A Reading Believing of

ROGER KOJECKÝ

© 2001 Roger Kojecký E-mail [email protected] All rights reserved.

IN MEMORIAM

Gordon Anderson-Smith 1940 − 1980

CONTENTS

1 The Discipline of Reading 5

Reading Narrative 8 Reading the 16 Reading and Discovery 22

2 The Acts of Jesus 29

The Baptism 30 Temptation in the Desert 34 Miraculous Signs: Healings and Exorcisms 38 Other Signs 45 Transfiguration 50 His Death 53 Resurrection 58 Mark 16:1-8 59 Matthew 28:1-10 59 Luke 24:1-12 59 John 20:1-18 60 Last Meetings and Ascension 61

3 The Teaching of Jesus 67

The Kingdom 72 The Parable of the Weeds 72 The Sower 73 The Mustard Seed and the Yeast 76 Judgement 77 The Talents 77 The Lost Son 81 Love 83 The Good Samaritan 85 Discipleship 89 Mission 94 The Twelve 94 Mission of Seventy-Two Others 98 The 102 Farewell Discourses in John 105

4 What Happened to the Gospel? 107

Kingdom Prospects 108 The Contest with Evil 111 Titles 114 Contexts 118 The Last Things 128

Interpretation in John 136 Gospel Gradations 141 The Public 142 The Mission of the Twelve 142 The Mission of the Seventy-two 142 The Trial 143 The Great Commission 143 Pentecost 143 The Gentile Mission 144 The Gospel: Seven Stages of Proclamation 145

Bibliography 147

Index 151

1 The Discipline of Reading

‘How do you read it?’ − Jesus, to an expert in the law.1

‘While all can read it with ease, it also has a deeper meaning in which its great secrets are locked away. Its plain language and simple style make it accessible to every one, and yet it absorbs the attention of the learned. By this means it gathers all men in the wide sweep of its net, and some pass safely through the narrow mesh and come to you.’ Augustine, Confessions.2

‘Literary criticism cannot provide a gospel’ − T S Eliot, the Clark Lectures, 1926.3

Characteristic of literary reading is awareness that, as in Jesus’ question to the lawyer, a book may be read in more than one way, that a story may yield several meanings, and that such readings are a matter for discussion. The text Jesus was speaking of was the Torah, a medley of history and commandment, but the inference applies to all narratives, and a fortiori to his own parables, which often leave the hearer to think, or puzzle on, after their end. Literary reading considers the alternatives, brings into play awareness of other stories and texts, and generally puts the reader into a position of responsibility. It contrasts with non-literary readings, literalistic or authoritarian for example, which claim ownership of a single interpretation, or set up restrictive lines of demarcation for what is and is not to be talked about in relation to the text in question. If this seems to risk making the literary reader into an autocrat, with a consequent demotion of the text, it is worth recalling the power of the written word to alter thinking and to bring down strongholds. Mukarovský pointed to a function of major works of art beyond their quality, often, of multivalency, namely to confront collective worldviews in a process of ‘permanent reconstruction’.4 And T S Eliot’s remark above came not many months before his baptism at the age of 39 into membership of the Church of England. Literary criticism may recognise or commend, but it takes a gospel to make the earth move. Or a Gospel. For what if, to adopt Augustine’s figure, the great secret remains locked away in the gospel text, whether by inattention, or by learned attention that is somehow of the wrong kind, so that the luminous idea of it, the transcendent form, is not discerned? Then, even though they hear, readers will neither hear nor understand. We read, sometimes naively, for bare information, or out of interest or for enjoyment. Often though, there are larger purposes, our own, or in the cultural matrix, of which we are only intermittently conscious. Interest may be innocent or not, may be disinterested or not, for we read in order to do something with what we have read. First, however, is the matter of understanding, which is often bracketed with reading, so that the reading of a text or a situation is a

1 Lk 10:26. Quotations are from the New International Version. 2 Book 6, Chapter 5. 3 The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, ed. Ronald Schuchard, London, Faber, 1993, p. 228. 4 Jan Mukarovský, Esteticka Funkce, Norma a Nota jako Socialni Fakty, Prague, 1936. 6 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading person’s, or perhaps an institution’s, understanding of it and specific to a moment or a state of affairs. In its elementary model reading, like listening, is essentially private and passive. Words bring ideas to the subject whose receptive mind is a tabula rasa. But with literary reading the subject is active, establishing lateral connections intrinsic and extrinsic to the text, and trying provisional understandings for fit, consonance and application. By a natural extension reading becomes discussion, as understanding is articulated or information about a text or its topic is exchanged. Thus reading becomes a collective enterprise subsisting in a matrix of synchronic relations horizontally, and diachronic relations, derived from tradition. Moreover the individual reader may work with a range of voices and points of view in a virtual discussion inside his or her own head, with verbalisation and application of the later stages of the process deferred. Memory and imagination are evidently essential to reading, as they are to language and thought. With memory we bring up what has gone before in the text or discourse, in related texts, in experience. With imagination we develop, extend, modify and test perception so as to place what we read, positioning it for further use or reference. Imagination conjures possibilities and things that are not, leaving as a separate task the discrimination of alternatives. Not always consciously reviewed, but always bearing upon the reading of a particular text, is the question of what is to be discussed in relation to it. ‘How do we know what can be said of a poem and what cannot?’ asks Sir Frank Kermode,5 and the answer he gives has much to do with consensus, often of an institutional kind. In respect of the Bible we are able to look back and see how very different the answer to the question has been in different ages. Institutional control has long been exercised by the church, or by churches, and more recently much of this power has devolved to the academy. Here all sorts of new questions have been raised, about historical origins for example, or modes of composition, or social context, resulting in a radically different critical discourse, for the most part deliberately distanced from the interests and beliefs of laymen, or indeed, of the original writers. Disjunction of this kind is not however a necessary characteristic of the literary enterprise, which is broad enough to accommodate many voices. Robert Alter for example, proposes a closer attention to the language, the narrative detail and the structure of the Bible than has been customary in much recent scholarship. ‘To read the Bible with literary eyes would seem to complete a long process of secularising Scripture. . . . On another level . . . the literary reading of the Bible provides a means of getting into touch again with the religious power of Scripture and so reinstates scriptural authority in new terms.’6 Or on its own terms. Alter gives an example in relation to the reunion of and Esau, ‘surely one of the great surprising climaxes of the patriarchal narrative’. What is to be discussed? For E A Speiser, author of the Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis, the narrative aspects can be perfunctorily dismissed. ‘In Speiser’s commentary it is not Jacob and Esau but E, J and P who become the subject of investigation.’7

5 ‘Can We Say Absolutely Anything We Like?’, Essays on Fiction, 1983, p. 157. 6 The World of Biblical Literature, 1992, p. 202. 7 Ibid., p. 206. 7 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

Nor is it merely a desire for novelty that produces a widening of the range of matters discussed. ‘Some of the new literary analysts of the Bible simply set aside any consideration of hypotheses about the composite origins of the text because they find other issues more productive to discuss.’ Alter’s own interest leads him towards enduring human concerns: ‘A literary approach directs attention to the moral, psychological, political, and spiritual realism of the Biblical texts,’8 whether these are deemed to be of human or transcendent origin. Or it may explore latencies that remain undetected by other techniques. Kermode has made something of this, roundly declaring in The Genesis of Secrecy that ‘the gospels need to be talked about by critics of a quite unecclesiastical formation.’9 Some years earlier an assault on Biblical scholarship narrowly defined had been mounted by C S Lewis, who took aim from the vantage point of a contiguous discipline: A man who has spent his youth and manhood in the minute study of texts and of other people’s studies of them, whose literary experience of those texts lacks any standard of comparison such as can only grow from a wide and deep and genial experience of literature in general, is, I should think, very likely to miss the obvious things about them. If he tells me that something in a gospel is legend or romance, I want to know how many legends or romances he has read, how well his palate is trained in detecting them by the flavour; not how many years he has spent on that gospel.10 Some of this may be wide of the mark. Scholars rarely make claims to authority based on the number of years they have studied, more often it is the number of secondary sources consulted and a display of competence in the literature generated within the discipline. But Lewis may have been right to raise the issue of what gets discussed in critical discourse, and what gets missed. ‘You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel’ in Matthew 23:24 makes a quite similar polemical point. In discussing the gospels it is possible so to strain to catch the voice of the Evangelists and to identify their contribution, that the voice of their principal subject is not heard. Deconstructionists would go further. The texts are variations upon other texts, transforming them according to the conventions of the genre. Individual creativity is of no interest. As George Steiner notes, deconstruction entails an uncompromising negation of meaning and of form as these are made the (fictitious) objects of both interpretative recognition and of consensual or ‘objective’ valuations. . . . The issue is, quite simply, that of the meaning of meaning as it is re-insured by the postulate of the existence of .11 With an agenda of its own, deconstruction’s principal terrain must be philosophical and theological before it is semiotic or literary. But incursions from neighbouring disciplines into Biblical and literary studies have been going on for some time, their effect to create new partisans and define territory for cognoscenti to establish and hold for highly professional reasons of their own. ‘Between the layman reading his Bible and the modern exegete disintegrating the Pauline epistles or perfoming newly- validated hermeneutic operations − form criticism, redaction-criticism,

8 Ibid., pp. 70, 204. 9 The Genesis of Secrecy, 1979, p. ix. 10 Fern-seed and Elephants [1959], 1975, p. 107. 11 Real Presences, 1989, p. 120. 8 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading structuralist criticism − on the texts, there is as great a gulf as ever.’12 Anthony Thiselton has noticed, and regretted, the effect of one of these incursions: ‘Reading’ as a term without semantic opposition seems neutral and innocent; but as a contrastive term to ‘interpretation’ or ‘understanding’ the newer paradigm shifts the focus for epistemological communication and interpretative judgement to semiotic effect, with some considerable loss for biblical scholarship and for the status of the Bible itself.13 There may be a parallel with Gnosticism and which, in their different ways, cut loose from the material world as a strategy by which in some way to overcome it. Deconstruction recognises relation, sign and text, but refuses both the representational character of language and metaphysics. Abandoning the relatedness of word and world, it drifts in a sea of flux, intrigued by the relations of free-floating fragments with which it contrives some sort of play, and sure only that there is no shore. But if some recent trends in critical discourses imply assumptions that seem to be at odds with the Bible and with common experience, is there an alternative ready to hand? Simply to return to an earlier stage of the discussion and adopt the critical language of thirty, or three hundred, years ago may facilitate some discussions, but will render others impossible. To an extent this is the reader-critic’s challenge, for he is in at least two matrices, those of a contemporary discourse and of the ancient text. Two horizons, with the reading an accommodation between them. Inasmuch as he tries to interpret the ancient in contemporary terms he engages in a translation that risks losing contact with the original, or in some way traducing it. On the other hand it is not feasible, though sometimes it is naively attempted, simply to adopt the discourse of the original, reproducing its vocabulary and terms, and achieving merely some kind of repetition. The critical reading is a processing, an understanding, in order to commend or dismiss. In principle the processing is distributed, the interaction of others, whether actual or virtual, providing a frame and a cybernetic effect of direction. Sometimes the reading is mediated as a kind of report, a series of sightings. Other readers may not have seen the text, may not remember it, may be lazily disinclined to access it for themselves. Bare plot-summary quickly becomes tedious however, and it is a nice discrimination in the critic to decide when to leave explication for the discussion of wider, related, issues. Nevertheless in expert hands it is capable of a range of tasks. A book review will sometimes consist largely of summary, but with clues provided concerning the reviewer’s sympathies. Often criticism can stop short of explicit commendation or dismissal: if direction marks have been set up, the reader can be put on the way to suggested conclusions and left to pursue his own way.

Reading Narrative More fundamental than the direction marks found in critical discourse are the indications, sometimes referred to as codes, within the text itself. ‘Codes’ may connote puzzlement, at least initially, and the process of a reader’s understanding is indeed a complex one of inference and association,

12 Frank Kermode, ‘Institutional Control of Interpretation’, Essays on Fiction, p. 175. 13 New Horizons in Hermeneutics, 1992, p. 503. 9 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading contextualisation and induction. If a literary reader is made more responsible than in those traditional models where reading is steadily impartial, he or she is also required to be more self-aware. Reading, Jonathan Culler suggests, is charged with artifice, and to refuse to study one’s modes of reading is to neglect a principal source of information about literary activity. By seeing literature as something animated by special sets of conventions one can attain more easily a sense of its specificity, its peculiarity, its difference, shall we say from other modes of discourse about the world. These differences lie in the work of the literary sign: in the ways in which meaning is produced.14 When a text resists attempts to make sense of it, the reader is led to ‘that questioning of the self and of ordinary social modes of understanding, which has always been the result of the greatest literature.’15 To read is to be changed. This can, and often does, occur with a text of narrative structure, and one of narrative’s holds upon the reader is its undertaking to recount events, to tell a story. Rarely however can this be an unemotive, value-free act of ‘pure’ communication. The events, and the story of the events, issue from one human situation and come charged with implication to another. Even as a narrative tells what happens it carries codes which simultaneously tell the reader what is to be made of it. As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

Twenty years, and the spring is over. John’s reader does not need to regard the exit or even the darkness as symbolic, although that is perfectly in order. The context and the next developments in the plot produce the affect, whether we think of it as an attribute of the text, or of the reading. Admittedly Schleiermacher’s principle of the hermeneutic circle applies, as it usually does, for the outcome of an act determines how it is perceived. Eliot’s line scarcely needs for its effect the poetic context of the poem (‘New Hampshire’), for it is in the experience of any one who has reached a certain age, adding to the factual awareness of time passing the feeling of regret, and perhaps of lacrymae rerum, that occurs everywhere in the world’s literature because everywhere in human life. Readers, and not only modern or western readers, for this was developed to a fine art long ago in Japanese literary tradition, appreciate and respond to understatement in such matters. To tease out significance and to register an appropriate range of feeling in complex collaboration with the writer is one of the concomitants of literary reading. More everyday forms of narrative carry less baggage, and are concerned to convey the reader as quickly as possible from A to B, to state what happened and to give the facts. Both Old and New Testaments contain chronicle, though usually it is subordinate to larger historicist and contextual purposes. With Biblical narrative a simple model is generally serviceable in which understanding arises out of and is about event. But in some prophetic and apocalyptic genres, although there is a thread of narrative, the focus is so much on significance that the reader loses the sense of linearity altogether. The reader of Isaiah, Daniel or Revelation is often left to muse, if he is of a mind to, what if anything is going on in everyday historical terms. Frank Kermode

14 Structuralist Poetics, 1975, p. 129. 15 Ibid. 10 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading notices a dialectical interaction in some narratives between two primeval kinds, or aspects, of plot, mythic and linear. The linear reflecting the faits divers of everyday, the mythic expressing ‘eschatology’ and the timeless.16 One might say along these lines that in the gospels both functions are present, and indeed that a good part of their readerly interest is to do with the strangeness of the intersection of the timeless with time in the narrative. The Book of Job on the other hand is fundamentally a debate, exploring some issues of theodicy, postulating an illustrative case and proceeding to make a narrative play with it. Within the narrative frame the discourse of the wisdom tradition bulks large, so that the linear reader is left here and there to yawn. The conclusion, in which Job’s fortunes are astonishingly restored, is a narrative sop thrown out almost casually, the discussion proper having already made known its findings to the reader who has made it his business to follow the thematic development. By contrast the gospels narrate historical events which, if they are of mythic proportions, are such in a metaplot that surely exceeds the powers of any human author to invent. Their narrative frame carries not only a montage of faits divers, characters, a plot, the materials in fact that go into the mystery plays of medieval Europe, but also discourse in a distinctive and often puzzling style. Kermode cites the effect of this strangeness of the gospels upon a British prisoner of war in the 1940s. The parables of the New Testament, for example, seem in their conflicting senses to be divorced from the consolatory gospels in which they are found, calling upon us to make the effort of correspondence; cold hungry men sitting in a cell thinking about the prodigal son and the lilies of the field. Was [one] the prodigal son or the man who fell among thieves? One fed hope, the other not. ‘The whole Gospel became more and more a structure of paradoxes, carefully balanced so that each statement could be invalidated by another, none having absolute precedence. The lost sheep, the foolish virgins; the prodigal son and the man with one talent; they made an impenetrable maze.’17 Apart from the parables, there is the question of what is to be made of the outline as a whole, from the beginning at the Baptism or birth narratives, to the end at and after the death of the protagonist. We may, with Kermode, view narrative ‘as the product of two intertwined processes, the presentation of a fable and its progressive interpretation (which of course alters it),’18 and discern in the irregularities we encounter effects of the quest for significance. Fabulous linearity is as much a virtue of reportage and historiography as of fiction, though even there it is not in itself enough to satisfy the reader who wants to know why the events matter. ‘We are always having to explain not the story, but why it counts,’ comments Kermode in respect of the Temptation narratives.19 Reading notices latent meanings, finding them for example in apparently arbitrary elements, disjunctures, contrary senses, repetitions, gaps and, rather than avoid them, singles them out for attention. ‘Hermeneutic confusion and problematical closure are not breaches of contract but natural features of narrative; they are found in dreams, in romances, even in gospels.’20

16 (Citing Jurij M Lotman), Essays on Fiction, p. 154. 17 Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, 1967, citing Christopher Burney, Solitary Confinement. 18 Essays on Fiction, p. 136. 19 Ibid., p. 191. 20 Ibid., p. 108. 11 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

They send the reader not merely back to the original sequence of events but also collaterally to contexts within, and beyond, the primary text. Narrative elements that a linear reading may take to be superficial and puzzling blemishes may, on a more analytic view, be seen as structural features. Thus Roland Barthes supplies the reader of narrative with a system of codes with which to identify various functions of the text, notable among them the hermeneutic: ‘Under the hermeneutic code we list the various (formal) terms by which an enigma can be distinguished, suggested, formulated, held in suspense, and finally disclosed.’21 Enigmas, which may be related to the suspense and story interest of traditional criticism, can supply leitmotif as well as a major feature. The twenty-second chapter of the Book of Joshua provides an example where an event of manifestly symbolic value provokes the threat of civil war between Israel’s tribes, war over two understandings of a contentious sign. The military campaign for Canaan had been sufficiently successful, territory had been parcelled out between the tribes, and the time had come for the two and a half tribes who had settled for land on the east bank of the Jordan, and who had been giving military assistance in battles in the west, to return home. ‘Joshua blessed them and sent them on their way.’ At Geliloth however, near Gilgal and perhaps identical with it, and still on the west bank, the returning warriors paused to build ‘an imposing altar’. Hearing of it, the mainstream Israelites, whose tabernacle, altar and cultus had been installed at the central site of Shiloh, gathered there ‘to go to war against them’. The narrative reports the development deferring explanation, leaving the reader to infer the casus belli. Later however the embassy of Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, meets representatives of the eastern tribes and articulates the interpretation placed by mainstream Israel upon the Geliloth altar: its construction signifies rebellion against God, Israel’s covenant lord, and ‘against us’. Not merely war is threatened, but covenant curses and ‘wrath’, perhaps upon the whole community of Israel. The east bank residents however are ready with their quite different reading of the significance of the altar. To them it is not a rival but a token of the altar at Shiloh. Not designed for sacrifice, its blankness in this respect is to bear mute testimony to the authority of Shiloh’s altar. Its message to the eastern tribes will be that they must worship with burnt offerings at Shiloh, while the message to the clans of Israel will be that their eastern brothers, despite their residence beyond the divinely ordained boundary of the Jordan, are loyal worshippers of the same God. At this point the narrative has reached a climax in the clash of the two understandings and the threat of war. The reader has no clue or prior knowledge and, until Phinehas and his associates welcome the explanation given, does not know which interpretation will prevail or which way events will go. To read is to await that closure. Only so far is the linear reader impelled by curiosity to follow closely what happens in a story. Sequentiality is not in itself a source of satisfaction, and an account overloaded with detail quickly becomes tedious. The reader of Joshua 22 is left to deal as best he can with gaps about the movement of the parties concerned, their numbers, the circumstances of their meeting, the construction of the satellite altar. Working assumptions about such points will see him

21 Roland Barthes, S/Z [1970], trans. Richard Miller, 1975, p. 19. 12 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading through while his attention is directed elsewhere. ‘The desire to see what happens next does not itself act as an important structuring force,’ suggests Culler, ‘whereas the desire to see an enigma or problem resolved does lead one to organise sequences so as to make them satisfy.’22 In the gospels the effort is distributed: there is a sequential, chronological framework, but the issues of identity keyed in to a title like Son of Man have a determinative function. The gospels as examples of ‘writing which directs attention from one part of the text to another’,23 are reflections of events concerning their protagonist Jesus, which drove disciples, in growing numbers at the time of their writing, to repeated examination of what he did and said. While the events, and the titles, were enigmatic, the response was to work back over them, to branch and link within the narratives, and to search out telling contexts. Strangeness, whether in incidents like the rebuff to a petitioner at Tyre (Matthew 15:23), or in gnomic words such as ‘Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather’ in Matthew 24:28, charges the process of reading so that it becomes a search for ‘clues to what is not narrative’. All readers, it seems, ‘need an ability to sense in the manifest that which is latent.’24 And while the ready apprehension of mysteries is given only to some, the interest, the faculty even, is surely as prevalent amongst mankind as . The history of criticism, suggests Kermode, is a history of attempts to earn the privilege of access to that kingdom of the large existence, which is in our time the secular surrogate of another Kingdom, whose horizon is no longer within our range.25 But reading is also of course about tackling the matter of horizons, of taking wing and enlarging our range, so that by dint of what is written and of the exercise of an imagination that may well also have faith, we go where we would never have gone, or alternatively receive ourselves a visitation. Talk about a kingdom is, partly at least, an invocation of spatial imagery, and the immediate appeal of such talk must relate to the basic facts of our human nature and environment. We are creatures to whom territory is full of implication. Usually, if not always, spatial images imply the visual, but there is in the scriptural texts a long thread of concealment and mystery, indeed the ultimate source of all is declared invisible. With the Jews it is a point of honour that although words are privileged, no visual image of God is possible. Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am your God. (Lev 26:1)

You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape. (Deut 4:15-16)

The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. (Deut 29:29)

Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Saviour of Israel. (Is 45:15)

22 Structuralist Poetics, p. 211. 23 Frank Kermode, Essays on Fiction, p. 16. 24 Ibid. pp. 54, 123. 25 Ibid., p. 31f. 13 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

He told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables.’ (Mk 4:11)

The universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Heb 11:3) Thus a major aspect of revelation turns out to be the matter of secrecy and hiddenness. In the word to Moses at Horeb, ‘I AM WHO I AM,’ as in Jesus’ allusion to the incident in the course of an exchange on resurrection,26 there is enigma. In many places the reader of the gospels finds that his expectations are dashed, and discovers that while to read is to find pleasure or consolation, it is also to suffer disappointment. ‘Parable,’ Kermode notes, ‘may proclaim truth as a herald does, and at the same time conceal truth like an oracle.’27 It may apply too to the larger structure: ‘It’s hard to see why the gospel [Mark], which is a proclamation of good news, should stop before it had fairly reached the part that seemed most important to Paul.’28 An important point this, and while one need not share Kermode’s assumptions about a late date for Mark’s composition, or agree that the book was composed to a schema contrived from testimonia, it is a point we shall touch on in one way and another in the discussion that follows. For our argument is that the Evangelists, still close to the substantive events, were concerned to record and to relay. True, they held their subject to be replete with significance, to be the Word, but they are written as moving rather towards than from a developed Gospel. There is a divide between the gospels and Paul. The fullest interpretation of the base events given by an Evangelist is John’s, but even he does not explain the Pentecostal Gospel, or that of Paul. The titular formula Lamb of God in John 1:35 makes an eloquent gesture, but little more, while the Capernaum discourse on flesh and blood in Chapter 6 is esoteric, almost Gnostic. The kerygma has little bearing on a rigorous reading of the gospels. On the other hand, a rigorous reading of the gospels has a fundamental bearing on the kerygma. Within the gospels, then, gaps and irregularities coexist with simple narrative and mediate to the reader certain secrets, notable among them ‘the secret of the Kingdom of God’ in Jesus’ phrase,29 and the ‘Messianic secret’ of scholarship.30 Apply this to a passage like Matthew 10, and you get a yield consisting of a number of puzzles. What mission, for example, is referred to: the Galilean one certainly, but is there not an intercalation of issues relating to subsequent missions to Samaritans and Gentiles? And the arrival, the parousia, of Jesus: is it only that of his itinerant ministry, or something beyond that? Embedded in the narrative it is possible to discern a model, mythical in function, but no less valid for that, of judgement, reward, the destruction of evil, the triumph of Jesus and of disciples who like him stay faithful despite opposition. In Matthew’s account Jesus makes extensive use of the figure of discipleship when he briefs the Twelve. Recently appointed and now trained, these men are authorised to carry out elements of Jesus’ own mission, to represent him and take to the Galilean towns both news about him, and his

26 Exod 3, Mk 12:26ff. 27 The Genesis of Secrecy, p. 47. 28 Ibid., p. 67. 29 Mk 4:11. 30 W Wrede, The Messianic Secret [1901]. 14 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading performative word in, for example, the expulsion of demons. They go lightly provided so as to signify they are disciples. Their appeal in the villages is to potential disciples, their message proclaiming the teacher whose discipline they follow. As well as discipleship, Jesus uses two other figures, shepherding and harvest.31 Shepherding, concerning relationship, is elaborated in John and in some of the parables. Here there is an implied offer to shepherd people in their need, a message of consolation. When he tells his disciples to request more workers for the work of harvest, the initial reading must be that God the Father, to whom the request is to be made, is the Lord of the harvest. Yet it is Jesus himself who appoints and sends out the Twelve. The harvesting image is used then to speak of matters of timing and result, while the reader by supplying connections across intervals, infers an equivalence between the Father and the Son. The prediction of 10:23 is something of a riddle: ‘I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’ Admittedly the reflexive use of a title from a prophecy of Daniel clears the way for an eschatological reading, but the disciples addressed are now long dead and of the eschatological coming there are as yet only signs. If we take it simply as an imperfectly remembered prediction of a return at the end of the age, the reference to the cities of Israel remains puzzling, particularly in an immediate context which predicts the persecutions attendant on subsequent stages of mission. It is possible that the emphasis on the original occasion fell upon ‘you shall not finish’, and that when he spoke later of the certainty of his Return, Jesus did so so vividly that Matthew, or his informant, understood and recorded it as imminent. Such a reading admits both terms, but alters the relation between them: the Twelve proceed through the towns of Israel; the Son of Man returns. Events which to our eyes are manifestly set in different epochs are linked, if indeed they are, in a way that is beyond the plain understanding of the linear reading. The words about the reception of the disciples identify different audiences in various situations. Or motives in a given event. But what is their thread? ‘He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my , I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.’ (Mt 10:40-42) There seems to be suggested a progression from spontaneous, hospitable kindness to the disciple traveller, to recognition of a person or disciple as one who is ‘righteous’, to recognition of a prophet, of Jesus (‘me’), and of God. Yet the order is reversed. Is this a confusion of the Evangelist, or rather a device of Jesus to send the reader disciple back over what was said, so that when he has discerned the hidden sequence he will, by receiving a disciple − whether an apostle or one of the poor and needy − do likewise? If a sense of intertextuality and of specific context is fundamental equipment for reading, so is awareness of audience and occasion, which may indeed be regarded as part of the same thing. In The Inheritors, a novel set in pre-history, William Golding tells a tale of deliberately mythical proportions in

31 Mt 9:36ff. 15 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading which a small group of Neanderthal survivors encounter a community of homo sapiens. The point of view is all with the Neanderthals, whose leader Lok struggles to use the new tool, language. Lok discovered ‘Like’. He had used likeness all his life without being aware of it. Fungi on a tree were ears, the word was the same but acquired a distinction by circumstances that could never apply to the sensitive things on the side of his head. Now, in a convulsion of the understanding, Lok found himself using likeness as a tool as surely as he had ever used a stone to hack at sticks or meat. Likeness could grasp the white-faced hunters with a hand, could put them into the world where they were thinkable and not a random and unrelated irruption. With the sense of circumstance, likeness conferred rhythm and, in the processing imagination, manageability. The foundation is laid for symbol, metaphor, language and thought. Parables work thus to make thinkable what otherwise would elude the listener. The rhythms make the differentiations that multiply meaning. Lok finds after the death of his predecessor that he is expected to lead, to speak. The pictures went out of his head for a while. He scratched himself under the mouth. There were so many things to be said. He wished he could ask Mal what it was that joined a picture to a picture so that the last of many came out of the first. But soon, before an audience: Lok found how easy it was to speak words to others who would heed them. There need not even be a picture with the words. Reception functions in the moment of expression as a stimulus or otherwise. A speaker rarely says what he knows an audience will never understand, and conversely a writer may address the latent expectations of his readers over the heads, as it were, of the characters in his narrative. Lok’s story takes place within earshot of a big waterfall, a circumstance Golding makes use of for symbolic effect, so that when Lok and his mate discover wine in a deserted camp few readers will fail to pick up the reference to the Fall, albeit with roles reversed. Fa put her hand on Lok’s wrist. ‘Do not touch it.’ But Lok’s mouth was close to the pot, his nostrils wide, his breathing quick. He spoke in a loud cracked voice. ‘Honey.’ Then he had a magnificent picture that would put everything right and he tried to describe it to Fa who would not listen. Soon the fall was roaring in the clearing, inside Lok’s head.32 The difficulty for the communicator is that however magnificent, however true the grand picture, mere words do not do it full justice, and even the words that offer the best chance require ears that hear. It is a principle found in the gospels. T W Manson gave a concise illustration from Mark 7 where Jesus addresses three audiences on the same issue concerning ceremonially unclean foods. With each the tone, style and matter is different. With Pharisees and teachers of the law he uses legal form,

32 William Golding, The Inheritors [1955], 1961, pp. 194, 96, 200, 202. 16 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading is even impatient, perhaps in the manner of those pundits; to the general public he gives an epigram; and to the disciples privately he provides a fuller explanation. ‘Both as to matter and method the teaching of Jesus is conditioned by the audience.’33

Reading the Gospels Jesus’ question concerning the law, ‘How do you read it?’, used Socratically to open discussion with a learned interlocutor, is one that a modern reader might fancifully transpose, addressing it to the Apostle Paul and altering the law to the teaching of Jesus. According to the gospels Jesus’ role, a multivalent one, included the functions of teacher and prophet. Paul styled himself the ‘servant of Jesus, called to be an apostle’. He considered that he owed his position and virtually his life to Christ, his all-consuming mission being to take the Gospel to the Gentile world. His writings were however occasional, their epistolary form quite different from the gospel genre. All the same, it is astonishing how little reference there is in the letters to the details presented in the gospels either of Jesus’ teaching or of his doings. An uninitiated reader might expect that a populariser, or at least a disseminator, of the teaching of a prophetic figure would, especially if trained as a Pharisee, give close attention to the master’s words, and expect his own disciples to do likewise. The method of dissemination might appropriately consist of quotation and explication of the original teaching. Yet this Paul signally fails to do, and indeed he makes little direct reference to that major theme of Jesus, the Kingdom of heaven. The matter of discipleship, prominent in what Jesus did and taught, is not referred to, or not in the same terms, and indeed the word drops out of the New Testament after the Book of Acts. The ‘Jesus-Paul’ question has been debated in scholarly circles since F C Baur postulated in 1845 a major schism in the early church between followers of Paul and followers of Peter. Recently A J M Wedderburn has suggested that the sayings of Jesus, held by Judaizers, were ‘in enemy hands’ so far as Paul was concerned.34 A contrarian German scholar, A Resch, achieved a modest sensation in 1904 by claiming to find nearly a thousand allusions to Jesus in Paul’s writings. By and large though, the enigma is recognised, though it is not resolved. ‘The search for continuity of tradition,’ between Jesus and Paul, suggests John Drane, ‘seems doomed to futility.’35 Wenham’s more sanguine finding is that ‘in the Pauline allusions to Jesus and his teaching we see only the tip of an iceberg that was quite as big as the Gospel mediated to us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.’36 If we take this to mean that Paul knew the gospels and much more, we may as well proceed to ask conversely how much of Paul’s Gospel was known to the Evangelists. The answer seems to be, not a great deal, no doubt because they wrote in a different context from Paul’s, and wrote before him.

