the position the twelve will have in the new age as judges over the twelve tribes of Israel. Lk, conscious of Judas' impending betrayal, omits the number "twelve" from his version of the saying. Psalm 122:4-5 speaks of the tribes going up to Jerusalem where thrones have been set up in judgment. The association of "judging the tribes" and thrones suggests a vision of the new age in which the "twelve" will be rulers over the renewed people of God. Acts 1:23-26 describes the followers of Jesus at Jerusalem choosing another person who had been among them from the beginning, Matthias, to replace Judas. Once the number "twelve" had been restored it was not necessary to continue to appoint persons to the circle of the "twelve."

However, the twelve quickly become confused with another group in early Christianity, "apostles." Luke uses the "apostles" for the twelve (e.g. Lk 6:13; Acts 1:26). But the term "apostle" referred to persons who were emissaries or missionaries sent to preach the gospel and has its background in the Jewish idea of specially commissioned emissaries. You can see how the two terms differ if you read 1 Cor 15:5-9. Paul, who is himself an "apostle," speaks of Jesus appearing to Peter and then to the "twelve" separately from appearances to James, the brother of the Lord not the son of Zebedee, other apostles, other believers and finally to himself. The confusion between the twelve and the larger group of apostles is rooted in the fact that the gospels also describe the twelve as being sent out by Jesus to engage in a mission of preaching and healing (Mk 6:7-13; Mt 10:1-15; Lk 9:1-6; Lk 10:1-16). Read one of those passages. You will notice that it gives a number of rules which the disciples are to follow in their preaching. These {70} rules make them radically dependent upon the hospitality that they receive from others along the way, since they are not to take money or provisions. They are also very close to the way in which the gospels picture Jesus conducting his ministry. Many scholars think that the first missionary efforts in Palestine were carried out by followers of Jesus who adopted this style of life based on what they had seen and heard about Jesus.

There are a number of different situations in antiquity in which a person might leave family and occupation to become the "disciple" of a popular leader. The most familiar would be persons who went to become students of a teacher, a particular Pharisee or teacher of the law, or, for the non-Jewish person, a particular philosopher teacher. Some of the latter also led a wandering life-style, warning the crowds of humanity about the blindness of their ways. A person might also join a gang of robbers, preying on travelers, or might follow a leader of a band of persons aimed at overthrowing the Roman occupation. These persons are also described as "robbers" in first century writings. Barabbas and the two "thieves" with whom Jesus was crucified may have been rebels of this sort. Or one might belong to a group of disciples surrounding a prophetic figure. John the Baptist when he began to preach to the people that they should repent gathered a group of disciples distinct from the crowds who came to hear him and be baptized as a sign of their repentance.

The Baptist was executed by Herod Antipas as a result of his popularity among the people (Josephus, Antiquities 18:11§—19), and the fears that his preaching might cause an uprising among the people. Similar fears may have motivated the Jewish officials responsible for turning Jesus over to Pilate as a potential rebel. But in neither case do the suspicions that are said to be responsible for their condemnation imply that the Baptist or Jesus was actually the leader of a "Zealot" gang devoted to the violent overthrow of a corrupt political regime. Both Jesus and John preached a message of God's impending judgment. Both called upon people to repent. Jesus insisted that the time of God's rule was already becoming present in his ministry. In addition to a lack of evidence for armed resistance by Jesus' followers (or the Baptist's), the general picture of Galilee in the time of Jesus suggests that much of the territory was peaceful. Even when the Jews did revolt against Rome in A. D. 66-70, the resistance in Galilee was quickly extinguished. Therefore, there is little to recommend the view that Jesus and his disciples saw themselves as rebels seeking to establish a new political order in which justice and obedience to the law would be realized.

Jesus' concerns for interpreting the will of God often lead his teaching to overlap with that of Pharisees and others devoted to interpreting the law. But he does not seem to have pursued the kind of detailed interpre-

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{72} tation and exegesis of the letter of the law that we find elsewhere. Therefore, his followers may have seen in him a popular religious teacher but they are hardly disciples of a scribe or rabbi. In addition to teaching, Jesus' ministry is also characterized by prophetic sayings and actions and healings. Charges that Jesus' activities were inspired by a demon (Mk 3:22-27; Mt 12:22-30; Lk 11:14-23) led to the view that Jesus was a magician and deceiver of the people. Josephus uses similar language about messianic prophets and Zealot leaders during the Jewish revolt against Rome (Josephus, War 2:259; 6:288). It is evident that how a person described Jesus and his disciples in the first century usually carried with it a judgment about Jesus himself. If Jesus comes in the name of God, then his teaching, prophetic warnings and healings must all be signs of God's activity. If not, then Jesus can be identified with any of the negative images for a popular leader: deceiver, rebel, magician. We will never know what led Judas to betray Jesus, but we can see that Jesus was a problematic figure even for his own disciples.