33 T W Manson, The Teaching of Jesus, 1945, p. 19. 34 A J M Wedderburn, Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays, 1989, p. 100. 35 ‘Patterns of Evangelization in Paul and Jesus,’ Green and Turner, , Lord and Christ, 1994, p. 295. 36 ‘The Story of Jesus Known to Paul’, ibid., p. 311. 17 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

Paul more characteristically turns to the Old Testament for illustration than to what we may call gospel detail, detail of what Jesus did and taught. Urging upon recipients of his Roman letter the importance of a social harmony that includes both Jew and Gentile, he cites Psalm 69: ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ It is odd to introduce into an exhortation to live peaceably a reference to acute conflict. The psalm, like Psalm 22, lends itself to application to Jesus’ suffering, suffering which came to be understood as the mark of his Messiahship. But Paul, often hounded by Jewish , would personally identify with the psalm’s image and he used it no doubt when arguing the case for Jesus. His point in Romans 15:3 is that Jesus ‘did not please himself’, and provided a role model for situations of conflict. So although he makes scant reference to gospel detail, Paul seems to have the outline picture constantly in mind, available as a paradigm for countless applications. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. (Rom 15:7-9) Interestingly this recognises that Jesus’ original mission was restricted to Jewish territory, a point made also in the gospels, but it has no difficulty with the transition to a fuller purpose, now operative, in which Gentiles are included. The need for agreement and unity is still in Paul’s mind when he brings his major letter, virtually a treatise, to an end. He warns his readers of the speciousness of those who are promulgating ideas contrary to the ‘teaching you have learned’, adding ‘I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.’37 Now it seems fair to say that this builds on the word of Jesus in Matthew 10:16 , ‘Be as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves,’ although at our distance we cannot perhaps know if this or a similar saying had currency as a proverb before Jesus. Paul, we note, makes no explicit claim here to quote Jesus, although conceivably he makes an implicit one. But in the letter’s concluding words, which reach towards inclusive summary of the preceding argument, the teaching of Jesus finds no place. Now to him who is able to establish you by my Gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him − to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom 16:25-27) The Gospel, not the gospels, is Paul’s great theme, the proclamation of what had been for ages secret. The Gospel is Jesus Christ, yes, and he/it is the powerful means God has appointed to bring people of all the world’s communities to belief, and so to what in terms of the gospels is a place in the Kingdom. In the letter Paul is understandably proud that the Gospel, ‘my’ Gospel, was being so widely and transformatively received. Its revelation however seemed to require something more than, or at least subsequent to, the teaching of Jesus. Acts and the letters attest special interventions, an arrest on the way to Damascus, visions, signs and wonders. In the gospel outline, in the gospel detail and in what took place in the subsequent proclamation, there was

37 Rom 16:19. 18 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading strange concord with the prophetic writings, so that what occurred was perceived to be an unlocking of mysteries, the revelation of a kind of superplot. Jesus, as we shall see, alluded to this, but Paul is not on record as recognising that he did so. The Jesus-Paul issue touches others, such as the differences between the gospels and the other canonical books of the New Testament, or the matter of the relation of theology to history. Positions taken in regard to the latter have played their part in academic readings of the gospels over the last century or so. Whereas Justin Martyr in the mid-second century described the gospels in his Dialogue with Trypho as ‘memoirs of the apostles’, by the early twentieth century Rudolf Bultmann was asserting that although the gospels evidence a desire to proclaim Christ as resurrected, they are not concerned to give any sort of factual account of the past of Jesus. For Wrede, the secret about the identity of Jesus in Mark does not at all belong to Jesus’ lifetime, but reflects a later idea in the early church. It is a retrofit. Graham Stanton, writing much more recently, considers Mark reasonably enough as the pioneer of a new genre, drawing upon and fusing established conventions. But Mark’s use of the word gospel in his opening, to describe the book he is writing, Stanton finds ‘surprising’,38 although it is less so if we invoke a derivation from the utterances of Jesus himself, and if, that is, we take the Evangelists at face value as providers of what Luke calls ‘an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.’ Opening as he does (‘The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the ’), Mark joins his own proclamation about God’s Son with prophecies like those of Isaiah and to which he alludes next, and with the good news proclaimed by Jesus himself at the beginning of his ministry. Mark will not give his readers discursive explanations − these must wait for other New Testament writers such as the author of Hebrews − but he will give the essential historic basis for what is proclaimed, and with it a few indications of fulfilments of the emergent mystery. It is descriptive narrative that is to be written, but the narrative contains elements of at least two levels of Gospel, the one proclaimed by Jesus, and the one that can be told only after the resurrection. Not only by their subject and approach are the gospels distinguished from the texts that followed them. Their idiom and vocabulary are markedly different.39 The discontinuity in terminology of Kingdom and discipleship mark off the gospels as belonging to a prior historical and geographical context, namely Judea in the first half of the first century AD. Geza Hermes brings the Jewish context into focus, separating it from the historical developments and the church dogma that followed.

The Christian doctrines propagated by John and Paul tried to put distance between the teachings of Jesus and those of ; they did so by stressing Christ’s eternal deity and bodily incarnation, the redemption of mankind through

38 Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, 1989, p. 31. 39 Eugene Lemcio argues in The Past of Jesus in the Gospels, 1991, that ‘the Evangelists produced narrative distinguishing Jesus’ time from that of the early church,’ and ‘kerygmatic expressions of faith found outside the gospels were not projected back onto the narratives’ (pp. 1-2). 19 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

his crucifixion and resurrection, and the of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. . . . The Christian theology expressed in the New Testament must be distinguished from the life and thought of the teacher, healer and exorcist whose ethical teachings made him a particularly striking and original figure among the charismatic Jewish holy men of first-century Galilee.

Attention is today shifting from the theological superstructure to the gospel foundation; and there is a growing sense of the differences between the message of the and the theology which the Church proclaimed in his name. People seem to be searching for basic ethical and religious truths, stripped of the accretions of centuries of dogma.40 To a literary reading of the gospels such differences have considerable interest, for the terms in which we read are for preference those of the gospels rather than of the later debates. Context and intention (or the effort to approach them) exert a major influence, as does the sense of the determinative effect of the original audiences. We should, though, have the humility to recognise that what a literary reading does to the theological debates of later ages it can do to the academic, and the literary, debates that have ensued down to our own day. But only so far: any reader is held in contexts of his own and located within the circumscription of his own horizon, so that the attempt to read exclusively in the original language, as it were, must always be a quixotic one, and unproductive. ‘Literary criticism cannot provide a gospel,’ but a gospel is read as a text in a lifetime’s experience of many, so that the manifold experience is not in vain. Given that the reader’s personal context is ineluctable, what elective contexts are usefully available? None as completely as the primary, but there are others textually mediated. One of them is the Hellenic world of the first century, known through the gospels and a variety of other surviving documents. Another, perhaps more crucial, is the body of Jewish tradition represented by the Old Testament. Yet another, more a microcontext, is what Jesus did with the tradition he adopted to such purpose, of discipleship. An ideal reading would be fully informed in terms of all three, albeit not only information but involvement soon comes into play, especially in the third. Culler notes a suggestion made by Stanley Fish that the most ‘fit’ reader of Milton is a Protestant believer, then goes on to ask (in terms I here transpose from feminism to discipleship): If the experience of literature depends upon the qualities of a reading self, one can ask what difference it would make to the experience of literature and thus to the meaning of literature if this self were, for example a disciple rather than an agnostic. If the meaning of a work is the experience of a reader, what difference does it make if the reader is a disciple?41 Or not, of course. If he or she is a disciple, the reader is in a position to go the second mile in respect of Coleridge’s requirement of the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, adopting the hypothesis, for example, that the gospels’ narrative subject is the Son of God. It may however be a hard road. Kierkegaard’s

40 Geza Vermes writing in the New York Review of Books, 11 August 1994, p. 13. 41 Jonathan Culler, citing Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in this Class?, 1980, in On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, 1983, pp. 41, 42. 20 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading personal, indeed idiosyncratic reading was that ‘Christ expressed absolutely absolute pessimism, which will have nothing to do with the wretched and sinful world except to be slain, sacrificed.’ And this he lays, arguably somewhat as Jesus does, upon the reader, noting ‘the condition demanded by the New Testament namely, discipleship, asceticism leading to martyrdom.’ ‘Take Christianity neat,’ advises Kierkegaard.42 About the importance of discipleship in the gospels Kierkegaard was in no doubt, although some contemporary scholars are less sure. Leon Morris, for example, would have it that ‘the gospels do not give us a picture of Jesus engaging in evangelistic campaigns, and we certainly cannot think that his main aim was to induce large numbers of people to follow him.’ Equally astonishing from a conservative scholar in the light of the word in Matthew 10:25 that ‘it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master’, is the claim that ‘Jesus’ disciples were (and are) people in a lowly position who would never aspire to the heights of their Teacher.’43 Given within the framework of discipleship, much of the teaching recorded in the gospels concerns the lifestyle, orientation and the disciplines expected of followers. Emulation was explicitly encouraged (‘I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you’). Discipleship was the ‘way’, and so important was association with the Teacher that he even described himself with the title ‘Way’. The goal proposed was styled variously: the Kingdom of heaven, or life, or salvation, or a figure of reconciliation, forgiveness or acceptance by God. Jesus was metaphorically the way, and he was also the Word, truth and life. To disciples it was promised that they would pass to where the Teacher would go before them; alternatively that he would come for them and translate them to the variously described goal. No image seems sufficient, hence the plurality, hence puzzlement. Naive readings will claim that it is possible for every one to agree on an interpretation, that only one is correct. Better readings will be prepared to admit instability. Take a pericope like Luke 8:40-56, where the daughter of a synagogue official is restored, and a woman in a crowd is ‘instantly healed’ of a bleeding condition. ‘Your faith has healed you,’ Jesus tells her, and a reading dulled by familiarity misses the strangeness. For if the public proclamation of a kingdom message was Jesus’ enterprise, or the performance of whatever is necessary for salvation, how can a reclusive faith be commended? Not secret faith surely, but the power of the Father, or the Son, is the operative factor. On the other hand, the injunctions to silence lead some readers to assume that Jesus was at no time concerned with publicity. That he was is confirmed by a speech in Acts 10 which affords a remarkable sidelight on the gospels. Impelled by two visions, one in Caesarea, the other in Joppa, Peter accepts an invitation to visit Cornelius who, being a centurion, puts a gospel reader in mind of another centurion whose faith had been notably answered by Jesus.44 He is to speak to Cornelius, not to teach him a thing or two from the sayings of Jesus, but to deliver from God a message for the times. Peter began to speak: ‘I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism, but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is

42 Soren Kierkegaard, The Last Years: Journals 1853-1855, ed./trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, London: Collins, 1965, pp. 158, 123, 122. 43 Leon Morris, ‘Disciples of Jesus,’ Green and Turner, op. cit., pp. 125, 126. 44 Lk 7:1-10. 21 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, telling the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached − how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.’ (Acts 10:34-38) The message in question is Peter’s inspired understanding of what God had said in Jesus Christ. That dual title reflects a further duality in that it is a message delivered by and about Jesus of Nazareth who comes both as bearer of good news and to enact it ‘doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil’. His advent constitutes a message, a series of signs, based in historical event. It concerns the identity of Jesus − ‘Lord of all’ being equivalent to Son of God − who offers peace with God. For communication of this order the broad bandwidth of words and actions is needed. Luke’s review in Acts 1:1 describes it as ‘about all that Jesus began to do and to teach’, which carries the implication that the process goes on, as here with Peter. There is a suggestion in Peter’s address that the acts of Jesus were a strike against evil, and even that they are redemptive, for the reference to the curse of the tree is surely Deuteronomic;45 and Peter affirms that the ancient prophets agree that God will forgive at the Judgement people of any background who opt to become disciples, ‘believing in in him’. ‘We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen − by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’ (Acts 10:39-43) Peter’s address is thus an epitome of the gospels, which were written at this time following the outbreak of persecution in Jerusalem. The loss of contact between scattered disciples begins to account for variations between, for example, the four accounts of the resurrection, making the gospels documents of dispersion as much as documents of a new community. Peter’s words summarise not only the gospels but also the Gospel, which here as in the work of the Evangelists, is not yet fully set forth. The crucifixion is crucial, but if Cornelius wants further information he will get it from ‘all the prophets’. Yet understanding a discursive explanation is not a prerequisite to the saving forgiveness which provides Peter, as on previous occasions, with his closure. Cornelius and others begin to ‘speak in tongues’ and otherwise respond to the Holy Spirit, and they are baptized. The message is for all races and peoples of the world. The gospels, as we shall notice, devote a significant amount of their space to the death of Jesus, but we have to beware of reading back into them from subsequent writings. As Joel Green remarks, We are told that Jesus’ death was central to God’s salvific purpose, but how it so functions is relatively unimportant in the passion account. . . . Even with the parallel preponderance of the Servant-motif in the passion story we are still outside the realm of an explicit, pervasive atonement theology; for reference to

45 Deut 21:23, cf. Gal 3:13. 22 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

the Servant’s vicarious death is almost completely missing in the passion story. . . . The cross-event cried out for interpretation, with the result that an interpretative story of Jesus’ suffering and death soon took shape. This narrative not only allowed but indeed presupposed the blending together of historical events and theological reflection.46 Laden with mysteries such as the identity of Jesus and his purpose in allowing himself to be tortured to death, the gospels document an early stage in the process of discovering the Gospel.

Reading and Discovery Distressed, and needing solitude, Augustine was tearfully praying beneath a fig tree: all at once I heard the sing-song voice of a child in a nearby house. Whether it was the voice of a boy or girl I cannot say, but again and again it repeated the refrain ‘Take it and read, take it and read.’47 His inner turmoil was to do with the sense of disparity between what he perceived God to be like and to want for his children, and the record of his own past. Riven by conflicting desires, Augustine chose the will of God and found peace. Nine years before, his mother Monica, troubled by her son’s interest in Manichaean writers, and seeking the intervention of a bishop, had been told: ‘From his own reading he will discover his mistakes and the depth of his profanity.’48 His autobiography is in many ways the story of his reading. In the child’s chant he heard the voice of God, and the reader of Platonist and Manichaean writings, and subsequently of the law and the prophets, the gospels and the epistles, returned at that moment to a book he had earlier put down, written by the apostle Paul. He lit upon words (Romans 13:12) which seemed to be directed by God specifically to him: ‘. . . not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.’ A professional rhetorician, Augustine was concerned with hermeneutic issues such as the plurality of meaning. He would find a resolution here as elsewhere in the action of God’s Spirit: ‘O Lord, make clear to us this meaning [Genesis 1:1] or any other true meaning that it may please you to reveal, so that whether you disclose to us the one which your servant Moses had in mind, or any other which can be extracted from the same words, we shall feed from your hands and not be deluded by error.’49 And through the Pauline dialectic Augustine found God. Reading led to response and to a change of life. A friend, Antony, had earlier taken to heart the gospel imperative to sell all, give to the poor, and follow Jesus as a disciple. All that Paul wrote in his letters flowed from his conversion on the road to Damascus. Antony, Paul, the call of Jesus to discipleship. Augustine’s reading placed him in that series, brought him to that closure, and that hope.

46 Joel Green, The Death of Jesus: Tradition and Interpretation in the Passion Narrative, 1988, pp. 320, 321, 323. 47 Confessions, Book 8, chapter 12. 48 Ibid., Book 3, Chapter 12. 49 Ibid., Book 12, Chapter 32. 23 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

If the niceties in literary debate of reading and interpretation, competence and understanding, appear to be somewhat esoteric, we should recall Augustine’s wrestling with the problem of multiple interpretations of scripture, some of them manifestly beyond the horizon of the original author − whom Augustine clearly wanted to privilege. The single correct interpretation, known to the inspired human writer, is an attractive concept if you want words by which to settle a dispute, yet Augustine recognised that readings succeed one another as do generations of readers. C S Lewis thought to transfer more of the responsibility from texts to readers in his Experiment in Criticism, calling them to account for what they made of texts. But when Friedrich Schlieiermacher directed attention nearly two hundred years ago in Germany to the author, his language, culture, feelings and individuality, it was as part of a move into what might be called Romantic hermeneutics. Since such things were knowable, the evidence of the text was to be supplemented from other sources. And the text must be read iteratively, for a sense of the whole would illuminate the reading of any part. An English Romantic, S T Coleridge, his eye on the author or poet, had as his ideal to ‘bring the whole soul of man into activity’. Language and culture quickly lose the pristine freshness of their creations, and the work of the poetic imagination is to ‘impart the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations of which custom [has] bedimmed all the lustre’. In a classic statement Coleridge derived such imagination from the divinity as the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.50 The later concerns of Mallarmé and Eliot to refresh linguistic and cultural forms, to ‘purify the dialect of the tribe’, continue the tradition, ascribing to the genius of the poet an importance which until recently in literary debate was seldom called in question. But of course it is possible to go to excessive lengths in regarding texts as the products of impersonal forces, of other texts, seeing gospels as expressions of faction, their true subject quite other than the ostensible one. Here Hirsch makes a corrective point: A guess about intention is in principle a permanent feature of interpretation which no methodological system could ever remove. . . . Unless there is a powerful overriding value in disregarding an author’s intention (i.e. original meaning), we who interpret as a vocation should not disregard it.51 The effort to read the gospels appropriately should include then an effort to apprehend the authors’ understanding of their various contexts and the nature and import of their project. Hirsch’s ‘original meaning’ may at times elude us, but of all meanings that, as Augustine held, is the one that normally must carry most weight. The poetic ideal of refreshing linguistic and cultural forms might be applied also to criticism, to the reading of texts, making interpretation not so much the pursuit of novelty as the rediscovery of an original significance that in some instances no reading, or even no text, has ever completely expressed. ‘The world always has,’ said Eliot, ‘and always will, tend to substitute appearance for reality.’ The task is to restore what is lost, ‘to bring back

50 Biographia Literaria, 1817, Chapters 14, 4, 13. 51 E D Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, 1976, pp. 71, 90. 24 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading humanity to the real.’ The function of the poet is ‘to make the inarticulate folk articulate’ with ‘a new language’. While the ideal literary critic should have both an intense concentration and an indefinite awareness. He should not be primarily concerned with sociology, or with psychology, or with politics, or with theology, or with any other -ology; he should be primarily concerned with the word and the incantation; with the question whether the poet has used the right word in the right place, the rightness depending upon both the explicit intention and an indefinite radiation of sound and sense. He should differ from the practitioners of other sciences not so much by what he needs to know and what he does not need to know − for indeed he needs to know everything − as by his centre of values: in the beginning was the word. In speech is both the highest level of consciousness, and the deepest level of unconsciousness. By speech false values are maintained, or real values are revealed. The poet’s first purpose is to amuse, and unless he can amuse, all else is vain; but he speaks in parables.

The ultimate purpose, the ultimate value, of the poet’s work is religious.52 Strange, that ‘incantation’, but Eliot rejects a simple view of poetry as reducible to the formulations of other genres. Incantation evokes the complex event in which text, reader and occasion fuse and bring about an altered state of consciousness. He is blunt too, about the need to hold interest, to amuse, while the allusion to parables suggests from the gospels the fascination to crowds of Jesus’ teaching and his stories that carried transformative significance. Jesus in these terms is, in addition to much else, a poet, the parables his distinctive literary creation. Their diversity is linked together by that Kingdom which is, as Stanton aptly says, ‘a series of ways of speaking about the reality of God’,53 with each story parole in the langue of parabolic discourse. Word and language may succeed in disclosing something new, but they may also reaffirm the familiar or mark out what in the nature of things cannot be apprehended. Thus Wittgenstein: The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

The world of the happy man is a different world from that of the unhappy man.

God does not reveal himself in the world. . . . It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. . . . Feeling the world as a limited whole − it is this that is mystical.

There are things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.54 Such dicta can be turned around or upon themselves. True, there is a multiplicity of human languages, but who is to say there is no apprehension or experience beyond what such systems encompass? If eternity is also an instantaneous presence, are both poles (duration and presence) equally determinative, or is one ultimately predominant? The different worlds of happy

52 The Turnbull Lectures 1933, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, pp. 289, 287-288. 53 Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, p. 196. 54 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 1921, 5.6, 6.4311, 6.43, 6.432, 6.44, 6.45, 6.522. 25 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading and unhappy people − this is analysed and reformulated in Jesus’ . If not in the world, where does God reveal himself: and if it is by the whole, why not by some part or parts, some Word, in fact? The things made manifest ‘that cannot be put into words’ contraverts the earlier dictum on the necessity for language. The inference we may draw is that for the mystical there is a language, a discipline, a kind of game. ‘The philosopher seeks to show us one aspect of reality, the poet to show us another,’ said Eliot, who had competence in both spheres; and he added that ‘both are modes of contemplation’.55 Where better, one might ask, to seek the manifestation of the things that cannot be put into words, than through the gospels? For all their ‘plain language and simple style’ they deal boldly with matters of immense significance, while their very strangenesses may signal the impossibility, assumed in the Ten Commandments, of fully adequate representation. Jesus spoke to reveal God, and also acted to the same purpose. He chose media, audiences, messages and occasions, and he gave interpretations, such as that of the , or the parabolic use of bread at the . When a woman anoints him with perfumed ointment (Matthew 26:6-13), he makes the interpretation of her action an issue. His disciples’ initial reading, that it was waste, or that much better value could have been achieved by turning the perfume into a cash gift to the poor, Jesus overturns, doing so interestingly, by invoking a criterion of intention. First though, is the reader’s initial assumption that the woman’s intention was to display esteem or gratitude. Jesus proceeds to ‘take over’ both interpretations, using the action as a synecdochal prefigurement and thus a sign of the death which has just (v. 2) been associated by him, significantly, with the Passover, and with the burial that would follow. ‘She did it to prepare me for burial,’ that is, without realising it. Then without pause apparently, he goes on to refer to the world mission with which Matthew’s gospel ends, encoding the death, burial and implied resurrection into the good news to be preached. ‘Wherever this Gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told.’ The authoritative interpretation of the woman’s action was context- dependent, drawing, that is, on a context which at the time was perceived by Jesus but obscure to disciples. Another instance is the Temptation, which also comes to us interpreted by Jesus. It is suggested below that he went to the desert areas to fast and pray and commune with the Father, but in a reversal was met by the devil. Yet this is scarcely supported by the text which goes straight to the metaplot, attributing development and intention to God: ‘Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.’56 The assumed proximate intention is overridden in the telling by an understanding of the broader, the divine, intention, just as with the gesture of the woman at Bethany. Effect, as final cause, is retrojected and appears in the narrative in the guise of intention. And it seems that something similar is going on with the hina of the incomprehension of parables in Mark 4:12 and Isaiah 6:10.

55 T S Eliot ‘Charybde et Scylla: lourdeur et frivolité’ [1952], Annales du Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, Nice, V (1951-52), p. 82. 56 Mt 4:1. The Spirit’s leading is referred to by all three synoptics. I shall not be at pains in the discussion that follows to establish differentiation between the gospels, my purpose being to pass through them to what they represent. 26 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

The beginnings of such a process can be seen here and there in the accounts of the suffering and death. A trail of scanty clues, predictions (which may have been figurative talk) of rejection, death and resurrection, and allusions to sacrifice and new covenant, give the acute reader a pre-understanding that nevertheless scarcely serves to equip him to interpret what happens. Unwavering, the gospel writers give the details of circumstances that abase the hero of their narrative in a puzzling peripeteia. Not only is the hero abased, but so are his close associates, the disciples. Who is left to save the plot? Judas soon regretted his part, not having thought perhaps that it would come to execution. And Peter, representative of all the others, cursing, denies him whom he had resolved to follow to the death. Judas despaired of his life and lost it. Peter stayed sufficiently in touch to receive later the reports of certain women that changed everything. But the appearance in the story of Barabbas introduces a pointed strangeness, his name, ‘Son of the Father’, suggesting some kind of alter ego to Jesus, or to any one. In the gospels he is a Godsend with the complication that it seems possible that but for him, the immediate requirement of justice might have been met and Jesus been released. As it is, the innocent dies because the guilty escapes, which can be turned round: the guilty escapes because the innocent dies. Such a formulation lurks in the subtext, waiting for the dialectic of a Paul who never, so far as we know, makes reference to Barabbas or to this item of telling detail. Plot hero, poet of parables, teacher, prophet, giver of interpretations − Jesus has these roles among others. The Evangelists have learnt from him that his career has the scriptures for its context and more, that it is an interpretation of that tradition even while it is fulfilment. When he was brought, accused, before the Sanhedrin and the Roman Governor, there was an expectation that he would have much to say. In the event he retreated for the most part into a silence, which fact is capable of being variously understood. Yet it is as he approaches his nadir, as it were, that we have at the most unpropitious moment, his public announcement, given in apocalyptic terms, of what has hitherto been the secret of his Messiahship, confided only to a few disciples.

Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ ‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied. ‘But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’ (Mt 26:63-64)

To the disciples revelation, and to the Sanhedrin blasphemy. In the account of Stephen’s trial before the same council in Acts 7, Stephen ‘full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”’ Again, the disclosure was more than the Sanhedrin could bear, and with no recourse to the Roman authorities, he was stoned to death. ‘This is the verdict,’ wrote John, ‘light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.’57 To (or by) the actors is revealed something quite momentous, something that transcends the circumstances, the personal predicament, and the world itself.

57 Jn 3:19. 27 A GOSPEL READING: The Discipline of Reading

For the rest of us, the reading of it affords a window out of the confined ark to bright spaces outside. Yet apprehension is not a physical sense, and requires something akin to a secondary, responsive, act of Coleridgean imagination. Like Golding’s creature Lok, we are all of us drawn to the ‘magnificent picture that would put everything right’, but fear of disappointment makes us wary, and we learn to dismiss constructs that are too simple, too tawdry, or too perfect. Our strategies are designed to ward off or to contain disappointment, yet we remain haunted by the claims to ultimate unities, closures, resolutions, to significance and to glory. And we are reluctant to play the game by its rules. With Auerbach we may admire the fresh realism, the demotic detail, of the gospels, but regard these as human qualities and neither more nor less than that. With Alter we may enjoy the Bible’s specificity and narrative range, and agree that ‘literal meanings always dissolve into figurative,’58 but then prefer figuration to the recognition of obligations to the figures disclosed. Yet the reader of the gospels must sooner or later reckon with the discomforts noted by Kierkegaard. The puzzles, the hard sayings, the distortions are part of the pattern. Mark’s lack of closure may present more of a problem to a modern reader than to the author’s original audience, for whom in resurrection, prophecy and promise a wider picture was already in full view. The gospels are not deadlocked by the crucifixion, though it is their greatest challenge, and soon their resolution is presented in the emergent Gospel, so that their true story is also to be read as a vast paradigm.

58 Robert Alter, The World of Biblical Literature, p. 88.

2 The Acts of Jesus

To come to an understanding of Jesus it is necessary to attend to what he said, to regard him as his own best witness, and to attune our thinking to a source of authority that appears to be not merely distinctive but unique. If we will entertain it, the hypothesis that he was sent from God in order, amongst other things, to reveal God more fully, entails some major problems of communication. How is the transcendent God, the Creator of the universe, to represent himself? Surely no image could carry sufficient information to be worth the risk of idolatrous distraction. And all human language, despite its achievements of imaginative conceptualisation and abstraction, is too much rooted in human experience and mentality to refer to anything totally new or other.1 The revelatory mission seems to have required an agent or form that is of both worlds. The already given revelation of law and prophets would be drawn upon, fulfilled and transformed, and in the Son a new source of light bestowed. What Jesus said, his teaching, is pitched to our comprehension in terms of concepts familiar in human experience, in terms of a religious tradition, and in terms of a framework of events. We understand words by a process of memory and association, finding they acquire different meanings from different contexts; indeed a sense of context is usually a prerequisite to understanding and using language. The macrocontext for the advent of the Son of God is Jewish tradition, primarily the Old Testament. The microcontext is the one supplied by the gospels, the events concerning Jesus, his interaction with people of his generation, what he did and what people did to him. For the purposes of analysis we may attempt to isolate the incidents and events from the teaching, whereas they are in fact the continuum described by the Evangelists, the acts and decisions framing the dialogue and discourse, the teaching that invites people to discover life, to repent of sin and to enter the Kingdom of God. What Jesus did is then a framework for what he said, but it too is a medium of communication from God. Indeed, it is more adduced by Paul in his letters, as we have noticed, than Jesus’ teaching. God spoke by the prophets, then by his Son, as the writer of Hebrews argues.2 In Philippians 2:6-11 Paul finds the outline of Jesus’ acts, his career as it were, an extremely powerful statement and more than that, the source of a lifetime’s orientation and motivation. Jesus

. . . being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death − even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven

1 Compare the scholastic maxim individuum est ineffabile quoted by E.D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, Yale, 1967, p. 177. 2 Heb 1:1ff. The writer of Hebrews describes Christ as the ‘exact representation’ of God, amplifying this by reference both to his ‘powerful word’ and to the acts by which he ‘provided purification for sins’ before resuming his place of supreme power in heaven. 30 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:6-11)

We need to focus on both the detail and the outline, and establish our reading in the light of the teaching, that of Jesus and that of the tradition before and after. Interpretation there will be perforce at every stage, but the initial effort has to be to perceive the fundamental data, to have ears to hear and while entertaining hypothesis, to attempt to do without the foregone conclusion. For in this matter our opinion is not final. Rather, we study to know the criteria for all judgement, and our own.

The Baptism

At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’ (Mk 1:9- 11) In a brief introduction Mark has provided the coordinates of time and place for the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: the Judean countryside in the time of another public figure, John the Baptist. John looked like a prophet, lived like a prophet, spoke like a prophet, and he used to baptize people in the River Jordan. Jesus, aged about thirty,3 made the journey south from his home town, Nazareth, where he was known as a synagogue teacher and elder,4 and where he practised the trade of carpentry5 and, contrary to John’s idea of what was fitting,6 elected to be baptized along with a number of others.7 Mark’s spare account follows a summary of John’s preaching as calling for repentance and predicting a mighty successor. In an age in which baths were relatively unusual, the river dip of baptism was a bid for moral and spiritual cleansing. Naaman, an Aramean general seeking a cure for leprosy, had been instructed by Elisha to wash in the Jordan, and God had rewarded his obedience.8 In John’s day the influential Pharisees had become much preoccupied by cleanliness as a sign of, and even means to, godliness.9 Washing was a mark of religious earnestness, and elsewhere in the desert region east of the Jordan the Essenes had constructed at least one community settlement with ample pools for baptismal purposes as well as daily ablutions.10 But John’s use of baptism was given its point by the historical background to which he directed the attention of his audience. The Day of the Lord’s coming, a conclusive judgement of the world predicted by many Old Testament prophets, was overdue. Sin was the cause of this visitation, and there was no sign of its having diminished. An evil generation was storing up for itself divine judgement. To reform one’s life according to God’s standards

3 Lk 3:23. 4 Lk 4:16-21. 5 Mk 6:3. 6 Mt 3:14f. 7 Lk 3:21. 8 2 Ki 5. 9 Lk 11:38ff. 10 Eleven pools have been unearthed at the site of a complex at Khirbet Qumran, thought to have been used by an Essene community from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD. 31 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus was the only hope, and by being baptized individuals made a statement publicly and to God concerning the moral and spiritual direction of their lives. If adhered to, such repentance would stand them in good stead at the eventual reckoning. As for the powerful successor, again John was drawing on an Old Testament tradition. A mighty servant of God, the , was predicted11 for the time of this fulfilment. He would carry out the large purposes of which God had given indications through the prophets. The depth and scale of these purposes had been referred to by several of them, but John’s way of describing what would happen, which may well owe something to Ezekiel,12 was to say that this figure would baptize not as he was doing, with water, but with the Holy Spirit of God. Mark of course wants us to understand that the successor was Jesus, and his gospel contains numerous incidents and signs as evidence of God’s action by the Spirit. Were these, however, a baptism? It is a question Mark does not discuss, and it is from Luke that we get the answer, though not in his account of the Acts of Jesus. He makes it clear in his second book, the , that the event at Pentecost was an ‘outpouring’ by Jesus of the Spirit. Mark moves on directly from the sketch of John the Baptist to the public appearance of Jesus, and even though he was baptized with others, the event is described in terms that emphasise that it was quite unique. This was not a sinner repenting, but the public entrance of a figure proclaimed as the Son of God. The divine voice rules out any suggestion of one more repentance being symbolised, or that a spectacular forgiveness had been vouchsafed; it does not announce a new appointment, despite the fact that Jesus was at the threshold of his public ministry. Instead the voice of God confirms Jesus as already blessed and more than blessed, the Beloved Son. If he was God’s Son, one might have asked, why was he in the world: was there some lapse, or estrangement, had he been cast down in anger, another Lucifer? No, the second phrase gives a resounding reply: ‘With you I am well pleased.’ The cataclysmic proportions of the event are signalled by Jesus’ perception, subsequently recounted by him to his disciples, of ‘the heaven being torn open’. What can we, locked as we are into our world, and conditioned by sense perception, make of this? Does the heaven mean the sky, and if so, was this some astronomical phenomenon? Our text suggests otherwise. Jesus saw it, no one else, yet it was as though external and like the objective reality we are accustomed to. The Transfiguration, still ahead, would take disclosure a step further, with three disciples as witnesses. Beyond that were the Resurrection appearances, not fully public, but witnessed by some hundreds of Jesus’ followers, while the last and universally public appearance of the divine glory is the Parousia. All the same, the descent of the Spirit takes us as readers over the brink of the referentiality of language. We stumble across discontinuities and among questions: what if anything was visible in this descent, in what way was the object, or Holy Spirit, like a dove − was it in the rhythm of its flight, size, colour or moving outline? We stumble until we leap to the identification proffered, as must be the case, by Jesus: the Spirit came upon him.

11 E.g. Is 42:13ff. 12 Ezek 37:9-14. 32 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

That phrase, going back at least to the Judges of Israel, is more reassuringly familiar. It does not tell us in what way the Spirit was not previously with him, but the contextual link to Judges may be relevant, for those literally charismatic leaders were endowed, as in the case of Jephthah, for their task with the Spirit of God coming to them as the occasion required.13 No acts of power or miraculous signs are known to us in the life of Jesus before this, unless we include his birth, but there were many subsequently. The Spirit provides a connection with the prior and the succeeding contexts. John the Baptist’s proclamation had included the testimony that ‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit’, and Mark’s narrative resumes without pause after the baptism with the words: ‘At once the Spirit sent him out to the desert.’ We have then a threefold agency powering the gospel history: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is not in order to satisfy some requirement of orthodox symmetry. It is an emphasis on the authority and importance of the events, each ‘testifying’ for and supporting the other, each providing a dynamic field for understanding a whole that goes beyond us. What can we glean from this spare narrative of Jesus’ baptism concerning its significance for discipleship? Can we indeed infer that there is any? Did Jesus baptize? Although the fact is not much mentioned in the gospels it appears that he did, though less than John, and often by powers delegated to senior disciples, perhaps the Twelve. John the Evangelist mentions Jesus baptizing in the Judean countryside,14 and baptism could easily have formed part of the proceedings when Jesus addressed crowds by the Sea of Galilee. The gospel writers however do not say so, and they depict an itinerary for Jesus’ ministry that takes no particular account of rivers, lakes, the sea or watering holes. In other words, it was at this stage essential neither to the message nor to its reception. And when commissioning the Twelve,15 or the Seventy (or Seventy-two), Jesus gave no instruction to baptize, perhaps because a significant proportion of the population would have already been to hear John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, and been baptized by him. For Gentiles, however, it would be appropriate. So when, shortly after the death and , Philip the Evangelist explains the Good News to a visitor to Jerusalem, the Treasurer to Queen Candace of Ethiopia, a response of faith and a new beginning are marked by baptism in a roadside pool.16 The man, a eunuch, had been reading Isaiah 53 and, as readers will, had made a tentative identification with the complex figure of the Servant who is treated unjustly, led like a lamb to the slaughter and left apparently without issue. When Philip transformed this and the recent events concerning the death of Jesus into good news, the man used baptism to complete, as it were, his identification with Jesus, believing that if he were associated with him as one afflicted, he could count on resurrection with him at the Last Day. Baptism had become, under the Spirit’s guidance, a

13 Judg 11:29. 14 Jn 3:22-26;4:1. 15 Mt 10:5ff.; cf. Lk 10:1ff. 16 Acts 8:26-39. Jesus had of course told his disciples to baptize in his Great Commission, Mt 28:19. 33 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus means of participation in the death and resurrection, the suffering and the glory, of the Christ.17 We have moved beyond the gospels, but even within them we find John reporting that Jesus attached importance to baptism18 and to washing as a symbol of moral and spiritual goodness. True there are other powerful symbols in John’s Gospel, but just as John approaches the Last Supper tanquam aliud alia with a discourse following the feeding of the five thousand, so he skirts Jesus’ baptism describing instead the washing of the Apostles’ feet in a private room in Jerusalem shortly before he celebrated the Passover with them for the last time. ‘You are already clean,’ says Jesus in reply to Peter’s protest, qualifying the statement, ‘though not every one of you’.19 Similarly later Jesus tells the Twelve, ‘You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.’20 He does not want the disciples to think of physical washing as effecting, ex opere operato, spiritual cleansing. The washing, then, in John 13 is not baptism, but it is symbolic. It is the washing of hospitality and of personal service, it is a token of esteem and done necessarily in humility, as a servant. Love and service, Jesus explains, are to characterise the disciples’ relationships when he is no longer bodily with them. But just as in the other gospels the Last Supper contains an institution, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ so here is the institution: ‘Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.’21 Arguably this carries an obligation for succeeding generations of Christians quite equal to that relating to Holy Communion; while baptism, already an established rite when Jesus began his ministry, is on the same par. So how does it help in the interpretation? Only that the institutions act as milestones of discipleship. They help believers measure their lives by that of Jesus, by what he did, and what he gives us to understand about the meaning of his actions. He encourages disciples’ emulation and uses the institutions as loci for meeting them. By the Holy Spirit Jesus met the Ethiopian as he read the scriptures and in baptism. Earlier he met two Emmaus-bound disciples in conversation and in the breaking of bread. The early church recognised baptism as an ordinance which had been honoured by the Spirit of Jesus and would be again, and there is an inference that can be made about Jesus’ own baptism as a place, like the cross, where two worlds meet. For the further elaboration of baptism’s meaning we have to go beyond the jejune gospel accounts. Peter told the repentant crowds at Pentecost that they should all be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, and presumably this was done in pools in Jerusalem like the colonnaded Bethesda, by the Sheep Gate.22 Paul invokes it often as a potent sign, a means even, of the disciple’s identification with Jesus in death and resurrection. By virtue of that event in Jesus’ experience, now made one with the experience of the believer,

17 F F Bruce observes: ‘The implied identification of the Isaianic Servant (“my beloved, in thee I am well pleased”) with the Davidic Messiah of Ps 2:7 (“Thou art my Son”) in the heavenly voice at the baptism is the earliest known instance of the messianic interpretation of the Servant.’ Commentary on the Book of Acts, London, [1954] 1968, p. 88n. 18 Jn 4:1f. 19 Jn 13:10. Judas Iscariot was disqualified from inheritance in Jesus’ Kingdom. 20 Jn 15:3. 21 Jn 13:14f. 22 Acts 2:38, c.f. Jn 5:2. 34 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus it is as though he or she has already died and, in anticipation of the general resurrection and Kingdom glory, already been raised by the Spirit to new life. It is a concept, but a powerful one representing spiritual truths. Paul made of it a major feature of his teaching.23 When Jesus underwent baptism he gave his support to John’s preaching concerning God’s requirement of righteousness. He was baptized as a sign of initiation, not into a newly reformed life, but into the Spirit-empowered ministry that lay ahead. His baptism came to refer symbolically not only to cleansing, or being clean, but to death and new life, and so pointed to his Passion and Resurrection. Its rehearsal was a locus of mystical meeting with God and with the believer, a rite already instituted into which he breathed new significance in preparation for what was to be revealed by the Spirit after his resurrection. And it was an event unique in history at which heaven was opened, the Spirit descried and God’s voice in some manner heard announcing the appearance on earth of his own Son.

Temptation in the Desert Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man does not live on bread alone.”’ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendour, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”’ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’ Jesus answered, ‘It says: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time. (Lk 4:1-13)

If in retrospect Jesus was providing his disciples a model in being baptized, he might equally be regarded as doing so in the next phase of his career, the forty days in the desert. The desert, with connotations of spirituality going back through Moses to the patriarchs, had now been adopted by the Essenes and of course John the Baptist as a locale in which to seek God. It was, even more strikingly than the cultivated countryside, a contrasting alternative to the town and village life long since established in Judea and Galilee. The gospels suggest that it was a matter of frequent habit for Jesus to turn his back on the people, and even on his own disciples, and to make for the hills so as to have the solitude for prayer. Empowered as he was expressly and quite dramatically at his baptism, and announced as come from God, Jesus does not fulfil readerly expectation by beginning the visible activities of his ministry. Instead he withdraws from human company and into the presence of God, angels, the

23 Rom 6. 35 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus devil and wild animals.24 It is like a deep drawing of breath before strenuous action. He is also, we might venture to think, clearing some space and making a statement for the benefit of disciples. Space is needed when we feel under pressure from the demands of relationships, needs and obligations, whether actual or merely asserted by others. By distancing himself and reducing to a minimum the satisfaction of bodily appetites, the disciple comes into a larger place in which the spiritual world can be seen as more real, as indeed it is, than the social world of everyday. In such a space he or she may hear God more clearly than within the toils of existence, and may see human situations and relationships in a better perspective. Through the gospel record Jesus tells us, as he told his disciples, that life is more than the needs, activities, comings and goings, striving and talk that occupy so much of our waking life. That it is more than these the Kingdom teaching was to show,25 and Jesus who taught people to seek first the Father’s Kingdom, sought the Father in solitary fasting and prayer as the first item on his own agenda. But although that period in the desert afforded a space, the space did not prove to be a clear field. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is opposed, and that behind the opposition is an enemy, Satan, and the work of the Kingdom is therefore a struggle, a battle. Again, the teaching has more on this.26 Jesus’ account of the devil’s temptations is certainly put in terms that disciples are intended to learn from, both as understanding their Master and for their own benefit. In what has a good claim to be the earliest Christian drama, the author of which is Jesus himself, abstract and spiritual matters are given embodiment. The first disciples are, it seems, left to guess at what form if any the devil took. No serpentine or human form is mentioned, yet the devil is as if, or is, personal and adversarial. Eve provides the only precedent for any human dialogue with the devil, in Genesis 3 when man was put to the test and failed. Now Jesus re-opens that debate so as to prove in word and action that a course other than and Eve’s is possible. The effect of the first representative disobedience would be reversed in a new obedience that would, like the first, be for others. Jesus is a champion for his followers in the perennial struggle against evil, a pioneer whose route his disciples are to follow. We might also say, continuing to apply an interpretative view which belongs a little later in Christian tradition, that just as the baptism may be seen as recapitulating the crossing of the Red Sea in the time of Moses, so the forty day temptation in the desert refers to the forty years that ensued, Jesus in a way epitomising those events. A further instance of this kind of interpretation is derived from Isaiah’s Servant figure, who expresses normative aspects of national history and with whom Jesus identifies himself.27 In such interpretation the figure we discern is more than a spiritual teacher or exemplar, he is an expression of the essential Israel and, more universally, a primal representative of the human race expressing the divine idea of human life. Before looking in detail at the three temptations it is worth taking a moment to juxtapose with our narrative the Lord’s Prayer, which reflects the spare

24 Mk 1:12-13; Mt 4:1-11. 25 Mt 6:25-34. 26 E.g. Mt 13:24-30, 36-43. 27 E.g. Mk 10:45; c.f. Is 53:11. 36 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus quality of these narratives of the early events of Jesus’ ministry. It expresses some of the motifs, as well as the theme, of the temptation in the desert.

When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’ (Lk 11:2-4)

Jesus had been ‘led’ by the Spirit into the desert east of the Jordan. Mark’s language is stronger, and he uses the word for ‘sent’ which he uses also for the expelling of demons. In the Spirit Jesus was given a new and powerful direction overriding natural expectation. We get a further hint of this in the distance he interposed between his own family and his work, sometimes surprising onlookers by not according to the Nazareth family the recognition they expected.28 Yet the desert, a place sought for the sake of purity of heart and seeing God, turns out to be a place of temptation. God is sought but the devil is found. And in the Lord’s Prayer the disciple who prays recognises the Father’s jurisdiction over the Kingdom, the world and his own circumstances, asking to be spared the trials and tests that he is in danger of succumbing to. Temptations are inevitable, but the goal beyond them is a blessing which comprehends fellowship with the Father and a final deliverance from evil. The three temptations pick up the newly announced designation Son of God and call it in question. To be Son of God must imply unimaginable powers, must portend events on a cosmic scale. Hungry, Jesus is tempted to use his powers on the desert stone and do something very like what he would later do for the Five Thousand. All three temptations can be linked with the public career: the first with the feeding miracles, the second with the attempts to set him up as an earthly king,29 the third with the taunt that he come down from the cross.30 In the desert and subsequently, Jesus treads the hard and narrow path that expresses his Sonship. It was not what the world expected, but its formulation is, finally, the Good News. In different circumstances to convert stones to bread would not be a sin: it is the context that is definitive. Compare for instance John 6 where Jesus makes an extensive commentary on the significance of the feeding of the Five Thousand. There his synagogue audience is invited to regard the multiplied bread, reminiscent of the wilderness manna, as a sign of the Father’s spiritual provision. This is not dissimilar to the teaching implied here in the answer quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, a verse which goes on to refer to ‘every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.’ Life is not for the meeting of basic needs or for finding merely natural satisfactions. It is about receiving from God, finding (and losing) life on his terms. Jesus tells then of a temptation to do ‘the right deed for the wrong reason’,31 that affected him as Son of God whose mission was to fulfil the Father’s will in the Father’s time and the Father’s way. It contributes to the understanding of him as conforming to a plan and pattern given, as it were, from above. He was emphatic on later occasions that, however unpalatable it might be to Peter and

28 Lk 8:19-21, c.f. 14:26. 29 Jn 6:15. 30 Lk 23:35. 31 T S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, Complete Poems and Plays, 1969, p. 258. 37 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus the other apostles, his course as Son and Messiah was an absolute imperative.32 For the disciple there is an exemplum of obedience in Jesus’ response to temptation, and in the first temptation there is a waymark indicating the primacy of the Kingdom of God and the availability of spiritual ‘food’ through the divine word. Just as the first temptation can be linked to the request in the Lord’s Prayer for daily bread, so the second may be linked to the phrases ‘Hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.’ To recognise the devil’s claims is to worship another where God alone is to be owned. Monotheistic certainty that whatever the hierarchy of spiritual powers there is only one God had strongly characterised Judaism and was not now compromised by the appearance of the Son of God.33 All other claimants were idols or devils, their claims false. For while it is possible to pursue power and glory in the kingdoms of the world, it is not possible to hold them. Through mortality and judgement God exercises a final authority which none can gainsay; and to invest one’s life in the world is to lose one’s soul. The second temptation in Luke’s account (Matthew puts it last) continues the implied polarity of the first between bodily and spiritual values, extending it in more cosmological terms to the realm of ‘kingdoms’. Jesus was of course to make this a, perhaps the, major theme of his teaching. Here he announces, and throughout his career he demonstrates, that the Kingdom of God implies choice, and so excludes other possibilities. The exclusions of Jewish and the distinctive separations of Jewish holiness are now applied to the single-minded spirituality and obedience the Kingdom requires. Jesus’ response to this temptation tells his followers that as Son of God his Kingdom, and therefore theirs, is not of this world, and that the service and worship of God alone is integral to it at all times. For the Kingdom, power and glory belong to the Father for ever. Led initially into the desert by the Holy Spirit, Jesus now is led by the devil to Herod’s new Temple, and the suggestion is that he should throw himself down from the highest place on it and have, thanks to miraculous angelic intervention, a dramatically soft landing. This presumably was to be in the public eye and so provide a spectacle for the worshippers of which the predictable consequence would be awe and the attaching to Jesus of the kind of esteem given to the greatest of wonderworkers. The issue raised is that of the means Jesus was to use, for wonders he certainly would be working, and crowds would come from far and near to witness his healings and exorcisms. And what end is implied by our use of the word means? ‘If you are the Son of God’ . . . what? That is the searching question, and if the answer is not yet to do with an imminent cataclysm ending the world in mighty judgement, and if it is to do with winning the trust of men, saving them from destruction and revealing God, then how the Son expresses divine power and authority is significant. In fact he not only performed numerous signs in public but also exercised considerable restraint, enjoining many of the people he healed to keep silence about what had happened to them. Jesus was aware of the

32 Mk 8:31-33. So much so that Peter’s remonstration is identified with Satanic temptation and the devil is lent a human form, that of the well-meaning apostle. 33 A matter of theological debate, this, down to the present. I find a monotheistic affirmation in Jesus’ experience and his response. 38 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus significance conferred, or altered, by context. To perform mere wonders would not be productive of the kind of response that the purposes of God required. Psalm 91, quoted here by the devil, gives reassurance of protection and divine favour. It poses the major dilemma for Jesus’ career that whereas he is announced as the Son with whom the Father is well pleased, he is nevertheless to suffer rejection and death. The psalm expresses a traditional understanding that God shows his favour in his servant’s circumstances. ‘”Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him.”’ He was in this vein taunted before and during the crucifixion,34 making a direct line from this temptation. Without necessarily seeing why, we can, as readers of the gospels, take note that the Son of God did not come primarily to demonstrate power or blessing in bodily or earthly circumstances. The glimpses of heaven vouchsafed to disciples and believers in their circumstances or felt experience are glimpses only. The reality is different and as it were elsewhere. So according to the rationale beginning to emerge, it was not possible for Jesus to bid for men’s hearts through mere wonders, nor to descend from the cross even when sneering bystanders urged that such a feat would make them believe he was the Son of God. Moreover, when his most climactic sign had come about, his own resurrection from the dead, the same rationale obtained, and the witnesses of it were all of them disciples. It was on the Church that the Son conferred the mission to make known the Kingdom hope he had taught and demonstrated.35 It is a strategy of indirection, an invitation to an event never or not yet clearly visualised and to be accepted on trust. Describing the temptations as he did, Jesus provided his disciples with images to help them understand his Sonship and to assist their understanding of what it is to be a disciple. The first temptation directs attention from the flesh to the spirit. The second underlines the need to choose the Kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of the world. The third can be summarised in terms of the Gethsemane prayer: Thy will not mine − where God the Father’s rationale and timing is to override the other desirable possibilities. Jesus was left by the devil, as Luke suggests, until the next time. In other words the process of temptation was ongoing for Jesus, a part of the business of being human. But the supreme temptation, the cross, was of a piece with what Jesus experienced in the desert. The path there blazed is, as the Twelve found, largely though not quite entirely mysterious, and what Jesus said about these temptations at the beginning of his career throws light on its enigmatic end.

Miraculous Signs: Healings and Exorcisms After his baptism Jesus’ reputation was quickly established as one with power to deliver people from afflictions ranging from fever to demon possession. There are similarities between the career and teaching of Jesus and of John the Baptist, but this is not one of them, for there is no evidence of John’s having performed miracles. The case is different however with an earlier prophet, Elijah, whom Jesus cites as a precedent on more than one occasion. The record of Elijah’s career begins somewhat abruptly in 1 Kings 17 with a period spent in solitude in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. Whether that and the

34 Mt 27:27-31, 40-44. 35 C.f. Eph 3:10. 39 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus preceding word to King Ahab predicting drought was the first action of Elijah’s prophetic career we do not know, but the impression given by the record suggests a resemblance to the beginning of Jesus’ career in the desert country beyond the Jordan. Elijah is described in 1 Kings as working miracles in God’s name, and the beneficiary of the first of these at Zarephath near Sidon was a poverty-stricken widow who had been willing to share her last meal with the prophet. The last of the flour and oil in her containers was miraculously multiplied and served the widow, her family and her vatic visitor until the drought ended. The miracle was at Elijah’s suggestion, not at the widow’s request. It was linked with the drought and its end, and that in turn with the contest on Mount Carmel. There issues of religion and faith were in play, and God’s authority was given unusual and spectacular expression. Some parallel may be drawn with miracles performed by Jesus such as the turning of water into wine at Cana and the feeding of the Five Thousand in the hills on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.36 An even closer match is afforded by the next development for the widow of Zarephath. Her son became ill and died, causing the distraught woman, with reason we can scarcely guess at, to turn on Elijah with the reproachful question, ‘Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?’ The narrative continues:

‘Give me your son,’ Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, have you brought tragedy also upon this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?’ Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried to the Lord, ‘O Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!’ The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive!’ Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.’ (1 Ki 17:19-24)

A modern reader tends to be distracted by speculative thoughts about the boy’s condition (was he clinically dead?), or by the business of resuscitation (was some pressure on the chest needed to stimulate the heart?), and may fail to arrive at the question so roundly answered by the mother’s concluding words: why did this so extraordinary incident take place? Her inference is one that can also be drawn from particular miracles performed by Jesus, and indeed from the sum total of them, namely that they are a sign, evidence of the power and authority of God made manifest in his agent. The deeds moreover corroborate the words, just as the words confirm the interpretation of the deeds: ‘the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.’ From our question we can go a step further and ask why this instance and not others; why does God not intervene in cases which seem to us equally needy? The widow herself admits to having something on her conscience, is aware of having sinned against God. Perhaps others were her equal in desert, if not in the good fortune of having been gathering wood near the town gate at the moment of Elijah’s arrival from beyond the Jordan. Is there logic, or indeed justice, in God’s singling her out?

36 Jn 2:1-11, 6:1-15. 40 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

A similar question can be proposed in respect of Jesus: why did he do the miracles he did (and there were many unrecorded)? Why did he not do them for some, or not do some classes of miracle at all? The Temptations address this as we have noticed, that account making the point that there is a right and a wrong context, and therefore understanding, of a miraculous act. But it was to the congregation in his home town of Nazareth that Jesus gave the beginnings of an answer to the question of selectivity: ‘I tell you the truth,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his home town. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. (Lk 4:24-26) In this incident there is a change of mood among the people of Nazareth that is not fully explained. After hearing Jesus on the good news that God had for the poor, for prisoners, the blind and oppressed, and about the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy,37 ‘all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words’ he spoke. But immediately afterwards, apparently, Jesus speaks to them in tones that suggest they had, in Matthew’s phrase, ‘taken offence’ at him.38 The difficulty is one that remains, for in our culture too it can be problematic for a person to promote himself and to advance large claims about his own position. ‘The Spirit of the Lords is on me . . . has anointed me . . . has sent me to proclaim.’ Jesus had begun by quoting a scripture, but his explanation of it alluded to himself, one familiar in Nazareth, a neighbour to whom his audience were used to taking their woodwork orders.39 There was perhaps an impulse to bring requirements for healing miracles in much the same way, and to assume too easily an entitlement to blessing. Referring as he does to the widow of Zarephath, Jesus brings to their attention the uncontainable, unpredictable nature of God’s acts of kindness. Such miracles are not to order, nor are they written into the terms of a covenant between God and his people. The healings of Jesus were part of a pattern drawn in Isaiah’s prophecy, not done to a formula, yet as Isaiah had said, were signs of Good News. Jesus was explicit about their function as testimony: ‘Report to John,’ he told the emissaries of John the Baptist, who from prison had asked if Jesus were the Successor, ‘what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the Good News is preached to the poor.’40 John found in Isaiah the contextual frame for his life’s work, while for Jesus Isaiah chalked up harbinger marks of the new Messianic age of God’s Son. In the language of theology the miracles are manifestations of divine sovereignty (in their incidence), and grace (in their compassion). Implementation formulae are characteristic of the practices of magic and superstition, rather different from what we are considering. All the same there is in the scriptural tradition a repeat in the pattern. We discern it running through from the raising of the widow’s son at Zarephath, to the raising by Elisha of the dead son of the wealthy woman at Shunem,41 to the raising by

37 Is 61:1-2. 38 Mt 13:57. 39 Mk 6:3. 40 Mt 11:4. 41 2 Ki 4:8-37. 41 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

Peter of a dead woman, Dorcas,42 a member of the group of believers at Joppa in the days following the persecution of Acts 8:38. The line passes through Jesus who, in Mark’s account as in Matthew and Luke’s, responds to a petition to go to the sickbed of a child seriously ill. (John provides a parallel in the raising of Lazarus.) On the way a message comes that it is too late, Jairus has lost his daughter.

Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’ He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, ‘Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.’ But they laughed at him. After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha koum!’ (which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, get up!’). Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat. (Mk 5:36-43)

Again it is a child that has been sick and has died, and again the man of God comes it seems too late. When he does come, he is not welcomed (‘they laughed at him,’ compare the widow’s comment to Elijah above), but making a point of privacy he goes inside to the child, who responds to the touch and word of God’s agent and is restored to life. The repeated event and narrative pattern makes an emphasis. No inference of a compiler’s imitation is necessary, pattern and repetition are as conceivable in miraculous activity as in natural. God is the Author of life, he gives, he takes away, he restores. His Son’s offer of Good News includes as we shall see the gift of life, available on his terms: ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’ Of this gift, which is more than earthly, the miraculous raisings from death to life are an illustration and a figure. With other miracles the emphasis of signification is elsewhere than on the power of the Son of God over life, death and the individual’s destiny. The restoring of sight to the blind is readily understood both as a kindness to people suffering from a major handicap and as a figure for the granting of understanding, spiritual seeing. Similarly the healing of leprosy, which can betoken moral and spiritual renewal where the disease, regarded in Jewish tradition as uncleanness and a token of sin, is removed and the sufferer restored to health and social identity, acceptable to God and blessed by him. There is a notable instance, described in all the synoptic gospels, where Jesus draws attention to the linkage between the literal and the figural, the sign and the signified, the earthly and heavenly.