The Trial and Death of Jesus

One of the most certain historical facts about Jesus is that he was condemned to be crucified by the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate. We know from the references to crucifixion in literary sources that it was considered the appropriate punishment for slaves and the most hardened criminals. St. Paul comments that Jesus' death on the cross is under a curse pronounced by God's law in Deut 21:22-23 (Gal 3:13). His interpretation is borne out by the legal rulings of the Essene sect such as the following passage from the recently published Temple Scroll:

If a man has informed against his people and has delivered his people up to a foreign nation and has done evil to his people, you shall hang him on a tree and he shall die. On the evidence of two witnesses and on the evidence of three witnesses, he shall be put to death . . . their bodies shall not pass the night on the tree, you shall bury them that very day, for what is hanged on the tree is accursed by God and humanity and you shall not defile the land I am giving you for an inheritance.

You can see just from the tone of this passage that many of those who saw Jesus on the cross or heard that he had been crucified would have presumed that he was guilty of a terrible crime. The cross would be a real stumbling block to belief just as St Paul says it is in 1 Cor 1:18-25. {73} Archeologists have discovered the skeleton of a young Jewish man, Yehohanan, who had been crucified in the first century. He was buried in his family tomb, which shows his family to have been a prosperous one. One of its members was a potter. Another had been active in the building of Herod's temple. Since it seems unlikely that someone from that family would be a common robber (and certainly not a slave), we can only guess that he had engaged in some form of activity that the Romans found suspect. Whatever his crime, the family had been able to obtain possession of the body and to bury it in their own tomb.

Our only evidence about the accusations against Jesus comes from the gospel accounts which were written decades after the event. Even though the evangelists may have been able to draw on earlier accounts of Jesus' trial and death, we do not have anything resembling a contemporary court record. In addition, we are in the dark about critical legal issues. Some historians agree with the assertion in Jn 18:31 that a Jewish court could not have condemned Jesus to death so that even if they had thought Jesus guilty on the religious charge of deceiving the people, they would have to get the Roman governor to condemn Jesus on political grounds. Others insist that the Sanhedrin could still exercise the death penalty in any case where the offense was clearly a religious one.

While the gospels all agree that Jesus was handed over to Pilate by Jewish authorities, the nature of the Jewish proceedings against him is unclear. It was possible for a private party to bring someone before the governor on the charge that that person was an evildoer. Then it was up to the proconsul to decide how to deal with the case. No more than two or three persons were needed as accusers. Thus, you should not imagine that Jesus was handed over by the entire Jewish people or even the entire Sanhedrin. Mk 14:55-65 (and Mt 26:59-68) presumes a trial before the council in which various conflicting testimony was brought forward, and Jesus was finally condemned as a blasphemer. Lk implies that no verdict was reached (Lk 22:71; Acts 13:27-28). Jn presumes that the decision to have Jesus executed had been made before Jesus was arrested (11:45-53). Charges of blasphemy are leveled at Jesus throughout the gospel (Jn 5:18; 8:59; 10:31). Prior to being turned over to Pilate, Jesus is interrogated by the former high priest Annas (Jn 18:19-24). Lk 23:6-12 has a peculiar episode in which Pilate sends Jesus off to Herod. Although offenses were tried where they occurred regardless of the defendant's origins, some scholars think Pilate might have taken such an action since Herod had the extraordinary privilege of extraditing offenders who fled his jurisdiction for other parts of the empire.

It is possible that Jesus was never condemned by a Jewish court. With its members from differing parties and traditions of interpreting the law, {74} it may have been very difficult to obtain a verdict in the Sanhedrin even if that body did have the authority to render a death sentence. Josephus (War 6:300-305) tells the story of a prophet, Ananias (ca. A. D. 62), who upset the authorities by predicting the destruction of the temple. He was turned over to Roman authorities who let him go as a "lunatic." It is also possible that the Sanhedrin session was never intended to be a trial but merely a hearing to determine grounds on which Jesus might be turned over to Pilate. Thus, while it is clear that some of the Jewish leaders had decided that Jesus' words and actions were potentially dangerous, it is far from clear that there was any consensus that Jesus had committed a capital offense. Sometimes Jesus is presented in a way that makes him an opponent of the whole religious tradition of his people, Israel. Were that the case one would expect a much clearer tradition about the religious charges against him.