One day as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem, were sitting there. And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralytic on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

42 Acts 9:36-42. 42 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’ The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, ‘Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, ‘Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, `Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, `Get up and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ‘ He said to the paralysed man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’ Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, ‘We have seen remarkable things today.’ (Lk 5:17-26)

Jesus’ response to the unprecedented entry matches and exceeds it in surprise value. He welcomes the sufferer and in the same breath goes to the root of his situation, short-circuiting vast amounts of possible discussion. Assumed in Jesus’ word of forgiveness is that the man was not only sick but a sinner, and aware of the fact. Elsewhere Jesus’ disciples make a connection between sickness and antecedent sin,43 but we cannot be sure whether that applied for this individual, or whether he took his paralysis to be a punishment from God. But since there is no reason to forgive unacknowledged sins this man must have been troubled by his conscience one way or another. Also implied by Jesus is that forgiveness of sins can be had in advance of the final judgement: a person can in this life have the blessing of God’s forgiveness. Then, although he does not explain the process by which it is accomplished − and uses a grammatical passive − Jesus announces, in an authoritative and no doubt performative utterance, that the man before him does actually have this blessing. The further implication perceived by the critical bystanders was the momentous one which the gospels exist to convey, that because this was one of the powers reserved to God himself the exercise of it must signify his action and presence. Because of their unbelief the Pharisees took this as ultra vires, a blasphemy, and knowing their thoughts Jesus took them up on the point. The man was still lying down, affording the opportunity for a demonstration. If God’s authority were being abused he would fail to support a miraculous healing, or even intervene punitively. Jesus’ rhetorical question, which is easier? implies that there are two alternatives available to him, that he as God’s Son exercises the authority of God with his approval, and that the act of healing confirms physically on earth what spiritually is decided in heaven. ‘The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.’44 The exorcisms resemble the healings in that they bring deliverance from suffering to individuals, but they seem harder for us to understand. Demons are not a commonly recognised feature of our world, at least not by that name. The afflictions however remain with us: deafness, aphasia, grand and petit mal seizures, hallucinatory conditions, impulses of violence towards others and oneself. We need to read the gospels open to regarding the descriptions of Jesus’ encounters with demons as serviceable ways to understand these aspects of the human condition. These can seem to sufferers and those near them the most intractable of difficulties, yet the hope extended by the gospels is that, no

43 Jn 9:1ff. 44 See below, p.71, on his custom of referring to himself as Son of Man, an appellation with the rhetorical effect of calling attention to what it skirts. 43 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus less than the rest of life, they are subject to the authority of Jesus. The reader could also consider the possibility that today’s worldview and terminology may not be better, or more authoritative, in respect of spiritual entities than that of the gospels. Jesus is represented as engaging with opponents, including demonic ones, with no suggestion of accommodation to a deficient or primitive mentality.

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no-one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No-one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!’ For Jesus had said to him, ‘Come out of this man, you evil spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘My name is Legion,’ he replied, ‘for we are many.’ And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.’ He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon- possessed man − and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, ‘Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’ So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed. (Mk 5:1-20)

The evil inflicted and suffered by this man had established a pattern of violence to the extent that he was perceived as a threat to his community as well as to himself. Just as a leper was ostracised as impurity personified, so this man was regarded by the Gerasenes as though he were himself a demon. Indeed the introductory word for evil spirit in v. 2 means unclean. There was a policy of containment and of social exclusion. Any treatment he had had for his condition was painful, hence the fearful outburst: ‘Swear to God that you won’t torture me!’ He accepted the view of others that he was afflicted by an evil spirit, going further and acknowledging a multiplicity of affliction and of spirits. Legion was as good a collective noun as any for something mobilised for potent destruction. It is not easy to unravel the man and the spirits in the narrative, so deeply rooted was his trouble, but it is startling that he recognised Jesus in the distance, came running and worshipped him in words that acknowledged his Sonship more explicitly than any more normal person had yet done (Peter’s confession still lay ahead). There is no reason to think he had seen Jesus before, although there is good enough reason to think he had heard of him, for 44 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

Jesus’ reputation by this time must have been widespread.45 Their meeting has something of judgement about it. The man, or the demons, reacted in fear to the advent of an authority that would deal with evil, that is, would punish or remove it, rather as the man had been outlawed. He feared now some further instalment of proscription, the fear arising from the native impulse for security, belonging and acceptance with which his violence was so at odds. Repeatedly the man who was to end by asking to leave the area with Jesus begged not to be sent to unfamiliar surroundings. In the next development the fear predominates. The clamant, perhaps frenzied demands not to be sent away anywhere become a request that the nearby pigs be dealt with instead of himself, for was there not evil to be judged and suffering of some kind to be endured? When he saw the herd panic and rush headlong over the cliff edge, the man saw an enactment of the very things that had been dominating his mind and emotions: a sending away and destructive punishment. Now it was the pigs instead of himself. And Jesus, there with him, was giving him acceptance, compassion, a restored identity, recognising him as a family man and a member of a community. Jesus stayed at the scene long enough for clothes to be found for one whose sufferings were now a thing of the past, and long enough for the local people to hear what had occurred and come out to the lakeside. Perhaps their unusual request to him to leave their shores was a reflection of outraged property interests, two thousand pigs had after all been lost. But we may note how it continues the trend of fear and sending away which had been so much endured by their hapless outcast, now transformed into one of Jesus’ witnesses and an honorary disciple. Luke reports Jesus as describing the course taken by expelled evil spirits in terms of a creature ranging around seeking a hospitable environment, a home.46 His warning is that it may return to the original host, the person from whom it was driven. Unless. The condition to be fulfilled if such a return is to be avoided is not given by Luke, and his reader is left to surmise that the person concerned should ensure by his faith and obedience that he remains in the authority and protection of Christ. Or that he or she should, by way of alternative, receive the Holy Spirit. In another image in the same context Jesus speaks parabolically of a man well provided as regards the security of his house, who is overpowered by superior force and his house looted.47 Again explanation is lacking, and we assume that spiritual forces are in question, evil opposed and vanquished by good. An interpretative clue may lie in the reference to ‘the armour in which the man trusted’, for Jesus usually urges the need to trust for the most fundamental things of life in himself and nothing less. His other words in Luke’s passage, a reply to the charge that he was carrying out these miracles in concert with the prince of demons, the ‘lord of flies’ Beelzebub, are less elliptical.48 Whether understood as done to Beelzebub, Satan or a demon, the effect of the healings and exorcisms was to undermine the hold on people of such evil powers. To cooperate in their own expulsions would be to oppose their own efforts and destroy themselves. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared,’ John would write, ‘was to destroy the devil’s

45 Mk 3:8. 46 Lk 11:24-26. 47 Lk 11:21f. 48 Lk 11:14-20. 45 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus work.’49 It seems that there was an outbreak of demonic activity, of afflictions and possessions, coinciding with Jesus’ public ministry. If so, we are entitled to regard him as the champion of God’s cause and ours against evil, such championship being an aspect of the Sonship presented in the gospels. The healings and exorcisms of Jesus are signs on earth of a conflict which, though impinging on experience, is largely unseen. We do not know why the individuals who benefit are chosen: some were petitioners, some petitioned for, others were picked by Jesus. The Gerasene man came thinking he was facing God’s judgement, and was restored by Jesus to family normality. Some petitioners were ignored, at least for a time, like the Gentile mother near Tyre,50 or simply turned from, like the people of Nazareth. Jesus’ words on the subject invite us to discern warfare but also tokens of the Kingdom, a taste of the Good News in this life. All the miracles are evidence of the divine authority of Jesus, while for the sufferer who has been delivered from affliction they are above all a sign that God is a Saviour. They are signs whose experience is vouchsafed to a few, whereas with his offers of Kingdom Good News Jesus addresses all. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.’51

Other Signs When people first heard of Jesus it was as a great miracle worker and, as the Temptation shows, this presented both opportunities and problems. The miracles advertised his abnormal power and posed questions about its source and significance. ‘When the crowds saw this,’ Matthew reports of one occasion, ‘they were filled with awe, and they praised God who had given such authority to men.’52 Power is perceived in the human world which can only be from God. But there were other acts performed by Jesus that were eloquent of his divinity, in addition to the healings. His ability to delegate the power to heal and exorcise evil spirits, for instance, as when he sent out the disciples on missions to the towns and villages he was to visit. His ability to know people’s thoughts, to make himself scarce53 and to make dispositions which suggest foreknowledge of normal random social behaviour, as when arranging for the use of a particular private room in Jerusalem for the Last Supper.54 Jesus not only healed sick people, he also raised from death Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son at Nain and Lazarus at Bethany.55 Such powers, those of the Author of life, were complemented on one or two notable occasions by powers to be ascribed to the Creator of the world. In the class of nature miracles we can group the feeding of the Five Thousand, the , the provision of Temple tribute, the transformation of water into wine at Cana, walking on the lake and the calming of the storm.56

49 1 Jn 3:8. 50 Mt 15:21-28. 51 Jn 14:11. 52 Mt 9:8. 53 Lk 4:30; Jn 8:59. 54 Mk 14:13. 55 Lk 8:40-56, 7:11-17; Jn 11:1-44. 56 Mt 14:13-21; Lk 5:1-11; Mt 17:27; Jn 2:1-11; Mk 6:45-52, 4:35-41. 46 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding round him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’ For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.’ So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him. (Lk 5:1-11)

The haul of fish that so surprised Simon Peter and his associates arises from something quite different, and is not presented by Luke as an end in itself. We should note what the crowd in the opening sentence were listening to: the word of God. This is what people heard when Jesus taught and what, as much as the miracles, made them want to seek out and to stay with Jesus. When he saw Peter’s boat, Peter evidently was with it, his tidying up done after a night’s unprofitable fishing and the nets stowed on board. But the word of God about the Kingdom and about Jesus’ mission in the world came first, and only when it was finished did Jesus suggest the trip out into deep water and another try for fish. Why did he do so? The way the narrative continues suggests that the invitation of Jesus to Peter and others to join him as disciples had something to do with it. Jesus seems to address Peter from the beginning in familiar terms: Peter may have shown ready interest and response to Jesus as soon as he saw him, or they may have known each other previously. But Peter passes a disciple’s test of willingness and obedience. By lending his boat and his services to the work of God’s word he was beginning to align himself with Jesus and his cause. And by agreeing to the request despite the evidence of his experience he showed recognition of Jesus’ authority. Jesus seems to have intended to make a point in the first instance to Peter and the disciples, not to the departed crowds, and his power over or knowledge of the katathalassic workings of nature were incidental to the fact of his authority. In later ages there would be debate about whether, or in what way, the catch was miraculous. It is debatable. But we must stay with the narrative, with Peter and his companions and with Luke. For them this was further evidence of divine power. When he exclaims, ‘Go away from me, Lord,’ Peter’s speech reflects awe at the presence of divinity and at the same time acute awareness of the gap, the discrepancy, between that presence and himself. Hence the reference to sin, which is the separator between man and God.57 In Jesus God had drawn near to favour him, to give and to bless despite his unworthiness and failures in honouring him and keeping his law. In spiritual fact there was a distance

57 Is 59:2. 47 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus between God and himself, a distance which Peter expects to be re-established. Yet Jesus does not do this and, instead of distancing himself makes one of his enigmatic, metaphorical statements, using words that Peter would come to understand as an invitation to become a disciple, a member of the Kingdom of God and a leading participant in its activity. ‘From now on you will catch men.’ It was a turning point in the life of Peter and of the friends who joined Jesus with him. That turning, a leaving of ‘everything’ then and there, stood as a model for numerous successors. Peter exchanges one life for another, the discipline of fishing for that of Jesus’ Kingdom. Repentance is symbolised by his turning, and the activity of the former life has, in the authority of Jesus’ utterance, a continuity with the new. And so it is in respect of this world and the world to come. One day Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.’ So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke him, saying, ‘Master, Master, we’re going to drown!’ He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. ‘Where is your faith?’ he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, ‘Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.’ (Lk 8:22-25) Although we are not told whether the boat belonged to Peter, or indeed whether he was among those present, it seems that the boats which had been used for fishing were now available to provide Jesus’ increasingly itinerant group with a convenient and rapid means of transport between the lakeside communities. On this occasion Jesus had apparently been with crowds of people for some hours, and before that may have been out early in the hills praying alone. Now he fell asleep in the stern of the boat. In Mark, he was ‘in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.’ A graphic detail, which must denote not a drawing room cushion but something rigged up for the occasion, some folded sailcloth maybe. Jesus at any rate had succumbed to tiredness like any other man, and amidst the regular rhythms of the boat’s progress had gone to sleep, trusting his friends’ skill for the completion of the trip. The storm struck suddenly, whipping up the water into fierce turbulence so that for all their experience the fishermen thought the boat would be swamped. The wind’s noise, the lash of rain and the sudden cold of dousings from incoming waves all failed to wake the Master so, by way of warning him, the disciples shook him awake. His reaction astonished them. The storm first, then the disciples, both received as it were a rebuke. Again the superhuman control over natural phenomena was not to impress a crowd, or done for its own sake. The words of command were for the disciples a sign of mastery over threatening circumstances. ‘All your waves and breakers have swept over me,’ declared the psalmist in a metaphor for distress, using the same language as Jonah’s prayer after he was engulfed first by the sea and then by a sea creature.58 Another psalm attributes to the compassion of God the stilling of a literal storm at sea: ‘Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper.’59

58 Ps 42:7; Jnh 2:3. 59 Ps 107:28f. 48 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

What is the relation of the gospel narrative to these antecedents? Is there an influence, a consciousness of resemblance on the part of the Evangelists or the disciples? Did such awareness condition the telling of our story? There is no indication that it did, or that the disciples were well-versed in the scriptures in the early days of their discipleship. Jesus however was, and it is possible that he who was tempted to perform wonders for no good reason, found one supported in the scriptures for an act which was thus lifted beyond an ad hoc deliverance from a tight spot to a statement about God’s responsiveness and concern, and their operation through his Son. ‘Where is your faith?’ he asked his disciples. When he went to sleep he had been trusting them; did their trust in him really need to falter? Jesus is not angry at being roused, he is using a question rhetorically to attach to this incident a principle quite basic to discipleship, that of trust in the Master. Faith however now acquires a further connotation of confidence in God the Creator and Controller of the natural world, and in One willing to deliver in answer to a cry in the midst of trouble. Such reflections however were for later. At the time, the disciples were simply shocked at what happened, evincing the fear that accompanies a direct apprehension of the proximity of God. Much the same kind of fear was felt by the disciples on that other occasion out on the lake when again there were strong adverse winds, and Jesus approached them over the dark water at three or four o’clock in the morning.

Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified. Immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.’ Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. (Mk 6:45-53)

Up on the hillside praying alone, Jesus could follow the progress of the boat northwards, could see the effect of the freshening north-easterly wind and the difficulty the disciples had to keep on course as they rowed in the direction of Bethsaida. They were forced in the end to settle for Gennesaret, some seven kilometres west of the original destination, arriving after what must have been one of the longest and certainly the most astonishing trip they were make on that piece of water. The straining at the oars, we should note, was an effort of obedience. They wanted to get to the destination given by the Master, and did not wish to give up and run before the wind towards, say, Tiberias, so missing the next rendezvous. And Jesus, we learn, watched them until dark, and after that waited a while before making a move. The praying took precedence over intervention or assistance all through the period from before nightfall until ‘the fourth watch of the night’, which we may take to be the last quarter of the hours of darkness. When he did move it was to pass over the lake showing them that he was now heading where they were going, and letting them see a supernatural ability 49 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus to do so. Already the disciples had noticed how he could come and go among people with a remarkable facility; now they were shown that this power over spatial incidence was a usually hidden aspect of his nature. A unique disclosure, this apparently arose from his communion with God immediately before, adding to his disciples’ apprehension of him as Son of God. He was seen to change his course and instead of giving merely a sign of confirmation and a glimpse of his transcendent power, he came to them as they laboured at the oars trying to keep headway. He came also to overcome their fear, for they were terrified at what they took to be a ghost, to assure them that they were seeing who they thought, and to give help. He calmed the wind and agreed the new destination. Mark comments that the disciples ‘had not understood about the loaves.’ What had they not understood? That this was the power of God being shown in his Son. Nothing was impossible if you put that interpretation, that title, upon Jesus. Did this sign resist temptation, was it done for sufficient purpose? Certainly it was if one of the main objectives of Jesus was to inaugurate a Kingdom on earth associated with recognition of his Sonship of God. It was then a sign revealing his transcendent glory, as well as an act giving immediate help and encouragement to obedient disciples. Even when we allow for the fact that the audiences for the most spectacular miracles were small groups, or one small group, of disciples it can seem strange that Jesus should have been challenged on occasion to give a sign as proof of the large claims that were emerging from his ministry. The challengers were Pharisees, their desire apparently not a disciple’s to learn from the Master but a wish to test and contest an authority which might well be at odds with theirs.60 The most public of the signs, the healings and exorcisms, were known to them. They wanted a sign on demand, requiring heaven to respond on their terms and at their time, proof that Jesus was approved by God. To accede would have been to yield to the third temptation of the devil. So can we regard the miracles as proof that Jesus was Son of God? ‘After his suffering,’ Luke wrote, ‘he showed himself to [his disciples] and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.’61 Like the nature miracles the resurrection appearances were witnessed only by disciples, but their purpose was to give them conclusive evidence that Jesus had overcome death. The miracles are also evidence, proof is the word disciples would use, of Jesus’ authority. Mark evidently writes from this position. For him the point ‘about the loaves’ connected directly with the point about Jesus passing over the waters of the lake, and it is his purpose to help his reader understand events and a Person which even yet resisted fixed or final understanding. The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh − an oracle: This man declared to Ithiel, to Ithiel and to Ucal: ‘I am the most ignorant of men; I do not have a man’s understanding. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know! (Prov 30:1-4)

60 Mk 8:11f.; Mt 16:1-4. 61 Acts 1:3. 50 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

Transfiguration Some of those whom Jesus invited to follow him as disciples were less responsive than Peter and the rest of the Twelve, preferring the imperatives of family and work to those of the Kingdom. Some of those whose interest was caught by Jesus’ words, who assented to what he said, or were attracted by the offers he made, before long were again caught up in ‘life’s worries, riches and pleasures’.62 The teaching aimed, among other things, to make people aware of the alternatives open to them and conscious of the choices they were making and had made. It aimed to show them that circumstances need not constitute a prison, and declared that God had sent Jesus to proclaim release to captives and show the way to a scarcely imaginable destiny with God. Hard to imagine as it was, it was not totally elusive. By speaking of a Kingdom of heaven Jesus evoked an idea of place, but he qualified this in parables pointing to classes of events such as discovery, judgement, reconciliation and so forth. His earthly course was illustrative in an unexpected way of the word he brought from God, while the specific acts we are examining in the gospels focus on or enact aspects of that whole which John the Evangelist calls truth. If the walking on the lake contained a reference to dominance in the spatial dimension, the Transfiguration gestures to the lordship of Jesus over time and, by implication, over death. ‘He is not the God of the dead but of the living.’63 The Transfiguration is an event which uniquely ascribes to Jesus not just great holiness, but a close identification with God; the voice, like that at the Baptism, complementing for the three disciples the evidence of their eyes. It presents a reality beyond that of everyday and shows the transcendent God to be personal, and as having sent to the human world a Son.

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters − one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’ When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus. (Mt 17:1-8)

The phenomenon is not unknown in the scriptural tradition. There is a direct line from this mountain to Sinai, and Moses’ descent ‘not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord.’64 If we set aside our customary sense of temporality the two occasions begin to converge, to become one in some eternal moment transcending the historical continuum in which men of prayer may be permitted to draw near to God. But when they do, what shall they hear, and what learn to discuss? ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see,’ Jesus told his disciples privately. ‘Many prophets and kings

62 Mt 8:21f.; Lk 8:14. 63 Mt 22:32. 64 Ex 34:29. 51 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus wanted to see what you see . . . and to hear what you hear.’65 We who come after should make the effort to see through their eyes and hear through their ears, without too hastily jumping to our received interpretations. As gospel readers at this point we are like the travelling companions of Saul, that apostle to be, who was blinded by God’s light as he approached Damascus. ‘They heard the sound but did not see anything,’ or ‘saw the light but did not understand the voice.’66 Peter tells the story against himself of his inappropriate suggestion, no doubt a topical one, that festival booths be built.67 He wished to take part in the talk, but the rules of its language were still beyond him. By the time of writing of his letters this will have changed, and Peter will have achieved an understanding and discursive facility far surpassing those of his early days of discipleship. Looking back then to the first steps, to the preaching about Jesus and the pioneering work of Mark’s Gospel he writes: We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eye-witnesses of his majesty. For he received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain. (2 Pet 1:16-18) The Transfiguration provided a key to open the mystery. Jesus was in the tradition of Moses, the giver of the law, and of Elijah, signifying prophecy. Those traditions led up to Jesus, but they did not make the final disclosure, for while they told of God’s righteousness and justice, and promised an anointed servant and deliverer, they stopped short of what now was uttered, as at the Baptism, by the voice of God. Jesus was his Son. John too took this revelation to be central to his witness as an Evangelist: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the Only Begotten, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’68 Luke’s account, reminiscent of the later occasion at Gethsemane, has Peter, James and John growing sleepy while Jesus prays. Then, when they see the astonishing change in his appearance, the brightness likened to that of the sun, and notice the two figures later identified by Jesus, they are roused to astonished wakefulness. Only when they hear the voice and sense the enormity of what is being revealed do they feel terror, the terror of awareness of the living God. It was an intended disclosure, a presentation by Jesus acting with the Father, of glory, where glory comprehends power and reality beyond what is currently known and, in the ascribed title and the command, providing a step to understanding of its significance. Light and brightness have long served mankind as representatives of truth, goodness and blessing. So deep is this association that we tend to privilege it, to assume it to be an exception to the rule of the arbitrariness of the sign and to consist in the nature of the universe. We easily assume the connectedness of light with right, and would readily bracket any questioning of the bond with the trumpery of calling black white. Can it not be said that light was first created so as to give form to the good? In the end perhaps, recognising that while the

65 Lk 10:23f. 66 Acts 9:7, 22:9. 67 Lev 23:39-43. 68 Jn 1:14, NIV margin. 52 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus bonding may be in some aspects a mystery to us, and seeing it used in God’s purposes, we can accord it its privilege. It occurs casually in a psalm, as when in a context of grateful praise there comes the declaration: ‘Those who look to him are radiant’; or in the famous benediction bequeathed by Moses: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.’69 It is by no means unheard of among Christians of any generation that in specific situations of God’s blessing a person’s appearance can be temporarily seen as suffused with light. But the most intriguing precedent is in the references in Daniel’s prophecies to the Son of Man. In one of his nocturnal visions Daniel sees a human figure (a ‘son of man’) approaching among the clouds of heaven. Great power and authority are given him by God (‘the Ancient of Days’). His jurisdiction is over all the nations of the world, and his kingdom is eternal.70 Daniel’s highly compact description has a close fit with aspects of the gospel accounts of Jesus. Its contemporary context was a desire to understand historical forces and the shape of things to come. Daniel’s subjects were the powers and principalities behind the rise and fall of world empires; but above them was the authority of God who in this vision was given human form. That, at least, is a possible reading. Another, scrupulous over the Mosaic prohibition of any visual representation of YHWH, would propose that the Son of Man is a principal agent, an associate or vizier of God’s. Either way, the outline applies at all points to the Jesus of the gospels, and when Daniel describes a similar vision of a human figure of great authority, the face is seen as ‘like lightning’,71 a simile used also by Luke in his description of the Transfiguration.72 The epiphany, for that is what the Transfiguration amounts to, is a statement that this is that: the man from Nazareth fulfils prophecy of the coming from heaven of one with authority over all the earth’s races and populations. In another medium, or quasi-medium (we cannot know), God makes a statement, an audible one, repeating the Baptismal affirmation to Jesus and adding the imperative: listen to him! His coming, and the coming again, from heaven are for individuals, nations and mankind as a whole, the most significant of all events. Life, truth, meaning, judgement, salvation − all these vastly comprehensive terms terminate in him, the alpha and omega of all. If any imperative is absolutely categorical, this is it. A strongly significant association occurs in the later documents of the New Testament between light and Christ. In Revelation John in the Spirit sees one ‘like a son of man’ who, reminiscent of Daniel’s visions, has a face ‘like the sun shining in all its brilliance.’ Finally in Revelation the glory of God supersedes light. In heaven there is no night, and those in it see the face of God’s Son.73 Prior to this we find Paul using light as a token of the character of the Kingdom of Christ.

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth)

69 Ps 34:5; Num 6:24-26. 70 Dan 7:13f. 71 Dan 10:6. 72 Lk 9:29. 73 Rev 1:13ff., 21:23, 22:4f. 53 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ (Eph 5:8-14)

Light here tells of the moral and spiritual characteristics that please God (the mixed metaphor of fruit drawing in both its terms on the teaching of Jesus74), involving believers during their earthly existence in the life of the world to come. In the final image there is a conflation of Christ with the sun which looks back to Isaiah and foreshadows Revelation even while it extends an allusion from the Transfiguration to the life-giving power that radiates from Jesus Christ.75 But these are images of a fulness that, while implicit in what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration, was not in the experience of Peter, James and John, whom Jesus instructed on the way down: ‘Don’t tell any one what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’ Mark confirms that they did maintain silence for the time being but were baffled about what ‘rising from the dead’ might mean.’76 Was this another of Jesus’ figures of speech? Certainly the gospels are no contrived story of enlightenment that deposits senior disciples at a new summit of comprehensive understanding. Our informants are frank about their own foolishness, fear and ignorance. Six days prior to this the incident had occurred in which Peter came out with a double title for Jesus, Messiah and Son of the living God. Again, the moment of illumination was succeeded by Jesus’ reference to the dark side of his Messiahship, the rejection and death in Jerusalem, to be followed by resurrection on the third day. Greatness, splendour, holiness and triumph, these are concepts the human mind is drawn to. Suffering, darkness, defeat, injustice and death we turn from. Jesus wanted his disciples to bring into their conscious understanding the death he was to embrace, and to know that in the matter of Messiahship and his role as Son, the suffering was integral. For the disciples the experience of his death they lived through was an aporia, a crux. Its hermetic obscurity would yield the most radiant of hermeneutics, some of it in this life. For those with ears to hear that this was the Son, the call to discipleship was a divine command. The identity of the two interlocutors provides for the unfolding Gospel a great sign concerning the mystery of the death outside Jerusalem, for to interpret it the reader-disciple must go to the law and the prophets.

His Death The death of Jesus loomed large with the gospel writers. If the content of the gospels is broadly classified, the death forms the largest subject category after the periods of ministry in Galilee and on the way to Jerusalem. Include the Last Supper, and you get a quite uniform allocation of space: Matthew 15%, Mark

74 Mt 5:14-16, 13:23. 75 Is 60:1-5; Rev, loc. cit. 76 Mk 9:10. 54 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

19%, Luke and John both 16%.77 Yet despite the attention they accord it, the Evangelists are more concerned to set down in detail what happened than to offer explanation. Theirs is not a poetic re-creation, planing away rough textures and shaping a story to fit a literary or religious form.78 The rude textures are left in place, just as they were experienced at the time by Jesus and the disciples. The narrative tone is one of factuality, so that the gospels’ genre has more in common with journalism or historiography than with poetry or artfully constructed narrative. The death of Jesus does not come as climactic to a clearly presented moral development, is not, in terms of what has gone before, a forcefully necessary catastrophe. In this the gospels make a contrast with an Old Testament death like that of Samson, whose end had been structurally prefigured in a series of developments, or of Saul, whose doom, early announced gathers to ineluctable fulfilment over a period spanning a number of narrated incidents over many years. Certainly there is in the gospels a trail of antecedent clues to the death of Jesus, but they do not carry the force of structural effect, and seem as straws in the wind. At a first reading (not impossible to reconstruct, especially if we approach as, or with, little children), the response to the event must resemble that of the first disciples, though perhaps with less fear of personal implication: there is shock, sadness, a sense of wrong. Perhaps too a presentiment of the brute dissolution and deprivation of death. We have been reading of wonders, acts of power and news of hope, and our hero is now horribly killed, his death not only unwarranted by what he had done, but scarcely to be explained by any of the discernible circumstances, so that it comes down in the end to some ghastly manifestation of the evil of evil. Could this happen to the Son of God? Surely not. True, he had spoken of the Messiah’s rejection, suffering and death, but the counterpoise of his presence had always prevailed, making his life more fitting, more desired, than any death he might meet. His life was the day from on high, his death night and oblivion, and best left out of account. Yet this the gospel writers did not do. In their accounts they give it pride of place because by the time they wrote, still quite soon after the event, they had come to see that although understanding and interpretation might not yet be total, these things were required. Jesus was not so much overcome by a fate he could not resist as submitting to a purpose yet to be explained. Here it is worth resisting for a moment the closure that offers itself so strongly to us from the subsequent Christian tradition. Explanation was given, and given by the time the gospels were written, but such is the Evangelists’ fidelity to their subject that they do not record more of it than appertains. They had a fine historical sense, their history written with an acute awareness of what is and is not anachronistic. They did not leap to interpret even though interpretations were in the air, were current perhaps in epistolary form. Their spare narratives are written out of respect for both their Subject and for the modus of God’s action in Christ. The gospels are not written to a genre formula, nor to create a bravura performance (though they do) in terms of historiography, they are written as they are because Jesus acted and reacted so.