Pilate was free to handle the case put before him in any way that he chose. The formulation of the charge "king of the Jews" reflects a Roman viewpoint: the condemned is a rebel leader trying to stir up the people. What we know of Pilate does not suggest a person overly concerned with the niceties of Jewish feelings or the guilt or innocence of those he condemned for seditious behavior (cf. Lk 13:1-2). Later in A. D. 35 Pilate sent soldiers to Samaria to prevent the Samaritans from following one of their prophets up Mount Gerezim. Some of the people were killed, and the aftermath led to Pilate's recall to Rome (Josephus, Antiquities 18:86-87). Since the high priest Caiaphas lost his office soon after Pilate was removed, historians presume that Pilate and Caiaphas had some sort of political understanding. Thus, a person sent to his jurisdiction as an evildoer from the high priest would hardly have caused Pilate much concern. The gospel writers seem to paint Pilate in a better light than other evidence suggests he deserves. They may have wished to avoid giving others the impression that Christians were, in fact, the subversive movement they were sometimes accused of being.

Of course, we have only looked at the trial and death of Jesus through the eyes of an historian trying to figure out the legal facts of the case. Even from that perspective, it appears to be an example of human evil, the thoughtless destruction of an innocent person. But the early Christians were able to look at Jesus' own acceptance of that death through the image of the suffering servant from Is 53:6-12. They saw that Jesus suffered for the sins of humanity to bring us back into a living relationship with God (e.g. Mk 10:45b; Rom 4:25; 2 Cor 5:21). They used the language of sacrifice, of the expiation for sin on the Day of Atonement to describe it (Heb 9:11-15; Rom 3:25-26). And they also saw in Jesus' death the supreme manifestation of God's love (Gal 2:20; Rom 5:8; Jn 3:16). For Christians, {75} then, the death of Jesus also demonstrates a power of love that goes beyond the worst of human evil and sin.

Summary & Study Questions

We have seen that the New Testament does not provide us with the kind of information that would be found in a modern historical biography of a famous person. One of the most critical events in Jesus' story, his trial and death, poses a number of historical questions, which we cannot resolve. Jesus' deeds and teachings were remolded as they were handed on so that they addressed the problems faced by later groups of Christians. Sometimes it is easy to detect the concerns that have led to new emphases in this material as in the link between the story of the Syrophoenician woman and the mission to the Gentiles. Or we may see the fuller and more balanced expressions in Mt's version of the Lord's Prayer as representative of the use of that prayer in Christian worship. But in other cases it is much more difficult to decide how a particular tradition may have developed.

We have also seen that as Jesus healed and preached among the people, he gathered around him a diverse group of followers. A special group of "twelve" represented the renewal of Israel through Jesus' ministry. But there were other disciples, women and men, who followed Jesus as well. Then there were persons drawn to him in the hope of being healed or out of curiosity about his preaching. Some may have become disciples. Some may have thought of Jesus as just another healer, prophetic preacher of repentance or interpreter of the law. And at least some persons among the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were so offended or concerned about the impact of Jesus' activities that they initiated the events which led to his execution by the Roman prefect in Judea, Pontius Pilate.

We have also seen that it is not easy to fit Jesus into any of the established categories for popular, religious or political leadership. Jesus was not an authority in one of the groups of the time like the Pharisees or Es-senes. His family did not belong to the priestly tribes, so he could not be a priest. The infancy narratives in Luke 1-2 and Mt 1-2 claim a relationship to the "house of David." But that relationship is clearly indirect. Jesus' family was not recognized as "heirs to the throne of David." If some people thought of Jesus in political terms as "messiah" or "anointed" leader of the people, they might have thought that he would establish a new dynasty or might bring about the final judgment of God. For those in the crowds, Jesus' leadership did not stem from any established role but was based on popular appeal as healer or prophetic figure. You can also see that for many of these people Jesus' death would be the end of the {76} story, since both political leaders and healers have to be alive to draw a following. Prophets and teachers may continue to influence others through disciples, who preserve their teaching. We will see that Jesus' disciples do far more than preserve his teaching. They claim that God has raised Jesus from death and that Jesus is the decisive turning point in salvation for all of humanity.

Study Questions

Facts You Should Know

1. Name the two basic types of stories about Jesus and give the charac teristics of each type.

2. Name three different types of sayings by Jesus and give the character istics of each type.

3. Why do we find different versions of the same parable, saying or inci dent in the gospel traditions?

4. What is the Gospel of Thomas? The "Q" source?

5. What other miracle-workers were active in the first century A. D. ? How do the stories of Jesus' miracles compare with stories told about others?

6. Give two examples of "radical" or "shocking" elements in the teaching of Jesus. What do these examples tell Jesus' audience about the "time" in which they live?

7. What is the significance of the "twelve"? How is that group distin guished from "disciples of Jesus" and from "apostles"?

8. Why would the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans have led some peo ple to conclude that he could not have been God's spokesperson?