77 R A Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 1991, pp. 197, 198, 224. 78 Nor, pace Rudolf Bultmann, does the later kerygma impose either story or structure on the gospels. The horse comes before the cart. 55 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

By them we have the privileged point of view, and it is a developing one, of the first disciples. Within the narrative are points which serve as signs towards a direction which may take the reader to an interpretative destination. Some such indications may recur as a leitmotif, or adumbrate a subplot, but this is not necessarily a guarantee of final significance. The arrival of certain Greeks to speak with Jesus in John, or the arrangements concerning the colt to be ridden into Jerusalem, and those to do with using the upstairs room for the Last Supper,79 don’t seem to signify much beyond themselves and are ancillary to the main narrative. The betrayal by Judas however differs, touching the narrative at several points and indeed providing elements of plot causality. With Judas the reader is provided at one level with an answer to the insistent question, why did Jesus get arrested and killed? Already the narrative has introduced on several occasions investigative, suspicious, and finally antagonistic Pharisees. Judas’ nefarious deal gives these antagonists, or their associates, an entrée into Jesus’ doings, enables the fateful meeting to be contrived at which he is taken prisoner. But as many readers have noticed, the narrative offers little explanation of Judas’ motive, and the original question is thus merely referred backward, not answered. The effect of the betrayal motif however is not merely one of puzzlement. With the regret there is sympathy, and a taking of Jesus’ side. Other markers in the narrative have a similar effect. Jesus is alone, abandoned by his disciples, his role increasingly that of a victim of plotting, of false charges, of an inverted judicial process, and then of torment, mockery and judicial killing. Pilate, a relative outsider and to that extent supposedly disinterested, wishes to release him, finding no basis for a charge. In John the point is made that Jesus who spoke habitually in public is arrested and accused in secret. Barabbas who by Roman rules merits death by crucifixion goes free, while Jesus, more than innocent, is killed. Even on the evidence of his own words, Jesus appears to set himself against, and to protest at what happens. In his prayers in Gethsemane there are tears and cries for escape. When he prays that God the Father will allow the bitter cup to pass him by, it is as though the proximate experience already casts a dark shadow the effect of which is to suspend the sense of the rightness of his course and of the favour of the Father towards him. From the cross, before he died, Jesus cried out loudly, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Neither Matthew nor Mark, who report the cry of dereliction, offer any immediate explanation, not even an aside that as a reference to Psalm 22 it is a gesture by Jesus to the prefigurement of the event in scripture.80 Cumulatively the effect of these narrative markers is to induce in the reader a sense of wrong, to dispose him or her to either redress or explanation. As we have observed, the gospels offer little enough immediate resolution, only deferment. They do however provide a series of markers indicating a different direction. There is no massive intervention of twelve legions of angels from the Lord of Hosts, no dramatic to trounce the mockers who called for it, though the very presence of these possibilities in the narrative

79 Jn 12:20-22; Mk 11:1-7, 14:12-16. 80 True John, and in some MSS Matthew, connects the disposal of Jesus’ garment by the soldiers with v. 18 of the Psalm. But this is a detail in comparison with the Son’s abandonment by the Father 56 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus caters to that expectation and begins to answer it. Instead there are repeated indications that while the story may not go as the reader might wish it does conform to the holy script, the one located both in the scriptures and in the words and will of Jesus. The several antecedent predictions by Jesus of his death are reaffirmed in the midst of the event itself. At Gethsemane his prayer to be spared the cup is completed by an expression of obedience to the Father’s will. The legions of angels are not impossible, but they are not in the scenario. At the moment of his arrest Jesus, who had on several occasions mysteriously eluded capture, surprised his disciples by allowing himself to be taken. We may assume that until the moment of his death his power to walk away from his captors was unimpaired but deliberately not exercised. Interrogated by the authorities Jesus, at whose speech crowds had marvelled, made minimal replies, or was silent. Brief as they were, his words in these dialogues mark the alternative direction. ‘You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above,’ he tells Pilate,81 so positioning the power of God above the secular authority. But the Kingdom Jesus was renowned for proclaiming, and which was now being adduced as the occasion for his indictment was, as Jesus again told Pilate, ‘not of this world’, and posed no threat to the pax romana. To the chief priests and Sanhedrin Jesus replied that he was indeed the Messiah, ‘and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven,’82 a statement amounting to affirmation of his position as Son of God and all that that might entail. But whatever it was, it was deferred, and in the present situation appeared to be of little effect. Indeed it might be thought, as perhaps by the priestly antagonists it was, that the death of Jesus must put such large claims to a final test, and extinguish them. The suffering of Jesus is also marked by a concern for others, the people of Jerusalem missing the coming of the One whom many were waiting for, and in a few years to be caught up in the city’s destruction. Luke has Jesus speaking of this to some Jerusalem women on the way to Golgotha, and then praying for the forgiveness of those who carried out the crucifixion in ignorance.83 John reports his thought for his mother, entrusted to a disciple’s care. The indications are then of another principle at work in the events narrated which has nothing to do with immediate closure. While it is mysterious, the deferment conforms to the will of God, whose Son and Kingdom transcend this world, and he who allowed himself to be killed is manifestly the Teacher of the .

Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and turned him over to Pilate. ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ asked Pilate. ‘Yes, it is as you say,’ Jesus replied. The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, ‘Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.’ But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to

81 Jn 19:11. 82 Mk 14:62. 83 Lk 23:27-31, 34. 57 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

do for them what he usually did. ‘Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?’ asked Pilate, knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead. ‘What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?’ Pilate asked them. ‘Crucify him!’ they shouted. ‘Why? What crime has he committed?’ asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, ‘Crucify him!’ Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spat on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. It was the third hour when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!’ In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. ‘He saved others,’ they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.’ Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?− which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of those standing near heard this, they said, ‘Listen, he’s calling Elijah.’ One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. ‘Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,’ he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. (Mk 15:1-37)

If events have meaning, this should signify that the man to whom this can happen is neither Christ nor Son of God. He who proffered forgiveness and talked of eternal life succumbs to a wretched death, and he who was declared God’s Son with whom the Father was well pleased is worse off than a typical mortal man, in effect disowned. Even when we allow that they go on to report his resurrection, it remains astonishing that the gospels describe all this. Even if the narrative deferment is regarded as preparatory to the discovery of the resurrection, the risks of such description would seem nevertheless too great. The death was public, but the resurrection was not. Such markers as there were are weak, and do not answer the questions that are tellingly raised within the text itself. The passion narratives do not represent Jesus as going to his death as one simply going to meet his father, or making a difficult though sure crossing to a world beyond. True there is in Luke a promise of paradise to a fellow victim, but he dies with no proclamation of imminent resurrection on his lips. Indeed in Mark the suggestion is that he dies not only in physical pain but in mental and spiritual anguish. Profoundly disturbed, interpreters down the ages have provided glosses and explanations turning failure into success, defeat into triumph, death into life, the victim into a deliverer. Yet the gospels themselves do not do what we 58 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus might expect and put the event itself through a mill of interpretation.84 We shall return to the subject of the death of Jesus in the discussion of his teaching and subsequently, but this point is a fitting one for paying tribute to the steady gaze, the integrity, of the gospel writers in reporting the hard fact. Theirs is an unflinching reflection of the contemporary experience. Some marginal sense there was of the fulfilment of scarcely understood prediction, but the meaning was either too awful to contemplate or not yet understood. Jesus himself seems to have experienced a darkening as he drew towards the end of his earthly course, and to have experienced neither outwardly in his circumstances nor inwardly in his spirit any of the fullness that hitherto had been his and had overflowed to others.

Resurrection The death of Jesus by crucifixion has all the effect of a powerful sign, though a negative one. It is countered by his resurrection, a discovery made by bewildered disciples who had adopted the practice of locking the doors of the place where they met. But the countersign is received, even if it is not given, with some ambivalence. An artful narrator would have done more to reconcile the different witnesses, yet although the Evangelists do show awareness of and use of their predecessors’ work, Matthew and Luke of Mark, John of the three Synoptics, they seem as much concerned to distinguish their own accounts by differences as to harmonise them. Why should this be so? Did each write for a limited audience which was not expected to read and compare the other gospel accounts? More likely than an explanation in terms of audience is a ‘source driven’ one. The Evangelists were concerned to set down the reports of the witnesses they were close to, variously , Peter and the Eleven, Cleopas and other disciples including Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Witness rather than collusion was their aim. There is moreover a tension between the claims of Galilee and Jerusalem. It may be that by the time of writing many witnesses were dispersed,85 and some memories of sequence and other details of the discovery beginning to blur. One thing however was sure, a lot of disciples were convinced over a period of about forty days that Jesus was alive. They had meetings with him, saw physical proofs and their fear turning first to amazement then spiritual ‘power’, found they had become witnesses of the fact that God had raised to life the Son who had died. Their discovery, more an event than a process, is reported by all four gospel writers, though as we shall notice, there is little interpretation within the gospels. In what follows, I consider in each gospel the report of the discovery and comprehension of the resurrection, the first meeting (a different thing) of Jesus with a disciple, the first sign given as evidence of resurrection, and the outcome, i.e. not the kerygmatic interpretation, which is scarcely present in the gospels, but the authoritative word of instruction given at the time.

84 Some qualification may be due in respect of John, who reports Jesus as saying earlier that the Father ‘has not left me alone’ (8:29), a word that his account of the last moments (19:28- 30) does not contradict. 85 Acts 8:1. 59 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

Mark 16:1-8 Mark tells how Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome went to the tomb with spices on the Sunday just after sunrise to anoint the body of Jesus. On the way they were worried about the task of moving aside the heavy stone they knew to have been placed to close off the tomb, which had been cut like a grotto out of rock. As it turned out there was no difficulty, for the stone had been rolled away, and they entered easily. Inside however, they were alarmed to find a young man in white clothing ‘sitting on the right side.’ In tones suggesting divine authority the young man bids them not to be alarmed and shows knowledge of their purpose (‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified.’). He shows them the evidence (‘He is not here’), giving the explanation, ‘He has risen!’ He adds a prediction and an imperative: Jesus is going ahead to Galilee, which is the rendezvous for a meeting with his disciples. They should go there. There is no meeting with Jesus in Mark, though in the verses that follow, probably added by a later hand, there is a summary through to the moment of ascension in which a number of meetings and appearances are mentioned. Awkwardly, the addendum claims the first meeting to have been with Mary Magdalene, although the immediately preceding narrative describes only her meeting with one who might have been an angel.

Matthew 28:1-10 Matthew’s account is similar, but he names only two Marys as going ‘to look’ at a tomb they know to be sealed and guarded, and does not refer to spices or anointing. Before they reach the tomb there is an earthquake and, coinciding with it an angel’s arrival to roll aside the stone. This done, the angel, whose clothes are white and who is ‘like lightning’, sits down on the stone outside. The guards meanwhile are effectively knocked out through fright. The angel’s authoritative word is substantially that reported by Mark, but as the two women leave to go and tell the disciples, the first meeting with Jesus occurs. He greets them, they recognise him with feelings of fear and joy, and they worship him. The Galilee rendezvous for the disciples (‘my brothers’), which the angel had given, is repeated by Jesus, and Matthew’s gospel ends with that meeting, and with the Great Commission.

Luke 24:1-12 In Luke’s account a group of women disciples from Galilee (‘Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the others with them’) go very early with spices to the tomb. Finding the stone rolled to one side they enter, but cannot see the body. Suddenly two men in clothes ‘like lightning’ are beside them inside. Their authoritative word differs from Mark and Matthew: ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’, a gnomic and rhetorical question leading into the demonstrative ‘He is not here,’ and the explanation, ‘He has risen!’ Instead of a reference forward to Galilee there is a retrospect recalling Jesus’ predictions while he was in Galilee of his death, to be followed by resurrection. In Luke the women remember the predictions and understand that Jesus has been resurrected, for what they now report to the Eleven is received with 60 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus incredulity. The first meeting with the risen Jesus in Luke is with Cleopas and another disciple on the way to Emmaus. When Cleopas and his companion reach ‘the Eleven and those with them’ in Jerusalem, their news is welcomed with the response that yes, the Lord has risen ‘and has appeared to Simon’. But that appearance is not described, for the narrative moves on at once to Jesus’ appearance among them that evening, while the Emmaus experience was being discussed. Later, at the Ascension described in Acts, Jesus instructs the disciples to wait in Jerusalem.

John 20:1-18 Here Mary Magdalene goes alone to the tomb in the darkness before dawn. Already on the Friday Jesus’ body had been wrapped in linen with 34 kilograms of myrrh and aloes by Joseph and Nicodemus. When she finds the stone out of position she runs back to Peter and the disciple ‘Jesus loved’ and, alarmed and uninformed of any development except the moving of the stone, tells them her fear: ‘They have taken him, we don’t know where!’ Peter and the other disciple run to the tomb, confirm the absence of the body, see the linen and, although there is no mention of angel, man in white or guard, they ‘believe’, i.e. although not yet understanding the scriptural basis of it, conclude that Jesus has risen from death (vv. 8-9). They return to their lodging, but Mary has followed and is at the tomb entrance after they have left. Crying, she stoops to look in, and at this moment sees inside two angels in white, one where the linen for the head was lying, the other at the foot. Their only word to her is the question, ‘Why are you crying?’ Just then she is aware of some one near her outside, whom she takes to be the gardener, repeating the question and adding, ‘Who are you looking for?’ Uncomprehending, she replies that she wishes to know where the body has been taken because she would like to take charge of it. Despite the earlier question she had not used Jesus’ name, but he now uses hers, proclaiming personal knowledge, reclaiming relationship. Mary responds with the title, Rabboni, that was for her customary. The authoritative word from Jesus is distinct from that of the synoptic accounts, although in Matthew as here he refers to the disciples as his brothers. ‘Do not hold on to me,’ indicates the difference between one order of existence and another. ‘For I have not yet returned to the Father,’ tells that he is going to where he came from, the ‘for’ being a connective rather than a causal conjunction. Mary is to go back to the disciples and tell them of his return to ‘my Father and your Father’, which suggests that in the Father he and the disciples remain bonded together. Jesus has shared human life and human death, and his disciples share his eternal Sonship, hence are his brothers. A comparative reading throws up the differences and generates a number of questions. About, for instance, the identity of the first disciple to discover that the tomb was empty, about who was the first to meet with the risen Jesus. Such things would surely have received attention within the early Christian community. There are questions about sequence and timing, about the guards so important to Matthew but unmentioned by the others, about the spices that are the occasion for the women’s dawn visit to the tomb in Mark and Luke, but in John are applied late on the Friday by men disciples, and not mentioned in Matthew at all. Luke/Acts is particular about Jerusalem’s being where the 61 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus disciples were to wait, and where a final significant meeting, a farewell and ascension, took place. But the other gospels instead have the disciples directed to Galilee. In Luke Cleopas, or his companion, makes a direct contradiction of Matthew and John, saying that no one had seen Jesus alive at the tomb or anywhere else.86 Only an , a vision of angels and an unsubstantiated claim of resurrection had been reported. Paul, writing at a distance of time and place, and not apparently familiar with the gospel corpus, makes his own summary.

What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Cor 15:3-9)

Although the meeting of Jesus with the women is not denied, or indeed mentioned at all, this gives pride of place to Peter as the disciple to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. The meeting is not described in the gospels, and only in Luke 24:34 is there a glancing reference to it. Paul seems to be thinking more of Peter’s pre-eminence than of reporting all the details of the sequence of events. His words occur in a context of assuring the Corinthians of the linked certainty of both the general resurrection and that of Jesus. Our reading raises questions, as indeed does the text at certain points. (Were the women right about seeing an angel, or was it a young man, or a vision?) Doubts too.87 But very soon the successive appearances, meetings with Jesus, overcome doubt with the certainty of his presence, and with faith. Such explanation as the disciples are given, whether by angels or by Jesus himself, is mostly in the nature of instructions on what they must do. There is little in Mark or Matthew of any interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection. In Luke there is a reminder, to be developed on the road to Emmaus, that Jesus’ resurrection, like his death, had been predicted by him in Galilee; while Jesus’ words to Mary in John concerning his return to his Father carry a seed of meaning capable of explaining his entire mission.

Last Meetings and Ascension Looking back later, the historically-minded Luke discerned a pattern. Over a period of forty days, Jesus showed himself after his death to his disciples, giving them proofs that he was alive. He told them to wait in Jerusalem, spoke to them about the Kingdom of God, and promised to fulfil John the Baptist’s word by baptizing them with the Holy Spirit.88 In bereavement there can be nostalgia, a desire to regress. While he wanted his disciples to be sure of his

86 Lk 24:24. An appearance to Simon is reported subsequently, though not described, in 24:34. 87 Mt 28:17. 88 Acts 1:1-5. 62 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus resurrection, Jesus also wanted them to move forward in the Spirit to a world scale version of the missions he had given them in Galilee. But first they needed to understand that his death had not been a disastrous misadventure. Mark’s narrative breaks off just after the discovery by the women that the tomb was empty, and Matthew recounts only one post-resurrection meeting, the one in Galilee containing the Great Commission. The Ascension is not explicit in Matthew, or in John, although both convey a sense of farewell and finality in the meetings they describe. The emphasis in Matthew is on making disciples of all nations. The message? ‘Everything I have commanded you,’ which unlike Luke fails to suggest that a significant further revelation is imminent. For Matthew the kerygma amounts to didache. The closing phrase, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age,’ provides grounds for reassurance to disciples obedient to the commands, but leaves open the mode of Jesus’ presence, whether or in what sense he is henceforth absent, and the whole matter of his return.89 John describes meetings with the risen Jesus on four occasions: with Mary Magdalene just outside the tomb, the Sunday evening behind locked doors, a similar occasion the following week with Thomas Didymus present, and in the appended last chapter a meeting with Peter and six other disciples on the lakeshore in Galilee. Confusingly, we read in 21:14 that ‘this was now the third time that Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.’ John’s attention was presumably on the group as providing greater authority and a more forceful confirmation of resurrection than the one-to-one meeting with Mary. There is surprise in both meetings with the assembled disciples in John 20. They are unexpectedly aware of his presence, and on both occasions he shows the wounds of crucifixion as proof. His ‘Peace be with you,’ (both occasions) is a greeting, a blessing and more, for it is associated with the conferring of the Holy Spirit: ‘He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”’ Where Mary seeking to hold him in human intimacy had been told, ‘Do not hold on to me,’ Thomas’ worship, ‘My Lord and my God!’ is accepted. There is continuity, but from now on Jesus will be seen as belonging to heaven. It has been a principal theme of John that Jesus comes to the world from God, and that he is sent by the Father with the purpose of disclosing him, bringing light, truth, a peace that surpasses understanding. Now John’s narrative shows Jesus as not only alive and returning as Son, as planned, to the Father, but conferring on the disciples his authority, and handing on to them his mission. ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ The context of the imparting of the Holy Spirit is one of mission, and the message of that mission is to include the forgiveness of sins: ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive any one his sins they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’ God’s forgiveness, the prerequisite of peace, is his to give, and that authority he can and does bestow on his disciples as they obey the mission imperative, follow the counsel of the Holy Spirit, and make Jesus known so that the world believes in him. The lakeside meeting in Galilee of Chapter 21 looks back at the call of Peter and his friends to leave their nets and become fishermen of men. It looks back in order to go forward. Again there is a recognition, this time after the disciples

89 For a fuller discussion, see below p.102. 63 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus carry out a suggestion called from the shore to try once more for fish. The unexpected success recalls the first episode, Jesus reinforcing the association by providing a meal of fish and bread as once when he had fed over five thousand people. The same, yet there was a strangeness: ‘None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord.’ In the ensuing dialogue walking with Peter along the shore, that hesitation is put behind and replaced by another, the effect on the relationship of Peter’s denials. Unstated but implied in the repeated question to Peter is Jesus’ forgiveness. Peter is reinstated, the image of the original call transformed. As a fisherman he had been called to discipleship and to mission, fishing providing a metaphor for the bringing of many into the Kingdom. Now the metaphor is varied from fishing to shepherding for what is essentially the same call. Jesus confirms that he will return at the Parousia, but not immediately. Disciples must face the prospect that they may grow old and die. John’s explanations of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus make his gospel rounder, more a Gospel, than the broken-off Mark’s or the didactic Matthew’s. His gospel is carefully differentiated from the Synoptics, but in the concluding matter John does have a number of similarities with Luke; and it is only Luke who describes the Ascension. Before this, and after the women’s discovery of the empty tomb, Luke tells of the encounter with Jesus on the way to Emmaus, and then in the evening his meeting with the assembled disciples in Jerusalem. When Jesus joins the two walking disciples he is not recognised, although the reader has been told who it is. Their answer to his question about their discussion summarises the subject of the gospels and the problem they address. Jesus of Nazareth, they say, was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.90 They tell of the missing body and the report of an angelic message that Jesus is alive. But instead of meeting this with self-disclosure, or showing the wounds of the crucifixion, Jesus refers to the scriptures and explains the ‘necessity’ of suffering as a precondition of the Messiah’s entering ‘his glory’. He wants the disciples to understand that his death had not been merely a manifestation of evil, but that being predicted it was purposed. God had intended it. The true idea of Messiahship was not the popular one which ends in earthly triumph. The divine idea of Messiahship takes the Son through rejection, suffering and death to resurrection and glory in heaven. Only later when, in a way that must have been familiar to them, he broke bread, did the two disciples recognise him. Finding they had now themselves become the witnesses they had earlier sought, they went back at once to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples. This time when he came to them Jesus did show the wounds: ‘Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.’ Again he eats with them, and he re-emphasises the scriptural prediction: ‘Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of

90 Lk 24:19-21. 64 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus

Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Only now does Jesus give the first intimation of the kerygma: ‘This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ (Lk 24:46-49) As in John, the disciples are charged with continuing and extending Jesus’ mission. Their witness is commanded. The Holy Spirit, ‘breathed’ in John, is promised in Luke, and will be received by them soon in Jerusalem as an access of power. As in John, the message to be proclaimed includes the granting of forgiveness of sins, which is associated with the call to repentance. Before his Ascension, described by Luke as occurring on the Mount of Olives, Jesus was asked by his disciples for clarification about the Kingdom. Their question is framed in such a way (‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?’) as to suggest a temporal fulfilment, but Jesus, replying that the timing is not revealed, directs their attention once again to the prospect of witnessing in the power of the Holy Spirit, soon to be received. That power would be theirs ‘at this time’, and moreover would manifest the Kingdom. After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’ (Acts 1:9-11) Somewhat as at the moment of discovery of the empty tomb, there are two men, or angels, in white with an authoritative word: Jesus would return as he had predicted, and would do so in a way that resembled his going. Here described as a ‘taking up’, the sight of him obscured by a cloud, the prediction evokes the reference in the prophet Daniel to ‘one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. . . . He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. . . . His kingdom is one that shall never be destroyed.’91

Structurally, Luke’s is the strongest ending and provides a more conclusive conclusion. In his gospel Luke alludes to the Ascension but leaves the detail to be described in Acts. But Luke’s ending is also of course a transition. Jesus is for forty days in a unique state between his earthly existence and his eternal being, between his suffering and his glory. The meetings have heuristic and strategic importance for the disciples, who are reminded that the death which had so disoriented them had been predicted both by the scriptures and by Jesus. As had the resurrection.92 The disciples are given a new role as witnesses of the resurrection, their earlier mission in Galilee is to be extended to the ends of the earth and to the end of the age, until, that is, the Parousia when Jesus returns. The seed of the kerygma is now given: Jesus had had authority on

91 Dan 7:13-14. 92 E.g. Ps 16:10; Lk 9:22. 65 A GOSPEL READING: The Acts of Jesus earth to forgive sins, and he conferred that power on his disciples for the mission. When the gospels end, the connection between his death and the forgiveness of sins is ready to be made. The first Christians are at the threshold of the perception that what Jesus did went beyond communication, and was more than a frame for communication, but was itself performative, the instrument by which a salvation still to be understood had been achieved.

3 The Teaching of Jesus

How are we to approach the recorded teaching of Jesus? All the Evangelists set their readers’ expectation in their opening words: John with a Prologue stating symbolically but unambiguously that Jesus came directly from God, is God, and expresses him fully; Matthew with a Davidic genealogy to show his Messiahship; Luke by telling of the coming of God to mankind in Jesus’ unique birth; and Mark quite bluntly: ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ That Jesus, later called Christ in an antonomasia that acquired the function of a surname, was the Son of God is the primary thesis of the gospels, and the premise of the Gospel. Having stated it, the writers proceed to give their evidence, their reports of the doings and sayings of this extraordinary figure, while often conveying the strangeness felt by the first disciples, the puzzlement, and the sense that while prefigurements were to be found in the Old Testament, interpretation was not sufficiently to hand. It was as though the sun had risen, was high in the sky, but the light of it, unaccustomed and dazzling, required adjustments of perception not yet fully made. In our own generation things are hardly different. The elapse of two millennia offers a deceptive sense of perspective, but fundamentally the questions at issue are the same for us as for the first gospel readers. If God has spoken through a Son what, from an infinity of possible subjects and predications, has he chosen to utter? The questions proliferate. Which, from the multitude of issues and questions that preoccupy mankind, does such a figure take up and, by doing so, endorse? Do we glean from him an understanding of which of the things that we deem important he does too? What word is there from the Author of life on what life is, and what it is for; and, from the Word who made the universe, language, thought and the realm of possibility itself, what word is there of elucidation, command or performance? What hope does he hold out to those who suffer in this existence, and to the many victims of injustice, the oppressed, the downtrodden and the despised? And for all who want to pursue goodness, righteousness and justice, what indications does he give of God’s concern, or of his requirements? Does he allow any hope to those who have sinned or are caught in the toils of their own or others’ sin? How does he speak of his own coming, how explain it; if it is a mission to mankind, what is its object? Since temporality is fundamental to human life, what does he say about its end, individual and collective, and above all, what does he say about his own dark experience of suffering and death? If his advent was a visitation to mankind, how is our perspective changed by the contact with him, and what agenda does he lay upon us? If he champions the cause of the downtrodden, the unprivileged and the outcast, what does this mean for them, and what does it mean for his disciples? What does it mean for political and other forms of human organisation? Two thousand years on, what is it to be his disciple: what direction and help is there? If human life is overshadowed by death, which seems to be its sole certainty, what does Jesus say about death, what reason or explanation of it, what example in affronting it, and what hope of transcending or overcoming it? 68 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

Why did he teach in the way he did? It is true of language generally, as of genre, that intelligibility requires the familiar. Yet would we not expect distinctiveness in the utterances of the Son of God? What forms and media did he use, and why? What audiences are addressed in the gospels? What topics did he favour, and what (apparent?) absences and silences surprise us? What sayings are comforting and what are shocking? Of the several ‘hard sayings’, what is hard: does it lie with their Author, with the imperfect memory of his disciples, or with human nature and ourselves? What pattern, in the record we have, can be discerned of emphasis or imagery? What kind of world is created by the figuration, the parable and metaphor that Jesus uses so much; and how should it live on in those who follow? From such a Teacher we would wish to understand what the Creator and Judge is doing about the gross imperfections of the world, and about the sins and rebellion of man. What does Jesus do confronting evil, and what at the end will he do? If people can be in relationship, on terms, with God, what is the mode of the relation, how is it expressed? How overt and conscious can it be? What are the directions to be followed by individuals, and what by collectivities? Indeed are collectivities recognised, or preferred, by God, and if so, what are they? The Kingdom is a major category in Jesus’ discourse. Our reading of the gospels is arguably a search to apprehend that Kingdom, and (to adopt the terms offered) to enter and enjoy it. Aware of its distinction from the world, we want to understand as well as we can the linkage that must exist nevertheless between the world and the Kingdom, between the hidden, spiritual inward and the public, open and, spiritual perhaps, outward. Are the words about eschatological Return merely deferment, or do they have present function? It is a characteristic of thought that it handles the multiplicity and confusion of the particular by seizing upon generalities. By means of such devices as memory, imagination, metaphor and symbol we model, communicate and manipulate. The particular may stand for some other particular, or may represent a generality. Words, parables, paradigms can help us to understand our own experience or to encounter something new. In the teaching of Jesus there is a process by which the listener is moved from the experienced to the imagined, and from the imagined to the experienced. ‘Look at the birds of the air.’ ‘You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’ But the human mind can go too far in its pursuit of generality. The gospels mediate an unevenness, a scattered fragmentariness concerning the teaching of Jesus even within, for instance, the receuil of the Sermon on the Mount. Is there an implicit counter here to theory and systematisation? There has been discussion in recent years, much of it speculative, about the audiences for whom (and as were from whom) the gospels were written. More fundamental however is the identification of Jesus’ audiences, with which we may conveniently bracket consideration of his use of forms and media. In broad outline the audiences are the disciples who acknowledged Jesus as their Teacher, the crowds of people who came to witness or benefit from his miraculous healings and to listen to him, and the antagonists, men of the religious hierarchy who rejected his teaching and authority. 69 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