9. Describe three unresolved historical questions about the trial of Jesus.

Things To Do

1. Study the stories of the Syrophoenician Woman (3-1) and the Lost Sheep (3-2). Make a list of the common details and of everything that is special to each version. Pick out the special features which a particular au thor might be directing at the later situation of Christians. Can you find any similarities between Mt's versions of the two stories?

2. Read the stories of Jesus' trial(s) in Mk 14:53-15:20 and Lk 22:54- 23:25. First make a list of the common elements in the two accounts. Then find the differences between them. What reasons can you think of for some of the differences? {77} 3. Take a concordance and look under the word "faith" to find all of the times in which "faith" is used in connection with a miracle of Jesus in the synoptic gospels (Mt, Mk, Lk). Compare the use of "faith" by the gospel writers with the use of faith in the story of the healing by the god As-clepius.

Things To Think About

1. What significance do the miracles of Jesus have for today's Chris tian? Should Christians expect Jesus to heal them of disease? What do they need to remember when they pray to Jesus for healing?

2. What kind of popular leader(s) might Jesus be confused with to day? What parts of his ministry or teaching might make him such a threat that he might suffer injury or death? What kind of "follower" of Jesus do you think you would have been?

B) The Preaching of Jesus

Proclaiming the Kingdom of God
Parables as a Language of Faith
Wisdom in the Sayings of Jesus
Summons to Discipleship
Summary

Proclaiming the Kingdom of God

The expression "kingdom (or "reign") of God" frequently introduces Jesus' message (e.g. Mk 1:15). It would evoke images of God ruling over the people. For some the true experience of God's rule could only come with the messianic age when evil had been destroyed, Israel was obedient to her God, and even the nations would be able to see the Lord's presence as ruler of Israel. In Jesus' preaching the "kingdom" is not just a reference to some distant event. Its presence makes itself felt in persons whose lives are changed. But the kingdom is not identical with what happens in this world either. There is still the future coming of the kingdom in which its promise of salvation is completed. Mk 14:25 has Jesus say to his disciples at the Last Supper, "I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine with you until that day when I drink it new in the reign of God." Drinking "new wine" at a banquet with the Lord is a symbol of the banquet of rejoicing in the new age.

One of the most famous sayings of Jesus pointing to the presence of the reign of God is Lk 17:20-21:

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the reign of God would come, and he answered, "It is not by observation that the reign of God comes; people will not even say, 'Look, here it is, or there!' For the reign of God is among you."

This saying captured the imagination of early Christians. Several versions of it found their way into the Gospel of Thomas:

His disciple said to him, "On what day will the kingdom come?" [Jesus said,] "It does not come with the expectation of it. People {79} will not say, 'Look, here or Look, there!' Rather the Kingdom of the Father is spread out on the earth and human beings do not see it."

[Gos. Thom. 113]

Jesus said, "If those who draw you on say to you, 'Look, the Kingdom is in heaven,' then the birds of heaven will be there before you. If they say to you, It is in the sea,' then the fish will be there before you. But the kingdom is within you and outside you. ..."

[Gos. Thom. 3]

Though Jesus had disciples pray for the coming of the kingdom in the Lord's Prayer, there is a firm tradition that he rejected speculation about the time and place of its arrival. Disciples should learn to discern the presence of the kingdom in their midst. Lk 11:20 preserves a saying in which Jesus points to his exorcisms as one sign that the kingdom is present. There is even a very puzzling saying in which Jesus says that some of those present "will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God" (Lk 9:27; Mk 9:1). Jesus' contemporaries might have assumed that he meant that the final manifestation of the reign of God, judgment and new creation, was right around the corner.

Another way that Jesus proclaims the "reign of God" is in the parables which point toward what it means to experience the kingdom. Mk 4:11 speaks of the parables as revealing the "mystery of the kingdom." Those who fail to grasp the parables are cut off from the kingdom. Some parables like the parable of the seed growing secretly (Mk 4:26-29) and the parable of the mustard seed (Mk 4:30-32) speak of the kingdom by comparing it to a small, almost unnoticed seed. But when the seed is fully grown then there is a harvest or a nesting place for the birds. In this way, Jesus shows us that the kingdom is not something that God brings about with a dramatic, cosmic gesture as the myths of the end of the world have it. The kingdom may begin in a way that is almost invisible.

Jesus also spoke about the kinds of persons who would "enter the kingdom." Mk 12:28-34 contains a pronouncement story in which a scribe asks Jesus what is the greatest commandment. Jesus summarizes the law by speaking of the obligation to worship only God: to love God with our whole heart, and to love our neighbor. The scribe approves and repeats what Jesus had said. Then Jesus concludes by saying of the scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." So we can see one type of person who is close to the kingdom. This person perceives what the essentials of a religious life are in terms of the love of God and neighbor. This scribe is not like some of the others in the gospel who try to trap Jesus or who take {80} offense at things which are not part of the essential love of God and neighbor. Another very famous saying of Jesus compared persons who would enter the kingdom of God to children (Mk 10:13-16). This saying was also widely repeated:

Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it (Mk 10:15) .

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:3) .

Truly, truly I say to you, unless a person is born anew, that person cannot see the kingdom of God (Jn 3:3) .

Jesus saw infants nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing infants are like those who enter the kingdom" (Gos. Thom.22) .

These sayings suggest that a change is required in persons who become part of the kingdom. The versions in John and the Gos. Thom. even think of beginning all over again like a new-born infant. Jn 3:5 links this new beginning with the ritual of baptism when the person is born of "water and the Spirit."

Parables as a Language of Faith

One of the ways in which Jesus showed what he meant by faith was through the parables. Some of the parables show us people doing surprising things. They suggest that the kingdom can radically change a person's life. For example, Mt 13:44-46 preserves two parables in which the characters take quick action. A day laborer digging in a field finds a treasure. He quickly buys the field for himself. A pearl merchant finds a really valuable pearl so he sells everything else in order to get it. We can understand both of these acts as things that human beings might do in extraordinary situations. Jesus is telling us that the kingdom creates that type of situation.

Other parables challenge us to evaluate the actions of particular characters in the stories. Their actions and success or failure indicate how persons should live in the presence of the kingdom. Sometimes the parable may have been given an introduction by the gospel writer that links it to the kingdom. A striking example of the link between the kingdom and un- {81} usual human behavior occurs in the parable of the vineyard workers in Mt 20:1-15. Matthew has added a proverbial expression, "The last shall be first and the first last," which was often used of the reversal to take place in the new age to the end of the parable (v. 16). The parable reflects a situation common in the agricultural economy of the time: when it was necessary to harvest the grapes a vineyard owner would have to hire day-laborers to do the work. Roman books on agriculture advise people to plant grapes that ripen at different times so that they would not have to hire too many people or work for too many days to pick them. Since the grape harvest was one of the busiest times, the story presumes a situation of serious unemployment. If day-laborers could go all day without work at this time of year, things must have been much worse at other times.

You can see from reading the story that the experience of the persons in the story depended upon which group one belonged to. The people who worked all day, even though they may have been happy to accept the work when they started, go away unhappy. We don't hear from the other workers, but we would certainly guess that those who had waited all day without work and then found themselves with a day's pay at the last minute were rejoicing. The owner, though free to do as he chooses, does have to face the complaints of the first group. He may claim that he is "good" but the first group no longer experience his behavior as good even though he has honored their original contract and has also followed the law which instructed people to pay the worker his wages on the same day (Lev 19:13; Deut 24:15). If this parable is about the coming of God's reign, then it turns out that the reign of God does not create universal peace and harmony. Some people are unable to share in its coming. This parable is a good example of how we may have to change our lives and our presuppositions about what is fair and just if we are to experience the reign of God.

Another parable in which a "good" or generous action on the part of the character whose acts have the possibility of deciding the destiny of others is the parable of the prodigal son in Lk 15:11-32. The younger son, like the figure of Joseph in the Old Testament, finds himself among pagans (Jews do not eat pork) at a time of famine. But instead of lifting the whole country to prosperity and becoming second only to the ruler as Joseph had done, the younger son is a starving pig-herder. So he decides it would be better to return home and beg his father for mercy than to remain where he is. The father surprises the younger son by throwing a party in his honor. The older son, who has remained at home helping his father, becomes angry. He says what many of us would feel in his situation. The younger son has done nothing to deserve such treatment. He has stayed home and worked hard and never been given anything like the welcome {82} his brother is getting. Notice that the father does not reject the elder. He reminds him that everything the father has will be his. But the father does say that it is wrong of him to be angry and resentful. He insists that it is right to celebrate the return of the younger in this fashion.

The story reminds us that there is forgiveness and rejoicing for persons who seek to change their lives no matter what they may have done. The younger would have agreed with his older brother that he did not "deserve" a large banquet. He wasn't even asking his father to take him back as though he were a "son"—just to treat him like a hired hand. But the father does not want the younger back in disgrace. He wants him back as the "son" he should be. The banquet is a way to show that reality. Other parables of Jesus have this pattern. Luke puts two of them just before the parable of the prodigal son in his gospel, the lost sheep (Lk 15:3-7; cp. Mt 18:12-14), and the lost coin (Lk 15:8-10). Some scholars think that Lk 15:1-2 provides an important clue as to why Jesus emphasized parables of this sort. Luke says that Jesus was severely criticized by the Pharisees for associating with sinners. They thought that a good or righteous person would gather those who are also good and righteous. In that way, a group of righteous persons would be built up that might turn others to God. Jesus claimed that his message about the coming of the rule of God was not just for the righteous. He came to seek for those who were "lost" and who might never have thought that they would have any hope of salvation. Instead, Jesus teaches that God is something like a shepherd finding a lost sheep, a woman finding a lost coin, or the father in the story of the "prodigal" (= lost) son. God is overjoyed when what has been lost returns.