If that is the broad picture, the detail is less simple. There are audiences whose existence is implicit or tangential, such as Jesus’ own family, specific communities like the one represented in the synagogue at Nazareth, or the disciples of John the Baptist. Galilee and Jerusalem are differentiated, although both may be classed as ‘the people’. The antagonists are Jerusalem-based priests and other religious leaders, yet one of the disciples, Judas, allied himself with them. Moreover the disciples were not merely the Twelve. Sometimes their numbers are larger: seventy-two were sent on a mission from Galilee, and on occasion Jesus addressed a ‘crowd’ of disciples. At the Transfiguration the audience was just three. At least one disciple, Nicodemus, was a member of the Jerusalem hierarchy. Mary Magdalene joined the women among Jesus’ itinerant followers in Galilee after benefiting from an exorcism by Jesus; while the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ were one of the last audiences Jesus was to address (in Luke 24) before his death. Other audiences are identified on specific occasions, but given the broad picture, is it possible to differentiate the messages Jesus had for his audiences? To some extent it is, but first we should give a thought to the media, and to the cultural forms he made use of in order to communicate. Speech and public address, certainly, is the mode we associate with Jesus on the basis of the information given in the gospels. He was not a scribe in the sense of a writer, and unlike Moses he did not create institutions or a systematised code. His public address however did occur in a variety of settings and drew on a range of available cultural forms. As a synagogue elder he was licensed to read from the scriptures and to preach, which he did at Nazareth, Capernaum and elsewhere in Galilee. In Jerusalem he addressed crowds of worshippers, including festival pilgrims from the country and abroad, in the large Temple that Herod was having built. Through his own purposive mobility, and subsequently by delegation to disciples whom he sent on tours, he conveyed his message to audiences over a wide area in a brief time. In another role, also a culturally established type, as healer, Jesus dealt with and spoke to informal but large assemblies in out-of-doors settings in the marketplaces of towns and villages, in the open country, on hillsides and on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. On one occasion he used a disciple’s boat as a floating platform to address large numbers at the lake’s edge. The healings and exorcisms functioned, as we have seen, as complementary evidence, signs, of who Jesus was, and as illustrations that his authority and power were from God. Although their cumulative effect was unique, they can be regarded as a medium of communication. As a teacher with disciples Jesus spoke to his followers sometimes specially and apart, giving explanations of the public teaching, giving the pro forma prayer known as the Lord’s Prayer, and possibly other sayings for the disciples to get by heart. The teacher-disciple relationship had antecedents in the relation of, for example, Joshua to Moses, Samuel to Eli, Gehazi to Elisha, Baruch to Jeremiah, and more recently in the practice of John the Baptist. It was a form which Jesus exploited not only as a frame for communication, but also as a paradigm in his teaching. Prophets traditionally addressed wide audiences, and this too was a role adopted by Jesus. In the Old Testament prophecies were addressed to leaders, communities, the Jewish nation and other nations. John the Baptist cast his net widely in the society of the day, and was suspect among the contemporary 70 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus establishment for that reason. In this and other ways Jesus resembled him, and his disputations with religious leaders in and from Jerusalem constitutes a further polemical category which is markedly present in the gospels. As for the types of message for each audience, it would be simple if one set of teaching were given to the crowds, and another to the disciples. Mark indeed suggests in his early chapters that Jesus taught mainly the crowds, then after Peter’s confession he reports fewer healings and describes Jesus as teaching the disciples, and the crowds less often. The nature miracles were witnessed by the disciples alone (the storm, walking on the lake), and also by a big crowd (the five thousand). Parables were used with all three audiences, disciples, crowds and antagonists. The Good Samaritan, for example, was part of a virtually polemic exchange with an expert in the Jewish law, and the Parable of the Tenants was told to, and against, the antagonists. We find Jesus using with this last group rabbinic forms of disputation, teasing out implication from scriptural texts, or responding to a dilemma with another to his questioners. The searching demands and inward standards of the Sermon on the Mount are stated by Matthew to have been given to disciples. Nevertheless the teaching was quite likely given on more than one occasion, and certainly the purport of the Beatitudes is invitation and introduction to discipleship, and applicable to those who have not yet put their hand to the plough. So what is said by Jesus to each audience? To the crowds his message has two edges: there is compassion for the variety of human need and suffering, for injustice and mortality; and the compassion is complemented by the power to heal, to lift affliction and even to remit a person’s sins. There are encouragements and promises such as those of the Beatitudes, which are closely associated with the Kingdom of God and with Jesus’ own person. The second edge is the reminder and warning of God’s judgement, with which again Jesus is personally associated. The response required is repentance, the adoption of God’s way of righteousness and, amounting to the same thing, to become a disciple of Jesus. Disciples are taught the principles and the practicalities of the way of life God requires. The emulation of Jesus, concern for the poor and needy, prayer, a high, monogamous, standard in sexual morality and a distinctive one on divorce, plus a practical love that extends beyond family, brotherhood or nationality to the ‘neighbour’, even to an enemy, are included. The teaching builds on the messages to the crowds, so that what is said about righteousness and love substantiates the idea of repentance, while the promises and encouragements are illustrated to disciples by signs like the Transfiguration and by parables of the Kingdom. For the disciples specifically, Jesus had information about himself, his provenance, identity, role and mission. He kept this for the time being, until the moment for witness and mission had come, within the family of disciples. This programme is what lies behind the repeated injunctions to secrecy, and the sayings about the privilege, compared with predecessors, of the disciples as witnesses of the acts and words of Jesus. Versions of it spilt over to outsiders and reached establishment people in Jerusalem, who took it not as good news but as bad. Coming in person or through representatives to Jesus, the antagonists were suspicious and soon hostile. Any talk of him as Son of God or Messiah prompted an a priori indignation: the claim must be inordinate, must be blasphemous. Such antagonists did not come as witnesses of what the crowds 71 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus saw and heard, but came with test questions and polemic, parti pris, and soon found themselves at the judgemental edge of what in Revelation was termed the sword of his mouth. ‘You belong to your father, the devil.’ Jesus told them in John 8:44. Titles clearly were important, they comprised a capsule of allusion more dense than incident or story, and governed attitude and discourse. Jesus pulled up an eager suppliant for calling him, with insufficient thought about all that was involved, Good Teacher. The Evangelists, as we have noticed, take it as their starting point that Jesus is the Son of God, which being an assumption, a belief, of disciples suggests that new disciples may have been the Evangelists’ audience. But the gospels describe a journey by which this understanding is reached, so that the reader sees and hears, as it were, through their witness, as did the crowds and the first disciples. That this man was the Son of God, as Matthew has the centurion say, is both their conclusion and their starting point. Yet, because of the crucifixion, and because of the injunctions to secrecy, it is a conclusion that is hard won. Jesus’ strategy of secrecy for the first stage of his ministry may also help explain the otherwise mystifying title Son of Man, which allows him to objectify, as in another manner did the parables, predication about himself. By means of this device he speaks of himself in the third person, invoking the large claims that risked antagonistic stumbling and offence. ‘Men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory,’ he says in a context (Mark 13) where Jesus, the Christ, the Son of Man and the Son of God are equivalent. Is there not, moreover, a likelihood of ironic play in the resemblance of the two titles Son of God and Son of Man? By a device of comic understatement and disparity Jesus can say one thing but gesture towards another, can refer to his humanity while confirming to his disciple audiences his divine origin. ‘The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ The secret is kept, coded, among the restricted audience until the time for proclamation. Moreover the key to the code is already, in Daniel 7:13, in the public domain. Although the figure of the Lord’s Anointed was identifiable in the scriptures, the title Messiah did not have much currency in Jesus’ generation.1 When Peter ventured it at his famous confession Jesus both confirmed its applicability and warned the disciples that they were not yet to tell this to others. They had not begun to understand what the Messiah was to do, or what surprisingly high costs to himself were to be incurred. This he now began to explain. But the gospel witness admits it was a slow learning process, not completed until the death had been followed by resurrection. In the discussion that follows we shall consider some major themes of the teaching of Jesus: the Kingdom and judgement, righteousness and love, discipleship and mission. Some of the large questions to which Jesus supplies answers, or the beginnings of answers, have been raised here. The questions with which we read, and the understandings which our questions give rise to, flow from context and intertext, and these can function across large spans of time. In a gospel reading the prophetic tradition must play a prominent, even a

1 ‘Messiah was not a common title at the time of Jesus,’ Graham Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, 1989, p. 224; c.f. Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus, 2000, pp. 28ff. See also below, p.117. 72 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus normative, part. What the teaching of Jesus is not is a legal system with measurable objectives; a merely ethical code setting out what is and is not righteous conduct; a rule or series of actions which a disciple must undertake to attain salvation; some inspirational gestures in the direction of love and tolerance; an alternative to the ties and obligations of ‘real’ social life; a license exempting the disciple from taxes and other duties to society; a schema for the church’s organisation; a schema for society’s organisation; or a panacea to make the individual effortlessly sinless, holy, perfect, healthy or successful.

The Kingdom

The Parable of the Weeds The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’ (Mt 13:24-30)

Although introduced as about the Kingdom, the first questions this parable raises are about the world: ‘Where did the weeds come from?’ and ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ If we allow a broad equivalence between the farmer and the Creator, the parable is predicated on the purpose, represented by crop cultivation, which God has for his creation. As the crop is threatened by insidious weeds so God’s purpose is threatened by evil, the action of an enemy. At once we are given a wide view of the Kingdom as what God intends in creating the world, the goal towards which he is moving it. That his intention is not realised poses a question from which others depend: what is the impediment, what its origin, why was it allowed any opportunity, and why was it not at once overcome? Characterising the problem as caused by God’s enemy, Jesus identifies both the power that is opposed to God and a way that is not his will. The universe in other words comprehends alternatives and choices between alternatives. The parable’s reach does not extend to explanation of primordial evil, instead it directs the listener’s attention to the creative, corrective purpose of the farmer who, biding his time, making use of time, literally sorts the problem out. By the time of harvest there will be no confusion. The wheat will have developed all the properties of wheat, the weeds will manifest their own different properties, and the harvesters will complete the sort, keeping the crop and discarding the weeds, which then burn with the chaff. The parable is more than a story with one simple point. It brings within its frame several entities, the farmer/Father, his servants, his enemy, his land and his purpose of cultivation. Time is functional and subtends at least four dramatic events: the two sowings, the servants’ questioning, the harvest with 73 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus its two actions for wheat and weeds. All these interact, develop. Narrative devices such as complication and dénouement are there, and the disciple audience no doubt identifies with the farmer’s servants, indignant at the malicious damage, eager to help resolve the problem. The setting for Jesus’ narration is an extended discourse about the Kingdom of heaven at or soon after the occasion when he taught from a boat. ‘He did not say anything to them,’ Matthew adds, ‘without using a parable.’2 The stories and images are not self-contained, but refer beyond themselves to the realm of God or, as in the present instance, to the world in process of moving to the fulfilment of God’s purpose for it. ‘God’s rule’ is an adequate basic definition of ‘Kingdom’, but the parables extend and qualify the concept. While some point to realisation, transcendence and resolution, others highlight its hiddenness, deferment and cost. This parable addresses the problem of evil, recognising in the servants’ questions the large need for judgement and for justice to be done. Evil is overcome at the end by God. Jesus predictively puts forward the Kingdom as solution not, it seems, individually or locally, but cosmically. We have noticed that the question of the enemy’s origin and powers is not taken head-on, and one might observe that Jesus’ own role in the Kingdom as indicated elsewhere is not included. The parable achieves nevertheless a compact statement giving grounds for hope and faith on an issue that perennially perplexes the human mind. The process of completion involves judgement. It occurs over time and perhaps at the end of time. In another parable concerning judgement, Jesus forward shifts the focus to the variety of responses made to the message of the Kingdom. In the parable known as the Sower, it is not so much the presence of evil but the degrees of responsiveness that we are made to think about.

The Sower

Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: ‘Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times.’ Then Jesus said, ‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’ (Mk 4:1-9)

This is what the audience was left with on the first occasion. Jesus gave his explanation to the Twelve later, ‘when he was alone’. The narrative effects for those first hearers are of development and outcome. It was no surprise after hearing that some seed fell in the wrong places that it didn’t grow. Expectation is set and then met, and there may be some interest or pleasure in hearing the points made and the expected reasons set out (‘because the soil was shallow . .

2 Mt 13:34. 74 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

. because they had no root’). The little story’s impact is in its concluding image of fecundity. These are big yields and make a stark contrast with the itemised losses. The listener, given a picture of an exponential gain, is to infer that this is an aspect of the Kingdom Jesus was proclaiming and offering. So far, the parable is similar to that of the mustard seed,3 it is a means to attract attention, extend a promise and give clues as to how fulfilment will take place. What clues? Not many, but by putting parables together patterns can be discerned. The parable of the mustard seed illustrates marked change, growth and transformation from seed to tree. The sower is paralleled in other parables where a farmer, lord or proprietor is a representative of God. Perceiving this, the listener is left to think about what, if anything, the seed is that God broadcasts and that can bring such big returns at the harvest. In his explanation to the Twelve Jesus clarifies what the seed represents: ‘Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop − thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.’ (Mk 4:13-20) He also characterises the devouring birds as Satan, and the quick, early growth on shallow soil as glad response to the word. The heat of the sun is trouble or persecution ‘because of the word’, and the thorns find their equivalent in the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth and desires for other things. Jesus’ explanation directs attention to people, and to the types of response they make. There is not in this parable a single event, like the enemy’s sowing in the parable of the Weeds, to account for what happens in terms of spiritual powers, but instead a diversity with human focus. Again Jesus recognises freewill, and appeals to his audience to be aware of the choice before them and to make the response described as hearing the word, accepting it and producing a crop for the farmer. As for the word, it must be something characteristic of Jesus, not the prophetic ‘word of the Lord’, nor a synonym for the Law, but Jesus’ own teaching. It is a word which provokes Satanic opposition, brings joy to the hearts of those who receive it, but entails trouble or persecution. The Kingdom it refers to is different from the world, and from worldly preoccupations, which exert an often fatal counter-attraction. The same point is made in the saying on Mammon. The parable is one of large promise, offering the prospect of participation in a rich and plentiful harvest. It is an alluring image, an invitation, yet although the reference is defined sharply enough to work in this way, the referenced plenitude is left to the hearer’s imagination and faith. There is no identified equivalent here, but no closing off either, and further parables, or experience, may provide interpretative help. The harvest is the realised Kingdom, but we have only symbols, figures and glimpses of it.

3 Mk 4:30-32, c.f. 26-29. 75 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

As soon as it is made, such a statement seems to require qualification, and from this context. For between the telling of the parable and the private explanation the synoptic Evangelists report some teaching about teaching, parable about parable:

The disciples came to him and asked, ‘Why do you speak to the people in parables?’ He replied, ‘The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’ In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’ ‘But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’ (Mt 13:10- 17)

Again we have a clear enough reference to increase and abundance, and can recognise an observable principle of nature and of human relations. When the question, More of what? comes to mind, an answer is available from the context: more knowledge of the Kingdom. Jesus is developing the point made in the parable of the Sower about the variety of people’s response, adding a dichotomy between the disciples who have knowledge of the Kingdom and the wider audiences who do not. That, he says, is the important distinction. In terms he uses elsewhere, a person may get to the banquet but not have the right dress, may speak the language and call Jesus Lord, but not be known by him, may press towards the sheep pen, but not belong to the shepherd’s flock.4 Much of what Jesus says about the Kingdom suggests deferred fulfilment, and concepts like anticipation, waiting and secrecy apply. Yet here Jesus is telling his disciples that knowledge of the Kingdom, and of things to do with it which they have, are hidden from others. He affirms that what they see and hear is a fulfilment of the anticipation of earlier generations, and a revelation of what until now has been known only in symbols, figures and glimpses. Jesus himself embodies the Kingdom. His acts and words are fulfilments of, for example, prophecies made by Isaiah like this one about looking without seeing, hearing without listening. Quite apart from its original application in Isaiah’s day, it describes the fitful response of Jesus’ contemporaries, a response just characterised in other terms in the parable. In both, the rhetoric works to produce a response: Jesus by holding out an image of an astonishing rate of gain, Isaiah by provoking, almost taunting his hearers until he comes to the compassionate motive of God, who wants his people’s repentance so that he can heal them. When he replies to the disciples’ question by saying that whoever has will be given more, Jesus is reverting to his theme of yield, using its appeal to enlist the disciples’ attention. His point is Isaiah’s: people have to respond, for only through heartfelt response and repentance can the healing of God reach them.

4 Mt 22:11; 7:21; 25:33. 76 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

Moreover healing is often an image for the peace and blessing of God, and for salvation.5 The disciples are uniquely placed by their closeness to Jesus to hear and listen to his word. This parable and its explanation promise huge reward for such heeding, while signalling that such reward is different from the customary preoccupations of the world.

The Mustard Seed and the Yeast Jesus introduces these two parables, which are scarcely more than images, as similes. The Kingdom of God is outside people’s experience and therefore comparisons and representations are needed. The unfamiliar spiritual is discerned in the familiar things of the world.

Jesus asked, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.’ Again he asked, ‘What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.’ (Lk 13:18-21)

Mark and Matthew enlarge, if that is the word, on the mustard seed’s small size. Its change from something small and granular into the extensive structure of the tree is the point: not merely growth is involved but transformation. The effect of yeast in dough likewise is both to enlarge and to bring about a qualitative change. So what does this say about the Kingdom? It suggests, for one thing, that it is greater than the world, where greater, as in other usage, moves beyond physical size to connote importance and value. For another, it suggests a fulfilment of potential and the manifestation of a latency which we might identify with the Creator’s purpose in making things the way they are. The qualitative change suggests that the life to which Jesus calls disciples is morally and spiritually different from their ordinary life. Terms like righteousness and holiness begin to operate, and the volitional change involved in repentance starts to apply. Finally the metamorphosis dramatises the possibility of transition from the world of mankind to the transcendent realm of God. The difference is in a sense absolute, yet Jesus’ Kingdom teaching has much in it of the possibility of bridging this daunting interval. Some Church Fathers may have suggested fanciful analogues for the planter and for the birds, but any disciple is implicitly invited to venture an identification with the seed that becomes in God’s purposes something so much greater and so different from what it is in itself. Does Jesus necessarily imply transcendence for the Kingdom, or is this something he leaves open? Is his own destination, and the one he proposes for his disciples, really other and elsewhere, or are we to understand inwardness and moral change as fulfilling such Kingdom references? Certainly there is a motif within Jesus’ teaching of inwardness, which is associated with righteousness. Superficial and hypocritical displays of religious observance are exposed as futile; God looks on the heart, and requires the inside of the cup to be clean as well as the outside.6 Another theme is of Judgement, a cosmic event which changes the world, putting an end to all that is wrong with it. So

5 Jer 8:20-22; 17:14; Is 53:5. 6 Lk 16:15; Mt 23:26. 77 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus much so, that the continued existence of the world comes into question. Beyond is the enduring Kingdom.7 Some of Jesus’ words are predicated on discontinuity between the present and the post-Judgemental Kingdom: ‘Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.’8 ‘Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed.’9 In an exchange with some Sadducees, sceptics concerning resurrection, Jesus was explicit about the difference between the present world and the Kingdom. ‘The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.’ (Lk 20:34-36) His disciples are under instruction on how they may be considered worthy of taking their place in that quite different and godly age.

Judgement If the world was made by God and, magnificent though it is, there is so much amiss, the question arises of what the Creator does about evil. Much of the answer is summed up in the idea of his Judgement, a sweeping intervention to complete what is demanded by his justice. Jesus confirms the expectation of such an event which the prophets and John the Baptist had predicted. His parables suggest that the evil will be identified and eliminated, and that the good will increase in or for its new environment. With Judgement other concepts are entailed, such as sin, the aspect of evil for which mankind bears responsibility, and the Return of Jesus to execute the final process of justice. A common motif in his teaching is the function of the deferment of the Judgement and Return, which becomes a time of waiting, a test and an opportunity.

The Talents Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his property to them. To one he gave five talents of money, to another two talents, and to another one talent, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. But the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received the five talents brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five talents. See, I have gained five more.’ His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ The man with the two talents also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two talents; see, I have gained two more.’

7 Mk 23:24-27,31. 8 Lk 16:9. 9 Lk 16:26. 78 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ Then the man who had received the one talent came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ (Mt 25:14-30)

Not the world of farming this time, but of mercantilism. In the absence of the owner, money can be invested either in business enterprises or as a cash deposit. As today higher risk can bring bigger returns. But Jesus does not analyse the investment strategy of the portfolio, only the performance which from eight talents yields seven. The human story behind the numbers centers on three servants, two of whom are active investors, entrepreneurial. They are holders of larger funds than the third man, and it is reasonable to assume that their past record of service was thus already rewarded in the opening scene. Every one who has will be given more. When the master returns, his calling in of accounts is a judgement in which the servants’ achievement decides their future. Before them is the possibility of a future with the master, a sphere of greater responsibility, of enjoyment of the master’s trust, and of sharing his happiness for, we may infer,10 his trip has met with success. Presented with one hundred percent gains he has reason to be satisfied with the two who have put his money to work, and he commends their results and their faithfulness. In their achievement he discerns not merely the enthusiasm of successful business activity, but also goodness and loyalty. These have not been the profits of oppression, or gains made by dishonest methods. The ego so often prominent in entrepreneurial motivation has been kept in subordination to the master’s wishes and interests. The third man’s presentation is a failed attempt at rhetoric. His image from husbandry essays a generalisation about the master intended to have a double effect: that he will recognise himself in the idea of gathering from places he has not personally sowed, and that, in good humour perhaps because of his gains, he will want to deny that he is ‘hard’ or unjust and treat the inactive servant generously. But the third man is in no position to suggest that his master’s gains are unmerited, and the master echoes his accusation with no inflection of agreement. Turning the words back on the servant’s head he points out that his merely custodial policy has neglected the option to earn interest on the sum. He is revealed in the judgement to be lazy, mendacious, ‘wicked’. In financial terms the master has done well in that eight talents have grown to fifteen, but his real interest seems to be in the goodness and fidelity of his servants. Here the tally is only two out of three, and the ending

10 Lk 19:15. 79 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus reinforces the principle seen at work from the story’s beginning that achievement is cumulative, that more is given to him who has. The bad third servant is cast out into the dark, whence are heard sounds of weeping and gnashing teeth. Is this merely a final flourish providing a heightening touch to a peremptory dismissal? From the Parable of the Weeds we can derive an answer. Judgement involves both sorting and the discarding of what does not conform to the Creator’s purpose. As with weeds which are sorted from the crop and destroyed, so with people. Jesus leaves some details of hell obscure, but his images of darkness, crying, devouring worm, smouldering fire and gnashing teeth convey a sense of the horror of it.11 The Parable of the Talents, then, is a parable of Judgement and Return. In it sin and righteousness are illustrated, both of them in moral terms, for the reward and punishment are not a function of business success. On other occasions and in non-figurative language, Jesus tells his disciples that he will return,12 and that the Judgement of God will decide everything for good. His parables warn, they may even threaten, but they urge the hearer to take the better course, to choose the way of discipleship and of life.

I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. (Lk 12:4-5) Human life is ‘about’ more than itself, or mere health, safety, or even justice for the world we are familiar with. God’s Judgement of each person has an outcome in another existence, and Jesus’ mission was to alert people to God’s call through him. When he apostrophises Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, towns where he was a familiar figure, his audience is in fact his own disciples:

Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgement than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me. (Lk 10:13-16)

He is briefing the Seventy-two on their mission and has just told them that towns which reject them and the message of his coming Kingdom are to be abandoned to their fate. On the day when the Kingdom comes, the Day of the Lord and of Judgement, it will be ‘more bearable’ for Sodom than for the towns that reject Jesus’ emissaries (v. 12). Sodom’s destruction described in Genesis 19 is, it seems, an archetype of Judgement. The town where ’s nephew Lot had settled with his family was blotted out by smouldering, sulphurous precipitation. Genesis attributes the natural disaster to God, who is provoked by the immorality of the townspeople: the catastrophe has a moral cause and, since Lot and his daughters are saved, it is selective. These features recur in the teaching of Jesus on Judgement, which is morally based and, while it is selective, is universal. But although no

11 Mk 9:42-39; Mt 25:46. 12 Mk 13:21-27. 80 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus individual or community escapes, it is possible to be saved. From these words it is clear that the people of Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum have neglected the numerous opportunities provided by the words and actions of Jesus to abandon evil and take the way of God. Are these towns especially corrupt, as Sodom is depicted as being in Genesis? Typically corrupt, one might surmise, but their sin is compounded by their neglect of God’s emissary, the Son of Man. They compare unfavourably with Tyre, an area Jesus visited, and Sidon, some of whose people came to him,13 which Jewish listeners would have been inclined to dismiss as outlandish heathen cities, sinks of iniquity. The special privilege of the Galilean towns as witnesses to his miracles and teaching has been ignored, and that itself worsens their guilt. Jesus uses a comparable argument to some Pharisees when he says, ‘If you were blind you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.’14 The Judgement of God is deferred, is awaited, but not entirely. In significant respects it encroaches into present experience and is reflected in contemporary events as well as in the conditions of human life. Some sense of this underlies the comment or question brought to Jesus concerning the early deaths of certain, presumably pious, Galileans.

Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them − do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. (Lk 13:1-5)

God is often assumed to regulate the incidence of premature death in accordance with the demands of justice. In this naive but prevalent assumption the early death punishes the sinner while the godly person can expect to be spared. Many Old Testament texts can be cited in support,15 but Jesus, who himself faced the prospect of early death, points out that such a death need not signify the punishment by God of wickedness. God may rather love than hate those who die unjustly, and the thing to fear is not death but the ultimate extinction that can lie beyond. Nothing is known from other sources of the Tower of Siloam, but for us whose ‘news’ seems so much to be a concatenation of disasters, it can stand as representative. Jesus anticipates the question of why God allows it to happen, why these victims were killed and not others, and his answer is that such things do not embody an individually differentiated Judgement. The eighteen killed by the collapse of the tower, like the victims of disease or deformity,16 are not shown by what befalls them to be more guilty than their fellows. But there is a moral lesson to be drawn. Luke omits the intermediate step as obvious, as Jesus may have done: the misfortunes dramatise and exemplify the lot of everyman. All are subject to death, and that subjection is a divine disposition, is an aspect

13 Mk 7:24, 3:8. 14 Jn 9:41. 15 E.g. Prov 3:1-2, but c.f. Ps 1 which suggests the context of a Judgement that transcends circumstances. 16 Jn 9:3. 81 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus of Judgement. So pervasive are the effects of sin that the human world requires, if not total destruction, a renewal in which the evil is sorted out and destroyed.17 Death makes an end of the individual life, and of the effects within it of sin, but Jesus’ parables hold out the offer of new life beyond death. In terms of what he says here the ultimate fate illustrated by calamitous death can be avoided. It is possible in God’s Kingdom, which transcends our experience of time and space, not to perish. Jesus’ condition, reminiscent of John the Baptist, is repentance. By virtue of human mortality then, the Judgement is already in process. A key feature is that of selection, of identifying the good. Righteousness and its contrary, sin, therefore becomes determinative, and a person’s move, by whatever means, from the one to the other sphere is a matter of consuming interest. One of the most renowned of Jesus’ parables focuses on an individual effecting such a move. He is by nature impatient, dissatisfied with the affluent circumstances of his life, rebellious where no provocation has been given, and ambitious only for self-indulgence.

The Lost Son There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. (Lk 15:11-24)

In Luke’s narrative the parable follows two stories of the lost being found, and both of them, by using the term repentance, add the dimension of subjectivity. From the perspective of heaven the lost is recovered. From that of the person concerned, there is a change of perception and a new direction is taken. Jesus’ story looks glancingly but profoundly into the heart of the younger son. He is not named, but ever since Jacob younger sons had been marked for leading roles. Our hero however has no better reason for striking out and away from his family than his own restlessness. His first demand suggests impatience: he grows tired of waiting for the wealth that he can expect to inherit at his father’s

17 C.f. the sentence of God in the time of , Gen. 6. 82 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus death. His demand for his share of land could well have sounded in his father’s ears as a wish for his demise. If it did, there is no hint of reproach, and the younger son is instated, like his elder brother, over a proportion of the property. He is not long satisfied with the new arrangement. Making whatever sales are possible to him, he liquidates his inheritance and sets off with considerable funds for a distant country, claiming perhaps that the opportunities there were bigger than those at home. With a few graphic details the narrative brings him to ruin and an unaccustomed sense of loss, isolation, humiliation and physical deprivation. Partly, no doubt, on account of these pressures, his perceptions change. The loss of his money has forced him to work as a hired labourer, a condition which at home he would have despised. Now the life at his father’s farm enjoyed by the employees seems preferable to his own miserable existence, and the instructive comparison prompts the thought that he would be better as a servant there than here as a tearaway son. There is nothing left however for him to bargain with, no success, no residue of money, no entitlement. With a new humility he resolves to appeal to his father for a chance to come back as an employee; moreover he will admit the wrong of his actions and attitudes, a wrong whose implications transcend the merely human: ‘I have sinned against heaven’. Admitting the wrong implies the choice of the right, and this resolve carried through to a return constitutes the illustration of repentance. The narrative perspective now switches to the father. There is potential for suspense over his attitude after such behaviour and after such an absence, but the telling moves swiftly to his readiness to welcome back his son. Time and experience have had their effect on the young man, and the father’s point of view is that of heaven in the preceding parables: a son lost has been found. The meeting which could so easily have been an occasion of recrimination, indeed of judgement, is a reunion and a celebration in which father and son are reconciled. Other parables use the topos of a banquet in such a way.18 The feast makes a sufficient conclusion. The parable has illustrated its points concerning sin, repentance and the lost being found. And it is remarkable that the very circumstances of home life which so irked the son to begin with, come to seem desirable when, after the discipline of trouble, he seeks reconciliation with his father and with ‘heaven’. But there is a rider, and this time the point of view is that of the elder brother. He too makes a comparison, between his brother’s homecoming and his own of that day, and resents the reward given to bad conduct. Jesus raised the issue in another parable where labourers who had worked a full day grumble at getting the same pay as others who worked only the last hour.19 Like those labourers the elder son is aggrieved at what he considers to be the injustice, the discrepancy. For him the occasion should have been a judgement in the sense of a punitive recompense for his brother who had depleted the family’s landholding and squandered the proceeds on dissolute living. His father’s reply directs his thought to a larger concept of judgement and to other concerns than those of retribution. It is true that the younger son’s actions had been destructive and wrong, but the essential for resolution has occurred in his

18 E.g. Lk 14:15-24. 19 Mt 20:1-16. 83 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus repentance and in his Father’s kindness. Alongside Judgement there is a place for repentance, reconciliation and gladness. As it is in the human story so, Jesus suggests, it is in respect to heaven. Between this life and the glory of the Kingdom of heaven there is a discontinuity. It is not possible to speak of it as one with this age, or with our time. The promise that some contemporaries would witness ‘these things’,20 must apply either metonymically, perhaps to the Resurrection, or to individuals taken out of time. It is not possible to speak of it as located spatially on the earth, although the Kingdom’s coming is to be prayed and worked for. Even that petition however uses the language of locality to accord precedence to a non-earthly heaven: ‘. . . on earth as it is in heaven.’ Yet from this time to that, from this place to that, Jesus offers junctures. In one image, the outcome of our Judgement, or selection for the Kingdom, is decided by the relation to him or his we have adopted in the present life. ‘No one who has left home . . . for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in the present age . . . and in the age to come, eternal life.’21 In another image, drawing on the parabolic sayings, faithful but naive disciples assume they are to be given conspicuous rewards: ‘Let one of us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.’22 In yet another, the purpose of discipleship is described as to be conducted on a way to a destination in another place. ‘Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am my servant also will be.’23 With the discontinuity then, there are threads of continuity provided by the words of Jesus, by his acts, and by his presence. An event of apocalyptic proportions, the Day of the Lord gathers the threads together. In it, Jesus exercises a dominant role, for he is the eponymous Lord. ‘At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.’ (Mk 13:26-27) The gathering, sifting angels of the parables work powerfully, comprehensively at his command when he returns to the earth. The time will be fulfilled, the waiting over, and things that have been told in figures will come to pass on history’s final stage and in the always new environment that is decreed to supervene.