Wisdom in the Sayings of Jesus

Another very common form of teaching in Jesus' time was the collection of "wise sayings" or proverbs. Sayings of this sort do not have any particular situation in mind. They are cast as general pieces of wise advice for a person. A wisdom saying can apply to a number of different situations. Proverbs do not claim to be new insights. Since proverbial wisdom is often aimed at the young, they may concern advice about how to be successful in friendship, family, work etc. Wisdom traditions often draw a sharp contrast between "the wise" and the "foolish." Most people, it appears, fall into the latter category.

Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus (or Ben Sirach) contain wisdom sayings of this sort. Here is an example from Ben Sirach about lending money:

Lend to your neighbor in the time of his need; and in turn, repay your neighbor promptly. Confirm your word and keep faith with {83} him, and on every occasion you will find what you need. Many persons regard a loan as a windfall, and cause trouble to those who help them. A man will kiss another's hands until he gets a loan, and will lower his voice in speaking of his neighbor's money; but at the time for repayment he will delay, and will pay in words of unconcern, and will find fault with the time. If the lender exerts pressure, he will hardly get back half, and will regard that as a windfall. If he does not, the borrower has robbed him of his money and he has needlessly made him his enemy; he will repay him with curses and reproaches, and instead of glory will repay him with dishonor. Because of such wickedness therefore many have refused to lend; they have been afraid of being defrauded needlessly. (Sir 29:2-7)

You can see that the sage expects his audience to lend to those in need. But he also recognizes the rather dismal record of human relationships when such loans are at stake. Such experiences might cause people to refuse to make loans altogether. Those who borrow are to keep their word and repay the loan as they said they would do.

We also find Jesus speaking about lending to others and about keeping one's word. Here are some of the sayings attributed to him:

Again you have heard it said to your ancestors, "You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn." But I say to you, "Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil." (Mt 5:33-37)

Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you. (Mt 5:42)

You can see that Jesus agrees that people should give and keep their word honestly. He even goes so far as to reject the "oaths" that they swear to prove their honesty. He also agrees that they should be generous in lending to those who wish to borrow. But you may notice something different in Jesus' tone. He does not engage in pessimistic reflection on the fact that most persons will abuse that privilege. This does not mean that Jesus was blind to the kind of human failings treated in Ben Sirach. We have already seen parables in which he uses such examples very vividly. But Jesus' {84} teaching springs from the presence of God's reign. It is not simply good advice about how to maintain one's integrity in a world of fools and less than honest people.

Sirach also tells his audience that the pursuit of God's commandments is more important than the pursuit of wealth:

Lay up your treasure according to the commandments of the Most High, and it will profit you more than gold. Store up almsgiving in your treasury and it will rescue you from all affliction. (Sir 29:11-12)

Jesus reminds his followers that service to God cannot be combined with service to money:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Mt 6:19-21)

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. (Mt 6:19-21)

Jesus was clearly able to use the traditions that circulated in the wisdom sayings of his people to shape his own instruction.

Summons to Discipleship

You can see that Jesus' preaching of the reign of God as present and his use of the wisdom sayings both presume that his disciples will begin to live in a new way. Sometimes people think that Jesus' words are just a vision of how things "ought to be" or will be when there is a new age in which God's rule is not "hidden" like the seeds in Jesus' various seed parables (see Mk 4:3-8,26-29,31-32), but is established among people. However, Jesus is represented as speaking directly to his audience about their life and behavior, not about some future ideal order of things. On the other hand, you will notice that the explicit sayings and deeds of Jesus do not play a major role in the ethical teaching of the other writings of the New Testament. Clearly, the first Christians did not think of Jesus as a person {85} who had set up an elite "sect" within Judaism that had a special interpretation of the law to follow as the Teacher of Righteousness had done for the Essenes. So we would also be making a big mistake if we thought of Jesus' preaching as a "new law" or even a special form of interpreting the law such as we find it among the Pharisees or the Essenes.

The Lord's Prayer

Synagogue at Capernaum.

Although Jesus does not propose a set of legal requirements for Christian behavior, his preaching does give us a sense of the ways in which Christians will act. The Lord's Prayer combines the future expectation of the rule of God and our present life as Christians. Look at Mt's version of the prayer (Chart 3-3). Each section has a conclusion to balance out the petition to which it is attached. These petitions also make the eschatolog-ical side of the reign of God evident. The first petition that the name of God be "sanctified" or made holy can be related to the prophecy of Ez 36:22-28. Yahweh is about to "vindicate the holiness" of his name which had been "profaned among the nations" because of the sinfulness of the {86} people. You can see that this image does not simply refer to praising God as holy. It means that the people of God show that God is holy in their lives. The addition that Mt makes to this section of the prayer emphasizes that point. God's rule, already a reality in heaven, still has to become a reality on earth. But God, not merely some form of human moral or legal renewal, brings about the coming of the kingdom in the "heaven-like" obedience to God's will on earth.

The second half of the prayer addresses petitions to God from the community of believing disciples. These petitions express their own desire to live in a way that does manifest the holiness of God. The conclusion which Mt gives to the third petition makes the eschatological character of "temptation" evident. Just as the Essenes spoke of the danger of the "evil inclination" and the "Angel of Darkness" leading righteous persons away from following the law, so Mt understands "temptation" to mean falling into the power of "the evil one." (The tendency to translate the Greek as though it were an abstract noun "evil" conveys the impression that this phrase is simply a variant of the previous petition.) The Christian community acknowledges the power of evil to lead people away from devotion to the will of God and must rely on God's aid to keep it from that evil.

The petition for bread, which Luke's version has generalized from "today" to "every day," contains an unusual word to describe the bread— epiousion. English speakers are used to "daily" as a guess about the meaning of that word. Some church fathers thought that the bread being referred to was the bread of the Eucharist. However, if you read through Mt 6, you will notice that much of the rest of the chapter concerns anxiety about material things and the basic necessities of life (vv. 19-21,24,25-34). It would seem that Mt understands the petition to be related to these anxieties. The symbolism attached to the bread might then be that of the "manna" which God had given the Israelites to keep them from starving in the wilderness. Prv 30:8 has the wise person ask God to provide only the food that the person needs. Therefore, the best guess about the meaning of the word epiousion is to follow the church fathers who thought that it meant the bread "of our need" or "for our sustenance." This understanding means that Jesus' disciples are to have a particular relationship to material things. They are not to hoard or rely on them, but are to rely on what God provides.

The petition about forgiveness appears to have been altered by Luke from "debts" to "sins," from "debtors" to "persons who have done wrong to us," and from "have forgiven" to "forgive." These shifts are understandable within a Gentile context that did not know the religious significance of forgiveness of debts in the OT tradition. The most dramatic examples {87} of this tradition are associated with the legislation about the "jubilee year" which is a time of "release" for the poor. Special times, the "sabbath" and jubilee years, required Israel to recall her own bondage and liberation by God. Slaves were to be freed and the land allowed to lie fallow (e.g. Ex 21:2-6; 23:10-11; Deut 15:1-18; Lev 25). Jesus' parable of the "seed growing secretly" (Mk 4:26-29) draws upon the image of the land producing food "of itself," what persons were allowed to harvest during the sabbatical year, to describe how fruitful the kingdom is. Within this context, to speak of Christians as "having forgiven debtors" makes life in light of the kingdom a continual enactment of the redemption and liberation of the jubilee year.

God's Forgiveness

Other passages in the teaching of Jesus also emphasize the radical nature of the forgiveness that is part of Jesus' understanding of God. Mt 18:21-35 links the parable of the unforgiving servant to Peter's request for a ruling on how often we have to forgive others for a wrong they have done us. Both Jesus' answer to the question and the parable make it clear that there are no limits on forgiveness. Mt 7:1-5 contains a sharp warning against judging others, while Mt 6:14-15 adds a reminder that the forgiveness we receive from God requires that we forgive others their wrongs. Various formulations of the "love command" expand beyond the love of neighbor to love of enemies as in Mt 5:43-48. You will notice that Mt uses that passage to cap off a collection of sayings against retaliation for specific wrongs, including "debt," that is, Christians are to lend without demanding repayment. Thus, one of the most important parts of Jesus' ethical teaching is the "love command." Jesus expects his disciples to make the experiences of redemption and forgiveness a reality of their lives. He tells them stories in which the characters do extraordinary things in order to demonstrate what forgiveness, generosity and mercy mean. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king was willing to wipe out a debt that was much bigger than the annual revenue of Herod's whole kingdom (Mt 18:24—27). Unfortunately, the servant didn't learn anything from that experience. He went out and threatened a fellow servant over a small debt (vv. 28-34) .

Jesus did more than talk about mercy and forgiveness. He also scandalized some people by welcoming sinners and eating with them himself. Luke 7:36-50 contains a dramatic story in which Jesus is a guest of one of the local Pharisees. A woman known to be a sinner suddenly comes in weeping and anoints Jesus' feet. When the Pharisee is puzzled because {88} Jesus permits a sinner near him, Jesus replies with another tale about debtors. He asks who will love the lender more, the one who is freed of a large debt or of a small one? When Simon agrees that the person forgiven a large debt will love the lender more, Jesus applies the case to the sinful woman. Her love has already been shown in what she has done for Jesus. Therefore, her many sins are forgiven. Other passages in the gospels show that people who wished to attack Jesus spoke of him as a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Mt 11:16-19). Levi, a tax collector, became a disciple of Jesus (Mt 9:9-13; Mk 2:13-17; Lk 5:27-32) .