Love Love is manifest in the forbearance and the forgiveness of the father in the parable of the Lost Son, and it is a quality Jesus teaches and himself practises. The gospels observe that he looked at a petitioner ‘and loved him’, that he regarded a crowd of people as harassed and helpless ‘like sheep without a shepherd’, and that he wept over Jerusalem.24 The association has become familiar, so that we too easily, perhaps, bracket Jesus and love, forgetting the anger to which the gospels also allude,25 and that love can be difficult to

20 Mk 13:30. 21 Mk 10:30, c.f. Mt 25:11-12. 22 Mk 10:37. 23 Jn 12:26. 24 Mk 10:21; Mt 9:36; Lk 19:41, c.f. 13:34. 25 Jn 2:16. 84 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus reconcile with justice and judgement. Recompense rather than love was expected, not without some justification, by the elder brother of the Lost Son. But if forgiveness and love are the rule for all occasions of conflict and sin, what becomes of justice? Did Jesus avoid conflict always, or did he oppose those who spoke against him?26 If love can have problems of coexistence with justice, can the same be said of love and truth? Jesus’ teaching left his disciples in no doubt that their new life of repentance and of training for the Kingdom of God was to be characterised by goodness. In the contemporary climate this would be taken to mean studious obedience to the law of Moses. Making a distinction between the law of God and human traditions,27 Jesus endorsed the law,28 but took his disciples on further. It is a theme of the Sermon on the Mount that a disciple’s personal goodness is to exceed that of Pharisees. Righteousness is a matter of the heart, of seeking reconciliation instead of conflict, opting for kindness in place of enmity, and looking to God and the interests of others rather than one’s own.29 Giving to the poor and needy, though without ostentation, was part of the pattern of Jesus’ teaching, and it was his practice to allocate donated money for the relief of the poor.30 Prayer, fasting, asceticism and giving formed a continuum in the teaching, for discipleship was about the realisation on earth of things in heaven; and conversely, the disciple who refused to forgive on earth could not expect to receive forgiveness from heaven. Disciples were to love one another,31 and even their enemies. The reason derives from God himself, whom Jesus teaches his disciples to know as Father. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5:43:48) Where a Jeremiah or a John the Baptist might be said, with a grain of distortion, to declare the judgemental aspect of man’s relation with God, Jesus brings intimacy with God within the disciple’s grasp. Often using the figure of treasure saved in heaven by dint of good done on earth, he encourages the disciple to view himself as one of God’s sons, an accepted member of his household and doing, childlike, what he sees his Father do. God is patient, like the farmer who lets the weeds grow for the time being, towards good and evil people alike, and the disciple/son should adopt the same attitude. God’s gifts as Creator continue to all, and the disciple should in the same way give to the needy without screening their moral worth. Such conduct carried out for such reason constitutes, in the teaching of Jesus, love. ‘If you obey my commands you will remain in my love,’ is how it is expressed in John’s gospel, and there the repeated pattern is one of replication

26 Jn 5. 27 Mk 7:7. 28 Mt 5:17. 29 Mt 5-7. 30 Mt 6:1-4, 26:8-11; Jn 13:29. 31 Jn 15:12. 85 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus by the disciple of what Jesus as pre-eminent Son derives from the Father. Love in obedience and obedience in love is how Jesus ‘remains’ in the Father, and when he tells his disciples to love each other he adds, referring ahead to his own obedience to the death: ‘Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’32 His is therefore a love that looks both ways, to the Father as obedience, and to the friends, as providing reconciliation. Agape (the word in the Greek) thus consists for the disciple largely of emulation of both the Father and the Son, and of obedience to the commands of Jesus’ teaching. Its beneficiary is the brother or sister in the faith, but especially the weak or needy. Because it is not conditional upon a record of goodness or repentance, the beneficiary may not necessarily be a brother at all, may even belong to a group customarily regarded with hostility.

The Good Samaritan Pace Augustine and other interpreters of allegorical bent, this parable differs from many in that rather than representing or symbolising, it illustrates. Correctly, the interlocutor has stated the importance in the Law of love for one’s neighbour, and Jesus tells the story to provide an example both of who a neighbour might be, and what it is to love him.

On one occasion an expert in the Law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘What is written in the Law?’ he replied. ‘How do you read it?’ He answered: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ‘You have answered correctly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’ In reply Jesus said: ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ‘But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. “Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.” ‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?’ The expert in the Law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’ (Lk 10:25-37)

Having gathered that Jesus held out the prospect of inheriting life in the eternal Kingdom of God, the teacher of the Law puts a question. Since it was a test question, we might surmise that he adopts Jesus’ concept hypothetically, tongue in cheek, and that he wants to manoeuvre the wonder-working rabbi onto the ground of his own specialism. Evenly, Jesus asks him for his own considered view, and receives a reply from two places in the Torah that would accord with most shades of rabbinic opinion.33 It is a reply Jesus commends.

32 Jn 15:10,13. 33 Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18. 86 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

He too lets a hypothesis pass: that in keeping of the Law there is eternal life. For the subject in hand goes significantly beyond legal observance. Obedience to the Law is a formulation of obedience to God, and that occurs as an aspect of a relationship in which the word love becomes appropriate. As Moses explains in Deuteronomy 6, the commandments are from God who delivered his people and brought them to birth. He is one, and can be known, recognised and loved. Obedience and righteousness are the way to do this, and if the Law is followed there are covenant blessings from God for his people. First priority in the Law is given to relationship with God, but that relationship subsumes, and is often expressed in, relationships with others, with neighbours in fact. Here too the Torah uses the word love, urging God’s people to prefer reconciliation to quarrelling, to forgive rather than avenge. It is a theme taken up by Jesus, but he goes further than the Law: the passage in Leviticus 19 refers to attitudes and conduct between Israelites, whereas this parable gains much of its point through the crossing of national and religious boundaries. ‘Do this and you will live,’ says Jesus, picking out another reference in the Torah to its laws: ‘the man who obeys them will live by them.’34 Does he endorse a doctrine of salvation by obedience? If so, subsequent interpreters, notably Paul, are contradicted before they have spoken. More likely, the sense is that the introduction of love into the frame, and the awareness of the two complementary dimensions, suggest that the interlocutor is well down the way to truth and life. And if it did appear that the one necessary condition for entry to the Kingdom had been stated, then Jesus’ admonition may have conveyed a nuance to draw the questioner on, to make him see, if not for reasons to do with the pursuit of truth, then so as to prove himself before an audience, that there was more to the matter than a rounded summary. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ he asked. The story shifts the ground from the general to the specific, from theory to practice, from talk to action. The concise opening claims the listeners’ attention. The protagonist, assumed to be a Jew, falls victim in a familiar situation to a familiar danger. The point of view shifts to the priest, then to the Levite. Both could invoke tradition, even perhaps the Law, to justify keeping their distance. If the unfortunate man can be classified as a dead body, there is contamination in contact.35 The fourth point of view is that of a traveller identified as a Samaritan, a signal to this audience of unenlightened thinking about the traditions of Israel. But this man’s unreflective sympathy links back to Jesus’ opening, and the sympathy it aroused in his audience. ‘When he saw him he took pity on him.’ The human response found practical and generous expression. A self-evident need was to be met. An impulse as fundamental will prompt a woman, when she sees its need, to care for a young child not her own. The business which takes the story to a conclusion makes a point about the Samaritan’s attention to detail. The job he does is thorough, he makes the victim’s recovery his own project, treating him as a neighbour on the basis of the need which he had fallen upon. Often Jesus leaves his parables to make their effect on the thinking listener, but on this occasion his pointed question involves the questioner: the examiner is examined, and the moral is drawn.

34 Lev 18:5. 35 Lev 22:4. 87 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

From the perception of the neighbour’s need follows the action of love that God looks for. Now that he knows, the Law specialist must act in this way. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives the Father as model for the disciples’ patience and love. In John’s gospel, as in the writings of Paul, the outline form of Jesus’ own life also has this function. The occasion, shortly before his arrest, when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, is accorded in John a special importance. In his gospel standing in lieu of the Last Supper of the Synoptics, it is parabolic, both representational and illustrative. When Jesus here explains his life and death, his mission, he does so in terms of love.

It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil had already prompted Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘You do not realise now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘No,’ said Peter, ‘you shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’ ‘Then, Lord,’ Simon Peter replied, ‘not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!’ Jesus answered, ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.’ For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean. When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.’ (Jn 13:1-17)

Jesus had told his disciples that among themselves the ruler was to be ‘like one who serves’.36 Here, the personal service he renders is that of a domestic slave and, like the service of the Good Samaritan, it meets personal need. Jesus is all the while leader and teacher, and says as much, but he demonstrates that leadership can be exercised in the direction of humility and in the service of others. He intends the disciples to take him literally: ‘you also should wash one another’s feet’, but when he adds, ‘I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you,’ an additional reference is layered over the literal. It becomes a statement of general import, connected with the course and direction of his life as a whole. John has signalled this generality of reference in the introductory words, and the concluding affirmations confirm that the specific example is for emulation in various ways. No one will be accounted great in the Kingdom who does not serve like this. As a parable, an acted parable, moving to a gnomic conclusion the episode resembles the Good Samaritan or the Unjust Judge. Above the moral conclusion however there is, as the word to Peter

36 Lk 22:26. 88 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus shows, a further, symbolic, level: ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’ Implied here is the range of connotation related to washing. At our distance the sense of it must be incomplete, but it extends from personal hygiene and comfort to hospitality, to ritual washing and to baptism. Cleanness did indeed signify godliness, and Jesus is confirming both that righteousness and goodness are required in a disciple, and that he can provide it. To belong to him it is necessary to be ‘cleaned’: the idea is to be developed in the words that follow in John on vine and branch, where the statement occurs that ‘you are already made clean because of the word I have spoken to you.’37 By this time the literal has receded. So in what sense can Jesus provide the disciple with righteousness? By his teaching, his ‘word’, which when implemented changes the nature and direction of the disciple’s life: love and service replace envy and self-seeking. Then further by a change which only God can bring about. In Johannine terms this is to be born again by the Holy Spirit and to become, under the right conferred by Jesus, a child of God.38 A further level of symbolism represents by this action that other Johannine theme, the coming of Jesus from God into the world, and his return to the Father. John indeed alludes to it in v.3 before it is acted out in the divestiture of v.4. When the washing was done, Jesus ‘put on his clothes and returned to his place.’ Similarly, when his task in the world was accomplished, he resumed his glory and position with God. Thus he prayed, ‘Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.’39 The accomplished task was, of course, that of enabling disciples and believers to become children of God, a service that cost him his status, dignity and his life, showing ‘the full extent of his love’. In the teaching of Jesus, then, love is an aspect of righteousness, or rather an added dimension of it, which draws inspiration from the kindness of the Father and the sacrificial service of the Son. Deriving from the nature of God, it is also an aspect of holiness; and Jesus sets it forth as a mark of the disciple. ‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ (Jn 13:34-35) By putting it this way he draws attention to its function in mission, and to the effect of good works done in his name as commending not only their doer but also their inspirer, attracting people towards his Kingdom. In the language of the Sermon on the Mount, lights are not to be concealed. A process of sorting and separation is described in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats,40 as in that of the Weeds. In place of a crop there is a flock, instead of a farmer a shepherd. The Judgement of God is signified, and the inheriting of the long-awaited, always-prepared Kingdom is in question. Although love is not named, a record of achievement in that kind is required, as the story makes clear. ‘The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”’41 Actions such as feeding

37 Jn 15:3. In Greek ‘prune’ and ‘clean’ are equivalent. 38 Jn 3:5 (which links water with the Spirit), 1:12. 39 Jn 17:5. 40 Mt 25:31-46. 41 Mt 25:40. 89 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus the hungry, clothing the poor, tending the sick and imprisoned are counted as done unawares to the King. The parable is often cited in support of broad social concern, but its focus is relatively narrow: the poor and needy of the Christian brotherhood. The case for undiscriminating charity is better made by the Good Samaritan. Rhetorically this parable makes a strong statement. It is not ‘like’, ‘as if’ or even ‘in my name’ that the services are performed, but ‘to me’. The King appears to be absent but is not, making some resemblance to the parables of the absent lord. The metaphor of identification signals that in effect Jesus is in his disciples, his Church, meaning in the members’ needs. By this means the disciple has the opportunity to meet, and indeed express love to, his Teacher and Lord. Taking it or leaving it, he evidences to which sphere, irrespective of profession or the opinion of others, he does in deed belong.

Discipleship The idea of Jesus conveyed by the gospels is of some one in quite specific relations with others. He is not an idealised figure in formal roles but, although a seeker of solitude, he is a spiritual leader prepared to go to all lengths out of compassion for human beings in their various needs. For contemporaries discipleship was the primary and most fruitful basis of association with him. To be a member of one of the crowds of onlookers when he performed miracles of healing, or to form part of the audience when he spoke about the Kingdom of God, was to be, potentially, a disciple. In the dynamic of communication and of relation a person was either moving, at Jesus’ direction towards or, at his own volition, away from full association with him. Discipleship is found in most cultures, and can be regarded as a variant form of apprenticeship. But whereas apprenticeship is for a term, the commitment to discipleship with Jesus was for good. The time comes when an apprentice is recognised as a fully competent practitioner: in Jesus’ discipleship there is some parallel when the disciples are sent out as his representatives. By that time they have acquired some likeness to the Teacher: ‘A disciple is not above his teacher, but every one who is fully trained will be like his teacher.’42 The roles were defined. Jesus taught, embodied authority, decided what was to be done. The disciple’s part was to learn, to serve and to emulate his or her teacher. And to follow, for the ministry of Jesus became a highly mobile one as he toured Galilee, Judea and neighbouring territories such as Tyre on the Mediterranean, on foot.43 Typically he would be seen walking at the head of a crowd of followers, not unlike a shepherd leading sheep. People of all sorts became disciples, even the well-connected, learned or manifestly religious. Fishermen, tax collectors, women were included, and it was understood that in order to be disciples they made a complete break with their former life, contributing money and possessions to the common needs of the group and to the poor. Within the group responsibilities were assigned. Judas Iscariot was at one point the bursar responsible for alms to the poor;44 and disciples were severally responsible for the logistics of securing the donkey on which Jesus

42 Lk 6:40. 43 Mk 7:24,31; Lk 4:44. 44 Jn 13:29, 12:5. 90 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus entered Jerusalem,45 the upstairs room,46 and for controlling access to Jesus by petitioners in the crowds.47 Often the invitation took the form of a quite peremptory command. ‘As he walked along,’ writes Mark in 2:14, Jesus ‘saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him. And Levi got up and followed him.’ Possibly Jesus would baptize his disciples at the next occasion his group was in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee or the River Jordan. The gospels do not spell this out, stating only that Jesus, like John, baptized.48 The absence of emphasis on the baptism of disciples suggests that its symbolism was overshadowed by the relationship itself. ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn,’ asked Jesus a propos of fasting, ‘while he is with them?’49 Disciples would attend to the teaching, listen to the parables and talk about their meaning among themselves, or with Jesus. Matthew’s gospel has much on the related subjects of discipleship and the teaching given by Jesus. In Matthew’s conclusion the disciples are commissioned to go to the whole world and make more disciples of Jesus, now risen. Baptism was to be included, and the teaching of ‘everything I commanded you’,50 doctrine which it was evidently one of Matthew’s chief purposes to record. Of the several teaching discourses of his gospel, the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) looms largest. In it the new or intending disciple is given both encouragement and warning. There is a background of Judgement, yet God is the loving Father. The world is magnificent, but life in it uncertain, and the disciple’s endeavours are directed to heaven ultimately rather than earth. Nevertheless relations with others on earth, as well as religious observances, are determinative. Jesus encourages a relation of filial trust in God, tempered by the knowledge that he looks into the heart and requires purity of motive. Confirming the authority of the Law and the Prophets, he defines righteousness differently from the Pharisees. His in fact is not so much a definition, more a statement of direction given with illustrations. ‘When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets.’ ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ ‘When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen.’51 Here the assumption is made that practical care for the poor and needy is characteristic of righteousness, and that the disciple will be giving personal or community money. The kind of self-publicity to be avoided is fixed in a memorable image. The command to love enemies is swiftly followed by an injunction to pray for them, a course which is calculated to lead to other specific action. Prayer here is almost businesslike. The prayer he taught (in Luke it is at the disciples’ request) ranges widely, yoking together heaven and earth, the one who prays with the One he prays to.

Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come,

45 Lk 22:8-12. 46 Mk 11:1-3 47 Mk 10:13-16. 48 Jn 3:22. Later the task was delegated to disciples, Jn 4:2. 49 Mt 9:15 50 Mt 28:19f. 51 Mt 6:2, 5:44, 6:6. 91 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. (Mt 6:9-12)

It identifies the disciple as having needs: the terms daily bread, debts and temptation translate readily into categories of physical, social and spiritual existence. All these needs are brought in petition to God who is thus characterised as having power of disposal over life in all three aspects, power to give and withhold, power of life and death. The good news is implied that God has power over evil, and that the disciple’s grounds for hope are interwoven with the relation he has come into with God, whom he knows as Father. The disciple is cast not as an element in an abstract play of forces of light and darkness, but as, by adoption, a member of the family of God. To be called to discipleship is to be invited by Jesus into a relation of sonship, to share in it and to benefit from it in a way similar to his own, by his authority and invitation. There is of course a tension, which the prayer fully reflects, between potential fulfilment and actual earthly experience. The prayer has an emotional tone of longing, expresses a sense of waiting, but with it resolve and even achievement (‘we have forgiven’). It is at once idealistic, in the sense that there is an end to which the disciple is oriented, and realistic, in that a range of needs, including those of failure and opposition, is encompassed. But although in need, and perhaps persecuted, the disciple is on the way to an outcome proposed to him by Jesus, namely the overcoming of evil and the fulfilment of all waiting, longing and need, ‘your Kingdom’. As this was Jesus’ message, work and goal, so it is his disciple’s. The fulfilment in or out of time is with God, but a son has power to bring the Kingdom where he is, beginning in his thoughts, decisions and relationships. Thus fulfilment in one kind lies with the disciple who, praying and obeying Jesus, depending on the Father, causes Kingdom coming by enacting God’s will and purpose. Cosmic fulfilment is with God, but ‘in heaven’ it is already accomplished, and there too is a kind of waiting, for fulfilment on a timebound earth. Disciples in this prayer are agents for God, struggling against evil, weak in their various needs, but aligning themselves with God’s cause and asking his intervention and grace to transmute the mess of their situations into his glory. Faith is here, in the trusting of God as Father and Provider; hope is, in the deliverance and the coming Kingdom; and love, in the care for God’s name and the forgiveness of ‘our debtors’. While much is encapsulated here concerning the Kingdom, Jesus himself is hidden. In this he resembles the Father described in the same context in Matthew as unseen, and the unseen God in the Old Testament whom no crafted image can depict, no name describe.52 Neither as Judge or Saviour does he feature, nor overtly as Son or Lord. Yet as the Teacher of the disciples to whom the prayer is given he is its author. He is implied in the first ‘Our’, for such sonship is his gift to his disciples (‘your heavenly Father knows that you need...’53), and only as his disciples are they led daily in the Kingdom way, in

52 Mt 6:6; Exod 3:14. 53 Mt 6:32. 92 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus paths that may not be trouble-free, but can escape evil (‘lead us not into temptation’) because of God and, we add with hindsight, because of Christ. The apostrophic opening may have struck new disciples as audaciously intimate with the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel,54 which may be why it is at once qualified by the expression of suitable obeisance to him who transcends all naming and depiction. The disciple aligns himself with God’s Kingdom, defined in a qualifying phrase, given on the first or a subsequent occasion,55 as the performance of what God requires by others, but most pertinently, by the disciple. Those divine requirements though, are not conceived as expressed in an earthly text, whether the Torah or the Sermon on the Mount, but as modelled ‘in heaven’. In heaven God’s will is done differently, ideally, and earth is to be brought up to its standard. ‘Be perfect,’ Jesus has just said, ‘as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ And earlier: ‘Pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’56 The petition is not an expression of resignation before circumstances that cannot be changed (although a disciple may come where his Teacher was when he prayed in Gethsemane), so much as a resolve to imitate a heavenly model that is already dynamically in action. Largely hidden, the model can be inferred from the ways of God as Provider and from the disciples’ own Teacher. Moreover the scriptures are continuous with the divine source (‘I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them’57). In every need the disciple depends on God. The association of bread and temptation recalls the time of testing, the struggle with evil, in the wilderness. That serves as an image for the disciple’s life on earth. Trials and difficulties cannot be avoided, but spiritual defeat can. Nevertheless, disciples will need repeatedly to be forgiven and to forgive, even while looking to their Master and Lord to lead them to the destination where evil is overcome and the disciple shall dwell secure. This is more than a faint hope. The success of Jesus in the Temptation, actual and symbolised, is cause for confidence, and elsewhere Jesus gives his disciples reason to believe that deliverance from evil is something he has in hand. ‘In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ ‘The prince of this world now stands condemned.’58 The prayer ends therefore on a note, recognisable to disciples but hidden to others, of the expectation of spiritual deliverance and the overcoming of the Prince of this world. The ascription of Kingdom power and glory for ever of the later manuscripts is entirely consonant. Although the Gospel as later proclaimed is not expressed here, it may be inferred; for what are forgiveness and deliverance from evil, finally, but salvation? And who, if not the redeemed, are adopted as sons into the family of God and entitled to address him as Abba? Not only did Jesus conduct, as it were, relationships by means of discipleship, he used the concept in teaching to elaborate on the basic theme.

54 ‘You are the children of the Lord your God,’ Moses instructed Israel in Deut 14:1, going on to refer to the privilege and distinctiveness this implied. 55 ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ is not in most MSS of Lk 11:2. 56 Mt 5:48,44f. 57 Mt 5:17. 58 Jn 16:11, 16:33; c.f. Lk 10:18. 93 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

‘Follow me!’ was an imperative invitation with wide repercussions for the one who responded. The change of life was radical enough, and usually implied the suspension of family and occupational ties, and their subordination to the requirements of the Master. The physical action of following an itinerant teacher also expressed, of course, a metaphorical following in which the teaching provided direction for day to day situations, the framework for life and a destination amounting to a destiny. Luke 9:57-62 has exchanges between Jesus and three prospective disciples. When the first of them volunteers he is warned of the inconveniences: ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ We are not told how he responded, but the context seems to bracket him with the two others who preferred in the end to go their own way. The second man, with a deceased father not yet buried, is given the striking, metaphoric reply: ‘Let the dead bury their own dead,’ which suggests that only in the Kingdom, only with Jesus, is true life found. In the third example Jesus makes clear that the new loyalty must come before family. The point is given even more emphasis on an occasion reported by Mark when Jesus addresses both crowds and disciples. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’ (Mk 8:34-38) The crowds are invited to discipleship as a way of gaining or saving their lives, which otherwise are forfeit, whatever their worldly success. There is a considerable cost involved in discipleship, and to disciples Jesus’ message demands a commitment that is total, while they are given the promise that they will keep their soul for participation after the Judgement in the Kingdom of God. Much is implied in these words about the Gospel, a subject to return to. But all leads from the initial ‘come after me’, in which the literal is at once superseded by the figurative; and indeed the expression is already laden with Kingdom and eschatological connotation. ‘Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant also will be.’59 In the incident where the rich young man runs up and asks Jesus about eternal life, the invitation to sell everything, give to the poor, ‘then come, follow me,’60 sets discipleship as the climax to a progression from observing the commandments, through care for the poor, to the pursuit of treasure in the Kingdom. That Kingdom is given only to disciples, but for those caught up with the worries, riches and pleasures of life the entry price must seem high. Faithfulness, endurance, sacrifice, righteousness, care for the needy are all entailed. Discipleship is therefore a fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. But also friendship and fellowship in the family of disciples, which comprises people who are now, through the privilege conferred by Jesus, sons of the Father. The disciples were to emulate Jesus, although the gospels record their confusion over how the predictions and promises were to be understood.

59 Jn 12:26. 60 Mk 10:21. 94 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

‘Let one of us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory,’ ask James and John, only to receive the reply, ‘You don’t know what you are asking.’61 But while requiring their very lives, and teaching that with them greatness is redefined as humility and service,62 Jesus invites them to come up higher, to be not merely his followers and servants, but in his confidence as friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit − fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. (Jn 15:14-16) Moreover, the love among disciples, and by them towards outsiders, whether the poor and needy or enemies, is to be their hallmark. ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’63 That love was Jesus’ motive for the last visit to Jerusalem when he pressed on towards evidently murderous opposition, seems not to have been at first recognised by the disciples. Even if it had been, the words from Mark 8 noticed above about taking up a cross must have been frightening. With the passage of time, as prospect turned to retrospect, the allusion was revealed as to a literal crucifixion. Jesus affronted, allowed, this fate insisting that it was ‘necessary’. What, for a disciple, was the implication? It is a question we must return to, but for the present there is an interpretative point to anticipate, that Jesus’ teaching concerning his Messianic mission resembles his teaching to disciples about their role; and there is a tendency of convergence between the two.64

Mission

The Twelve Just as they portray Jesus in specific relations with people, so the gospels are also specific about the places where Jesus went. Regions and villages are named and linked with incidents. The gospels give a sense of unusual mobility in their protagonist, not the restlessness associated with a nomadic or vagrant lifestyle, but rather a mobility infused with purpose.

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’ (Mt 9:35-38)

61 Mk 10:37f. 62 Mk 10:43f. 63 Jn 13:34ff. 64 See below, p.110. 95 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

The travelling among the towns and villages of Galilee, Judea, Syria, the Tetrarchy of Philip and the Decapolis, like the final journey to Jerusalem, was evidently an expression of deep-seated intention, and highly suggestive of what we commonly describe, metaphorically, as a mission. In Matthew the words quoted introduce the sending of the twelve designated disciples (‘apostles’, or representatives) to carry on the activities of his ministry by other means for a defined period. The mission of the apostles extended a process already in train. Jesus had left Nazareth, his family and his carpentry for the Transjordan wilderness and for public ministry. Capernaum was for a time his base, and he taught in synagogues. Soon he was teaching the crowds who were drawn by his many miracles. He moved rapidly among the lakeside communities of Galilee, often by boat, before beginning to make excursions further afield with the disciples now gathered to him. The image he uses of a big harvest to be brought in with few resources conveys the sense of opportunity and purpose behind his sustained drive to reach new audiences and yet more individuals. Time seems to be limited, but the present is almost overwhelmingly fruitful, full, and fulfilled. In discussions of the gospels the mission of the Twelve is sometimes given no more importance than one more meeting or miracle. Its importance however is structural, relating to considerations of overall plot and development, and thematic, linked with all that Jesus did and taught from beginning to end. The mission of the Twelve is closely linked, in Luke, to that of the Seventy-two, and both with the Great Commission given by Jesus when he charged his disciples with what they were to do after his departure, and therefore with the significance of his life’s work. In his teaching Jesus conveyed the sense that, while he must have been perceived as unique, he was not an isolated figure or phenomenon, or working to private idiosyncratic objectives. His coming, as one sent, from God the Father is a topos in John, but explicit too in the Synoptics. ‘He who receives you,’ Jesus tells the Twelve in Matthew, ‘receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me.’65 The mission of the Twelve is associated with their nomination by Jesus. Mark, like Luke, has the nomination three chapters prior to the sending out, stating that there was a period of familiarisation and training, of discipleship in fact, by way of preparation. Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve − designating them apostles − that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. (Mk 3:13-15) For the named Twelve it was, evidently, an occasion they would never forget. After being summoned, they were addressed apart from the other disciples, higher up the hillside, and given a title signifying a role they would now learn. The language of v. 14 is purposive, ‘so that’ (hina) occurring twice: they were to be with Jesus, observing and listening, and in time, perhaps a matter of a few days or weeks, they would be sent out with his authority to implement the training they had had. The giving of the twelve names seems to be more than a list ‘for the record’. Mark draws attention to some names conferred, whether or not on one occasion, by Jesus on these followers: Simon

65 Mt 10:40. 96 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus the Rock, James and John, Sons of Thunder, and all of them designated apostles, or emissaries.66 Such names would affirm the individuals and dedicate for Kingdom purposes the personal characteristics they refer to. The appointments were made authoritatively, even imperatively, by Jesus yet required the cooperation of those called, a point exemplified by the later betrayal by the last named, Judas Iscariot.67 Following their period of training the Twelve were given a briefing for their mission, covering where they were to go, what the message was, indications of what to do, some cautions about opposition and, we infer, when and where the mission would end. Mark and Luke give similar accounts of the briefing, but Matthew, aware of the applicability later on of this early mission, is led to introduce instruction and warning that relates better to events still well in the future. ‘Brother will betray brother to death . . . . All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.’68 But it is Matthew, not Luke (normally informative on historical and territorial questions), who reports Jesus’ geographical directions. ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.’69 Such territorial definition accords with the circumscription at this early stage of the mission of Jesus himself. ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,’ Jesus told a woman who approached him in the region of Tyre and Sidon.70 It accords too with the injunctions to secrecy. There is to be no proclamation yet that Jesus is the Son of God or Messiah. The apostles were to go unencumbered by baggage, spare clothes, or even money. For their necessities and daily bread they were to depend on the Father who, where they were made welcome, would supply what they needed as they needed it through the welcomers, many of them beneficiaries of the miraculous signs. Healings are mentioned by Luke and Matthew, but at the top of the list on this occasion in all accounts is the expulsion of evil spirits. ‘Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.’ ‘. . . Gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.’ ‘. . . Gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases.’71 This presumably reflects the ensuing experience, the incidence of problems presented by the people of the villages and towns they went to. If so, the effect would have been to support the preaching and teaching (both terms are used) of the apostles, drawing on what they had learnt from Jesus of the Kingdom of God. To witness a deliverance from evil anything like those of Jesus would have disposed individuals, families and communities to listen with attention to what the visiting pair said about the Kingdom, and about the Teacher − Lord would have seemed a more expressive title − in whose authority they had come. And by dealing in coin, as it were, of the spiritual realm, the signs would help steer people away from drawing temporal or nationalistic inferences from the teaching about a kingdom.