We sometimes forget how amazing Jesus' behavior toward sinners is because we think of a "sinner" as someone like us, a person who is trying to live a good life but who falls short and has to ask God's forgiveness. In Judaism, a person like that is not a "sinner." That person can use the rituals of atonement to receive forgiveness for the failings in his or her efforts to follow God. A "sinner," on the other hand, is a person who deliberately turns against God. That person is leading a life which he or she knows is contrary to the law. The "wicked" scorn righteousness, justice and piety to pursue their own desires. Tax collectors were considered to be engaged in an occupation which excluded them from the "people of God" because they were working for the Romans in collecting taxes and other fees. Tax collectors also had a reputation for defrauding people by demanding more taxes and pocketing the difference and for using violence against people in collecting fees. So you can see that it was the kind of occupation in which a person could hardly claim to be "just" and "merciful." When the prodigal son squandered his father's money in sexual immorality and then wound up working as a pig-herder for a pagan (pigs were considered "unclean" by Jews, who do not eat pork), he was acting like one of the "wicked."

Most people thought that when God brought salvation to the people, only the righteous, those who were trying to follow God's will, would be saved. The "wicked" would be condemned for their evil ways. Jesus, on the other hand, insists that God's reign reaches out to the wicked. He told a parable about a shepherd and a lost sheep (Lk 15:1-7; Mt 18:10-14) to demonstrate the attitude of God toward the wicked. The "righteous" are all right. Jesus has come to seek out those who are lost. People like that do not even think that they have a chance of being accepted by God. Matthew's version of this parable makes it clear that Jesus' disciples are expected to continue that concern for those who are "lost." Matthew realizes that there is a danger of Christianity becoming a group just for the pious, the good people. So he surrounds Jesus' parable with a warning that the angels of the "little ones" stand before God. Church leaders must seek out the wandering and lost. They must never take an attitude of self-righteousness and "despise" such persons.

Summary

When Jesus preached about the "reign of God," he was not only speaking about God's power in the future. He was also calling his disciples to experience what God's power could do to change their lives now. We are expected to live in a way that depends upon the power of God and not upon our human prejudices, divisions, cares and anxieties. Otherwise, we will not experience the joy of salvation when the reign of God is completely manifest.

The central feature of the new life of disciples can be found in Jesus' vision of the mercy, love and forgiveness of God. This love also has to govern the relationships which Christians have with one another. They cannot judge or condemn others. They must be looking for ways in which they can show what love, mercy and forgiveness mean in their lives by extending them to others. And they must also be willing to seek out persons who are not part of their own group of pious or righteous people. They must be willing to help the poor and suffering. They must go even further and seek for the "lost sheep," people who are so marginal to society and to religion that they would not even think of approaching God or a church.

Study Questions

Facts You Should Know

1. Give examples from the teaching of Jesus that point to the kingdom as "present" in the experience of disciples and as "future expectation."

2. What do the sayings about "becoming like a child" tell disciples about entering the kingdom?

3. Describe the objections raised to the behavior of the central character in the parables of the workers in the vineyard and the prodigal son.

4. How do Jesus' sayings about lending and wealth differ from similar say ings in the wisdom traditions of Israel?

5. What does each petition of the Lord's Prayer tell us about the kingdom and discipleship?

6. Why was Jesus' behavior toward "sinners" a scandal to his contempor aries?

Things To Do

1. Read Lk 15. How do each of the parables in the chapter answer the objections against Jesus raised in vv. 1-2? Compare Lk's version of the {90} parable of the lost sheep with the other versions (Chart 3-2). What elements in Lk's version fit in with themes in the rest of the chapter?

2. Use a concordance to find the passages in Mt which warn disciples that they must show forgiveness to others if they are to expect it from God. Read the parable of the unforgiving servant. How does the parable illus trate this teaching?

3. Read Mk 4. Find all the allusions to "secrecy" and "hiddenness" in the chapter. How is this theme related to the seed images used in the parable?

Things To Think About

1. Make yourself a list of the characteristics of discipleship in the Lord's Prayer. How would you make them part of your life?

2. How do you think the conflicts that are left hanging at the end of the parables of the vineyard workers and the prodigal son might have been resolved?

3. What situations today call for forgiveness and reconciliation? How might Jesus' parables be applied to those situations? Could you write such a parable for today? {91}