66 All MSS have ‘the apostles’ return at Mk 6:30. 67 If ‘Iscariot’ derives from an Aramaic term for assassin (via 'isqarya'a), there could be an allusion to his former life, with the later plot development illustrating recidivism. 68 Mt 10:21f. 69 Mt 10:5f. 70 Mt 15:24, c.f. Mk 7:27. 71 Mk 6:7; Mt 10:1; Lk 9:1. 97 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

So what did the apostles say? What is implied by Luke’s phrase ‘preaching the Kingdom of God’, or even ‘preaching the Gospel’?72 Evidently there was continuity with Jesus’ preaching of the good news predicted by Isaiah for the poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed, and now being fulfilled. Jesus had spoken to this effect in the synagogue at Nazareth,73 and in the Beatitudes. There was an identification to be made, although we are not told that the apostles at this stage spelt it out, between the fulfilment and Jesus. Elsewhere in Luke his reputation is summarised as that of ‘a prophet powerful in word and deed before God and all the people’.74 With the promises and the demonstrations of God’s goodwill were warnings, as we have noticed, of Judgement. In his account Mark does not mention good news or the Kingdom, but he implies it when he refers to the message that people should repent.

These were his instructions: ‘Take nothing for the journey except a staff − no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them.’ They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. (Mk 6:8-13)

If any of the teaching of John the Baptist had reached these audiences, the apostles’ preaching would strike a chord. The condemnation of God was escapable. A way of righteousness could be chosen, learnt and followed. And could the new prophet be the One who would, as John had said, come after him? Baptism was not, it seems, a feature of this campaign among scattered towns and villages, and no exodus to the Jordan was required. But the repentance which baptism might have signified would have been central, and in the teachings of Jesus there were directions enough concerning what it is that God requires in his people. It was in fact very like what Jesus expected from his disciples, as the apostles would have gladly testified. The mission however was not all sunshine. The apostles’ briefing covered the possibility of rejection, and it was remembered and recorded no doubt because the instruction to leave without hesitation had to be carried out. In respect of Jesus’ ministry the gospels report opposition from establishment figures, but few Pharisees or Sadducees, presumably, resided in any of the villages visited by the Twelve. So what sort of opposition was aroused? Perhaps the best clue is the comparable instance when the community on the Gerasene shore of the Sea of Galilee asked Jesus to leave.75 He had disturbed familiar patterns of their existence, there had been loss as well as gain, the manifestation of powers both evil and good had evoked fear, and it is characteristic of human nature to resist change and to hold to the familiar. As for the shaking off of dust at departure, it is perhaps a conspicuous indication that the absence of the hospitable bowl of water for the travellers’ feet has been noted.76 The gesture is wordless, and to that extent irenic, but is

72 Lk 9:2,6. C.f. Mt 10:7 ‘The Kingdom of heaven is near.’ 73 Lk 4:16-21 quoting Is 61:1ff. 74 Lk 24:19. 75 Mk 5:17. 76 C.f. Jesus’ reproach to Simon the Pharisee in Lk 7:44. 98 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus nevertheless a sign warning that the rejection bodes ill for the unwelcoming village. It is a testimony. Their response goes down in the record against them, and on the Day of Judgement it will count adversely.

Mission of Seventy-Two Others Luke describes a further stage of mission when Jesus makes additional appointments to an apostolic role and sends emissaries to repeat what had been done by the Twelve. He does not refer to these disciples as apostles, a term which is by and large reserved for the Twelve, but does use the title Lord for Jesus.

The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.’ (Lk 10:1-4)

Luke again specifies no geography, but his use of the title Lord suggests that he writes with hindsight, recalling later stages of mission. This was a prefigurement and an aspect of their training that prepared disciples for a part in a plan extension which would include the whole world. Lordship connoted great authority, often divine authority. This was discernibly the action of God. Jesus’ appointment of seventy-two disciples makes symbolic reference to the nations of the world. Seventy and seventy-two are variants in the gospel manuscripts, both of them in early traditions; and in rabbinic teaching this number did for the number of Gentile nations: seventy descendants of , Ham and Japheth being named in Genesis 10, and seventy-two in the commonly used Greek version, the Septuagint. As with the previous mission there is a briefing. Its purport is similar, but strong notes of warning and urgency are sounded. The disciples are like lambs, easy victims to enemies who are waiting to prey upon them. This is more daunting than simple rejection, and on the roads the pairs must not risk being waylaid, are warned not to strike up casual acquaintance with fellow-travellers whose interests, suggestions and invitations are likely to divert them from their itinerary. ‘When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

‘When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. (Lk 10:5- 8) In the target villages they are to seek out kindred spirits, who will be recognised by their responsiveness. In and around the homes of such people they can carry out their mission, not wasting time and effort by making constant changes of accommodation. The hospitable home of a welcomer is the temporary base, and provision of shelter and food can be accepted by the emissaries as their due under God, an entitlement expressing the Father’s 99 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus provision for their needs.77 Again Luke must be thinking of issues that would arise in the mission to Gentiles,78 for the point is made twice that the emissaries should eat whatever is served. Now it may be that some of the disciples were told by Jesus to go to Gentile regions, though if so, Luke would surely have been among the first to draw attention to it; or Jesus may have provided for the eventuality that some would find themselves in non-Jewish homes in the predominantly Jewish areas where they went; or Luke may have noticed that acceptance of the various forms of hospitality that might be offered, including possible infractions of the food traditions derived from the Torah, was implied in Jesus’ briefing. Mark, in another context, made a point of explaining to his readers that, in effect, ‘Jesus declared all foods clean.’79 The message of this mission seems to be, as before, the message of Jesus and of the Kingdom, and this too is mentioned twice. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The Kingdom of God is near you.’ But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The Kingdom of God is near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. (Lk 10:9-12) It is taken to a wider audience than hitherto, one that included actually or prospectively Gentiles as well as Jews. John the Baptist had preached to mixed audiences,80 and Jesus had been in the Gentile regions of the Decapolis and Phoenicia during the course of his public ministry.81 The impulse to Jewish distinctiveness was deeply coded into the religious and cultural tradition and, as the documents of the later stages of mission show, it was hard for most Jews to relinquish the assumption that such distinctiveness, often signified by dietary and sabbatarian regulations, was coterminous with righteousness and the favour of God. Preaching a Kingdom message Jesus shifts the emphasis from obedience to a religious tradition whose two pillars were the Torah and the Temple, and more precisely the contemporary institutions formed round them, to participation in events now unfolding against a background of fulfilment of ancient tradition to be completed as a Kingdom that would stand in and beyond the Judgement. As with John, Judgement was fundamental to the paradigm, and motivated repentance. But now in the emissaries’ message and the demonstrations of which Jesus was the authoriser, the Kingdom of God was near. Jesus was near, was extending a word that people could take to change their inner lives, their social relations, their hopes for the Judgement, their standing with God. Yet, from the words of warning, it seems likely that once again there was a good deal of rejection and opposition. Korazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum, which may indeed have been on the emissaries’ route, are singled out and warned. It is as though Jesus is saying in the briefing, ‘This is my message to these audiences.’ But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgement than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths. (Lk 10:14-15)

77 C.f. Lk 22:35. 78 E.g. Acts 11:2-18, where Peter is criticised for eating with uncirumcised men. 79 Mk 7:19. The entire chapter addresses the issue. 80 Soldiers, presumably Gentiles, are mentioned in Luke 3:14. 81 Mk 7:31. 100 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

But by sending in the disciples, he made a new invitation and opportunity, not the threat of condemnation, his word to them, at least for the present. The last words of briefing to the Seventy-two have a particular significance. He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me. (Lk 10:16) They are the instrument of appointment authorising them as representatives, in effect, of God. Such authority, like the forgiveness of sins, was his to grant, and he does so here for the limited purpose and time of the campaign. Only two types of audience response are envisaged, listening or rejecting. Underlying the proclamation of the emissaries is a proffered relationship pursued or refused between the individual and God, who is Creator and Judge. The debrief is more fully reported than that of the previous mission. There are three audiences, the returning emissaries with others, not necessarily disciples, listening; God the Father to whom Jesus prays audibly and publicly; and the disciples alone.

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ He replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. ‘All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’ (Lk 10:17-24)

Although Luke has not referred to exorcism in the briefing, the success against demons is the only feature in the report of the emissaries to be recorded. But the emissaries have been struck by this success, and evince joy, as no doubt had the erstwhile victims now delivered, together with their families and communities. The mission of the Twelve has been reiterated further afield, and the ‘name’ of Jesus been revealed as one of astonishing power, undiminished by delegation. The matter of the name of Jesus, including his authority, reputation and identity provides the thread that runs through what follows. For the scale of the exorcisms constitutes a quite major sign, parallel to the later resurrection, in respect of both Jesus’ identity and his mission. What is meant by his seeing Satan fall like lightning from heaven? Does the quite astonishing asseveration belong to this context, and if so, does it do so exclusively? In other words, when did Jesus see this answer to the petition, Deliver us from evil? Was it in a Kingdom mode beyond the fourth dimension, or while the mission of the Seventy-two was taking place? Luke’s positioning of the statement suggests that the mission has inflicted a decisive defeat on evil, yet so large is the reference that we must take it as applicable not merely 101 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus to this stage but to the entire mission of Jesus, to the subject indeed of Luke’s two-volume work on all that Jesus did and taught.82 Is there significance in Jesus’ saying ‘I saw’ rather than simply affirming the fall of Satan? There is vividness in the words he uses, and a willingness to be taken literally; moreover he associates himself with what is said, leaning into it his personal authority. Rhetorically, how much more potent this is than some low-toned predication such one I have used above in discussing the Parable of the Weeds, ‘Evil is overcome at the end by God’.83 A further question: What was Satan doing in heaven? Although elsewhere in the gospels, in Matthew’s ‘Kingdom of heaven’ for example, heaven is synonymous with God himself, here it seems more like ‘sky’ used metaphorically for position of power in the world, usurping what should be God’s. ‘The prince of this world’84 is overthrown by the action of God, action seen in the mission of Jesus carried out by himself and by those he appoints. Thus the snakes and scorpions stand for ‘the power of the enemy’, power over which Jesus gives his apostles and designated others, authority. Again Luke, as no doubt Jesus, seems to be gesturing towards the mission to follow the resurrection. He does not stop to explain how ‘nothing will harm you’, because an ultimate security is assured in Jesus’ authoritative word, but he does give Jesus’ corrective: ‘Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ Their attention is re-directed from success experienced on earth to salvation promised for heaven, with the one a foretaste of the other. Jesus characteristically established a number of such linkages: ‘By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned’; ‘Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the Kingdom of God is near’; ‘I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God comes.’85 The exultation of this time of reunion, which is tinged, as it were, with the emotions of the still future resurrection, prompts Luke to invoke the Holy Spirit, as earlier in the infancy narrative, also a time of joy.86 It is an emotion with which the returned emissaries’ mood of v.17 accords, and creates an affective link between the early and the later resurrection, witnessed by the Eleven with ‘joy and amazement’.87 Then the Holy Spirit was promised and bestowed with signs, power and authority for mission, so that there is between the missions of the Twelve and Seventy-two and that of the post-resurrection church, a thematic continuity in the Spirit. When Luke tells his readers that praying, Jesus was ‘full of the Holy Spirit’ he uses terminology that derives, we can assume, from Jesus, and reflects a high point of his earthly course. There is an anticipative fusion, generating warmth, of two major terms, the taking on of evil and the extension by mission of the Kingdom. It is a fulfilment involving, arousing might be a better word, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Messianic mission however is still, as the prayer says, hidden from the world and revealed to children, one of Jesus’ titles

82 See also ‘The Contest with Evil’, below p.111. 83 P. 73 84 Jn 16:11, c.f. Rev 20:1-3. 85 Mt 12:37; Lk 21:31; 22:18. 86 Lk 1:67; 2:10. 87 Lk 24:41. 102 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus for his followers.88 The rhetorical effect is to redraw the lines of spiritual- religious understanding, affirming the privileged role of his own disciples. Such expressions held explosive potential for offence to outsiders, and at this time there is an opposition between the impulse of dissemination and mission on the one hand, and secrecy with controlled disclosure on the other. But Jesus’ emphasis is on the pleasure of God that ‘these things’ are now apprehended, that a beginning has been made in something that is destined to develop into something far greater. Luke conveys a sense of stored up potential, awaiting release at a time, still future, determined by the Father. In the early stage of restricted disclosure to disciples, and the later one of international proclamation, the Father is the source of authority. But whereas later Jesus expresses this in relation to timing, here he speaks of the choice of individuals by God, similar to the call by Jesus of a disciple.89 Speaking to them privately he confirms that they are the ‘children’ of his title, and as family members privy to household secrets. These are to do with the fulfilment of prophecy and knowledge that Jesus is the Son. Clearly these things had not been divulged to the crowds either by Jesus, apostles or any one else. For this was not yet the content of the Good News, and for the Galilean villager visited by Jesus’ emissaries the message was of a Kingdom whose spiritual power was signified by exorcisms and healing, and of the great Prophet and Teacher who, against a background of impending Judgement, taught what God requires and called people to be his disciples.

The Great Commission For the Evangelists one of the most important features of the resurrection appearances of Jesus was that he gave the disciples directions and explanations for their new situation. It now became clearer to them what their discipleship, their training, was for. Jesus had been the centre of their lives and focus of their loyalty, but with his physical absence, although the substance of discipleship would not change, its expression in one respect would, as the missions of proclamation in and around Galilee were relaunched in mission to the entire world. ‘Go’ is the imperative in Matthew, the last command to disciples. In Luke the Great Commission is staggered over the resurrection period and Pentecost. ‘I am going to send you [the Holy Spirit],’ Jesus tells them. ‘You are witnesses of these things.’ John establishes a direct line from Father to Son to disciples: ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ The gospels’ ending is, appropriately, about a fulfilment of Jesus’ teaching as training is put into service. The end of Jesus’ earthly life coincides with an initiative to the nations of the world that sets the scene for what was to come.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ (Mt 28:16-20)

88 Mt 10:42, c.f. Lk 9:48. 89 Acts 1:7. 103 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

The only other meeting in Matthew of the risen Jesus with any of the disciples was when he greeted the two Marys on their way from the empty tomb, and gave them a message for ‘my brothers’ referring to this meeting arranged to take place in Galilee. The ‘doubt’ of some of them can be put down to their sense of what is normally possible, the fact that Jesus was still at a distance, and perhaps that his appearance suggested the extraordinariness of his status between two worlds. His presence however was such that the disciples responded with awe and worship even if some were not sure of this being’s identity until he drew near and spoke to them. The mission to go to all parts of the world is linked to a statement about his supreme authority, for his role and identity are now more fully revealed. As Lord explicitly of the world, and with the full authority of God, Jesus claims mankind for the Kingdom of heaven. The disciples are to make further disciples, for he remains with them even though, like God, he is unseen. All the teaching is to be relayed, heeded, practised, and the Evangelists no doubt see their work writing the gospels as an aspect of this discipling. The association of authority conferred by God and its scope over ‘all peoples, nations’ is one made in the locus classicus of Daniel 7:13-14, and thus suggests the fulfilment of the Son of Man role and the implication that if the title had been used ambivalently or to conceal in the immediate past, now Jesus was explicitly the cosmic Lord and victor over Satan. Is the new and final stage of mission to include the proclamation of the Kingdom? Matthew does not say it is, yet we may assume so since it forms an integral part of the teaching in the gospel accounts. So much so, that it is astonishing that the Kingdom is so little mentioned in the surviving later documents. The disciples’ message to the world would be that of Jesus in his ministry, and that of the missions of the apostles. Discipleship would start with baptism, as had the ministry of Jesus and, we assume, the obedience of the existing disciples. Warnings of Judgement and a summons to repent are implied, with teaching such as the Sermon on the Mount providing knowledge of the righteousness, exceeding that of the Pharisees, that God requires. The missionary command is accompanied by the promise of Jesus to be with his disciples even if he is unseen. Although mentioned in the Trinitarian formula for baptism, the Holy Spirit is not invoked to account for the comfort or assurance here promised. For such explanation we must read Luke or John. There is no Ascension here, and Matthew ends on a minor chord, for the end of the new age is not, surely, the end of the story? There is Judgement to come and much else besides to do with what Jesus has said and done. So although for some readers Matthew’s gospel ends with a sufficiently large gesture towards the ends of the earth and the end of the age, other readers may be left wondering. The ruminating reader may direct his thoughts to the parallels in the other gospels, but another approach is available within Matthew’s text. If we posit the screenplay direction, Cut to, and look back at Matthew Chapter 10 where Jesus commissions the Twelve at some length for their mission, we find information that is surprisingly apposite in view of the killings that began quite soon after this, with the death of Stephen.90 The coming of the Son of Man is both explicit and imminent. There will be antagonism and persecution from

90 Acts 8:1. 104 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

Gentiles as well as Jews. To persevere as a disciple (witness is, significantly, the alternative term) may mean death in martyrdom.

‘Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. ‘When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.91 ‘Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. ‘Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.’ (Mt 10:17-20, 32-33, 39)

Jesus foresees what will happen to the later mission and gives his disciples both forewarning and encouragement not to give up. As for the injunctions to secrecy about his identity, they are now reversed: ‘What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.’92 Matthew’s final chord, the end of the age, also of course alludes to an earlier theme, the Parousia, about which the discourse in Chapter 24 leaves no doubt.

‘Immediately after the distress of those days ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ ‘At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.’ (Mt 24:29-31)

So Matthew’s eschatological framework is in place, and he has no need at the end of his gospel for repetition. All the same, the reader may notice the absence of an explicit message about the forgiveness of sins and, as regards the death on the cross, prediction rather than any accounting for it.93

Luke’s gospel is distinctive in that the period of resurrection appearances and meetings marks not so much an end as a transition. The reader is prepared in the last verses for the resumption of the historical narrative in Acts. When Jesus meets with the Eleven his words to them look back to start interpreting what has been taking place, and forward to the world mission. Moreover Luke locates this teaching, and the new stage beginning at Pentecost, in Jerusalem.

91 A difficult verse. Matthew may have used an author’s license and put into direct speech his informant’s report that Jesus spoke of the coming of the Son of Man with such emphasis and assurance that it sounded as though it would happen over the next few days. See also p.14 above. 92 Mt 10:27. 93 Mt 28:6; 16:21. 105 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus

He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’ (Lk 24:44-49)

As we have seen, he has presented the earlier mission with at least half an eye on what now occurs, for this is the fulfilment of scriptures in Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms concerning the One who was to come with the very word of God, with the Spirit of the Lord upon him, triumphant over evil and over death.94 There were scriptural references to the suffering, crucifixion and resurrection, such as Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 and Jonah 2, for these were, as much as the power and authority, the role designated for the Lord’s Anointed, the Christ. The apostles who have witnessed what has happened are soon to begin the world mission. They will tell what they have seen and heard, particularly concerning the resurrection, and preach a message enjoining repentance and conferring the forgiveness of sins. Again, the Kingdom is not explicitly mentioned, but the summary is in line with earlier Kingdom proclamation, except that the King is no longer veiled and Jesus is identified as Lord and Christ. His death and resurrection occupy the signifying position of the earlier widespread success casting out demons. There is a short time of waiting, symbolically parallel to that before the Parousia, until the bestowing of heavenly power in the Holy Spirit. This and the first quite dramatic moves in the new stage of international mission are the subject of Acts. Luke displays awareness of chronology, geography and of the divine, rather than human, control of epochal events. The apostles must wait, without knowing how long; must be in Jerusalem so as to start from Jerusalem; must declare now about Jesus what before could not be said, for without the resurrection the story had been incomplete. Even here, at the commissioning of the disciples, Luke does not report any explanation from Jesus of something that in later expositions of the Gospel was to acquire prominence, namely that the suffering and death were the ground of the divine forgiveness. Some readers might find it implied by the reference to explanatory scriptures, but the emphasis here, as previously, falls on scriptural prediction rather than interpretation of the event. Luke’s narrative hurries to its interim conclusion: things will be made clear in his next book, as they were in historical fact at and after Pentecost.

Farewell Discourses in John Chapters 14 to 17 of John, following the pre-Passover evening meal at which Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, have some of the character of the briefings and commissioning that we have been considering in the Synoptic gospels. There is encouragement mingled with a tone of regret at the necessity of parting, if only for a while. Jesus speaks of grief, of joy to follow and, as in the

94 Examples might be Deut 18:18-19; Is 11:1-5; Ps 16:8-11. 106 A GOSPEL READING: The Teaching of Jesus briefings, there is the suggestion of difficulties for the disciples he leaves behind: ‘In the world you will have trouble.’ ‘A time is coming when any one who kills you will think he is offering a service to God.’95 The disciples’ trouble will arise from their traffic with the world, yet mission is only made explicit towards the end in the prayer: ‘As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.’96 John’s version of the Great Commission can be discerned in his telling how Jesus appeared to the disciples on the first Sunday evening after his resurrection.

‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’ (Jn 20:21-23)

This, which seems also to pre-enact, perhaps parabolically, the Pentecostal event of Acts 2, gives to the apostles as part of their message the authority to forgive sins. No linkage with a redemptive death here, rather a conferring of an authority already revealed by Jesus in his ministry. Forgiveness will be by pronouncement, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, however, and the sending, must be understood by the reader in the light of what has gone before in Chapters 14 to 17. Just as in Matthew and Luke the Great Commission is to be understood by a reading which ‘cuts to’ the briefings for the earlier missions. Why should the gospels so extensively exhibit this structural feature? (Mark, which we have not included on account of its foreshortened ending, has no Great Commission but does not lack an eschatological discourse, so could be argued to display the feature a fortiori.) At 16:14 the in John provides an answer. ‘I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you.’ The gospels tell it this way because it occurred this way. The early stage of Jesus’ mission was relatively secure for the disciples, with no great threat from opponents, no need for teaching about the last stage of mission, or warnings about persecution. Then, about the time of the missions of the Twelve and Seventy-two, and again near the end in Jerusalem, Jesus begins to set the disciples’ expectations with predictions, warnings and encouragements. Finally, after the resurrection, the disciples are reminded both by Jesus and by the Holy Spirit. Their minds are opened (Luke’s phrase) as they perceive the completed story and begin to understand what they are to do with it. Their remembering, of which the compiling of the gospels is a part, is dynamically linked with the interpretation of what Jesus did and taught, with the kerygmatic formulation that is the Gospel, and with the mission begun by Jesus and continued by the apostles and the church. ‘The Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.’97

95 Jn 16:33; 16:2. 96 Jn 17:18. 97 Jn 14:26.

4 What Happened to the Gospel?

Our four texts have always, it seems, been known as gospels, and Jesus proclaimed good news from the start. The Evangelists believe that in writing about Jesus they are telling about the coming to the world of the Son of God. Their difficulty is that he was killed, on the face of it the worst possible news. Rather than minimising, or putting a gloss on his death, they devote a fifth of their space to the circumstances, yet beyond Jesus’ predictions and his emphasis that it was intended by God, there is surprisingly little explanation of why it had to take place, and of what was gained. All four gospels are witnesses to the resurrection of course, and there seems to be a well- established reader strategy of taking that event, miraculous, unique and triumphant as it is, as so far surpassing all that went before, that the need to understand the suffering and death which at the time were so appalling to the apostles and to Jesus himself, is deferred, or rendered not necessary at all. An alternative reading involves taking the fuller picture that can be inferred from the rest of the New Testament, and reading back into the gospels the more fully featured Gospel. ‘The gospels are books about the atonement,’ argues Leon Morris in The Cross in the New Testament. ‘Their authors select their incidents and choose the words in which they describe them specifically to bring out the great saving act of God in Christ.’1 Yet although Jesus taught about many other matters, the gospels record no parable to illustrate, for example, the atoning function of a person’s death. It seems that for detailed interpretation of the suffering and death we have to cross over the gospels’ threshold to the apostolic preaching at and after Pentecost. The message proclaimed by Peter and the apostles was certainly taken as good news by the first audiences. The kerygma has been summarised by F F Bruce as

a a narrative of the public ministry and , b the divine attestation of his Messiahship and of his resurrection, of which the speakers are eyewitnesses, c ‘testimonies’ from the Old Testament proving Jesus to be the Messiah, d exhortation to repentance and faith.2

Much of this is in the gospels except that there were no occasions of public witness to the resurrection within their chronology. The earlier missions had proclaimed a need to repent, but had stopped short of announcing Jesus to be the Messiah, which would have been counter to his express instruction, and they would not therefore have referred to his future death or resurrection. The broad question then remains of what we find within the gospels by way of interpretation of the deeds and words of Jesus, and what markers and clues there are, whether from Jesus or from the Evangelists, to explain the coming of

1 Op. cit. p. 13. C.f. F F Bruce, Paul and Jesus, 1977. A more realistic claim is made by Joel Green: ‘The passion story has very little to say about the significance of Jesus’ death in salvation-historical terms,’ The Death of Jesus: Tradition and Interpretation in the Passion Narrative, 1988, p. 320. Quoted also above, p. 21. 2 On Acts 2:14ff. in New Bible Commentary, 3rd edn., 1970. 108 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? the Son of God and his allowing himself to be killed. The gospel reader finds himself drawn into a quest for understanding of catastrophe; and if it is to be pursued also outside the gospels, he will all the same wish to locate whatever pointers within these crucial texts establish connections and provide basis and confirmation of the emergent pattern. The Gospel was a proclamation under development by its protagonist: the message of Jesus in the days of John the Baptist is markedly different from the proclamation of the apostles in Acts, and it undergoes further major development in Hebrews and the letters of Paul. The figure of Jesus provides historical basis and controlling authority and, via the Holy Spirit, empowers the pursuit of understanding beyond the gospel parameters. ‘He will guide you into all truth.’ If we want a controlling idea, it must be the Kingdom, the declared subject of most if not all of his teaching, and the metaphorical locus of large promises made to the disciples. And if there was a necessity for his death, we should expect it to have much to do with the Kingdom, and perhaps with the fulfilment of those promises.

Kingdom Prospects Concerning it there was an unmistakable sense of anticipation and futurity. So much so, that it came as a surprise when Jesus told his listeners that the Kingdom of heaven was ‘near’ or already among them;3 and even when he was about to depart they asked in confusion whether he was going to re-establish Israel in some Messianic way as a monarchy.4 The Beatitudes extended a promise to various categories of poor, needy and questing people: ‘they will inherit the earth’, ‘will be filled’, ‘will be called sons of God’. On the basis of the principle of parallelism, the fulfilment of each promise is tantamount to gaining the Kingdom, which is the symbolic predicate of the first and last of them. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.’5 A sense of the Kingdom emerges from the images of comfort, of receiving mercy, seeing God, being credited with sonship and of inheriting the earth. It meets, or will meet, a range of needs and aspirations; its centre is relationship with God. Public awareness of an imminent kingdom of heaven had been raised by John the Baptist, who advised his audiences to anticipate the Judgement by amendment of life.6 Jesus proceeded with a similar message but with major additions in which the Kingdom was progressively revealed. He made authoritative pronouncements about God, let it be known that a relationship of, or like, sonship was possible with him, and illustrated verbally and actually what is meant by righteousness. His acts and signs endorsed the promises and the teaching, were evidence that the title Son of God fitted him uniquely, and conveyed in a new mode the message of divine presence. He put forth the power of the Creator, healing a range of illnesses, quelling a storm, restoring to life people who were taken to be dead. When he exercised the divine

3 Mt 4:17, or within as opposed to an entity with only historical and geographical coordinates; Lk 17:21. 4 Acts 1:6. 5 Mt 5:3-10. 6 Mt 3:2. 109 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? prerogative of forgiveness of a person’s sins, or told some one he would give them eternal life,7 there was ground for understanding, and reason to believe. Like the idea of the Kingdom, such belief was dynamic, developing. Discipleship provided a framework in which the Teacher remained the subject of attention and the source of authority. The woman from whom he had expelled seven demons became a disciple, and subsequently a witness of the resurrection.8 The gospels attest a progress in belief and understanding of the Kingdom that was by no means even or straightforward. There were conflicts with common experience, even common sense,9 and the Teacher deliberately withheld publication for a time of his status as Messiah, even though the identification was acknowledged by him as true. But so powerful was the cumulative effect of his miracles that people generally were impelled to postulate an ever higher status and origin: he was a mighty prophet in the tradition of Elijah, he was Elijah, or the successor predicted by John the Baptist, he was even (Herod Antipas’ anxious supposition) John returned to life.10 The course open to those called to pursue understanding and what was soon called the Way of Jesus, was discipleship, and to disciples it was given to know secrets that were hidden from others. These secrets, indicated, but not discursively expounded, in the gospels, concern the status and mission of Jesus, and are implied by titles such as Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah and Lord. Understanding and belief developed as Jesus acted and taught, yet all the while good news was being proclaimed. There was, it seems, a Gospel operative at various identifiable stages, beginning with the earliest public teaching of Jesus’ ministry, a subject to return to.11 First, however, it is worth considering some of the keys to interpretation available to gospel readers, and some of the operative figures. Most carry a loading of futurity. The following general prediction, for example, given to a crowd soon after Peter had privately ventured the suggestion to Jesus that he was the Messiah, is framed by the Parousia. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.’ (Mk 8:34-38) ‘Come after’ and ‘follow’ make use, as we have noticed, of the paradigm of discipleship. The literal is in view, and Jesus may well be issuing a ‘hard word’ of invitation to members of the crowd to join his group of followers. They must count the cost at the beginning. But there is a figurative element too, unless we insist on a reading that accords discipleship only to those who after carrying their cross lose their life having been, presumably, impaled upon it. Yet Jesus has just predicted his own death at the hands of antagonists, together with his

7 Mk 2:5; Lk 23:43. 8 Mk 16:9. 9 Jn 7:46; Mt 14:16. 10 Lk 9:7; Mk 8:28. 11 See ‘Gospel Gradations’, below, p. 141. 110 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? resurrection, and the reader knows, as the original audience did not, that the death was by crucifixion. The warning therefore evinces a frisson of fear in the reader-disciple, who is shaken into realising that response to Kingdom promises and consolations must cut both ways, there is future gain but present loss, and following Jesus is more than the adoption of his ideals. Jesus establishes a Kingdom dialectic,12 whose starting point we know from the Beatitudes: justice, consolation, sonship and the Kingdom are possible. To gain this blessing (‘salvation’ is in the subtext),13 it is necessary to follow and learn from Jesus. But such following does not stop at listening to his precepts and illustrations, it means a cooperative relation which leads at once to imitation and thence to a shared fate. The disciple is to resemble his master, and since the master is the Messiah who suffers crucifixion, and the Son of Man who comes in the clouds, these astonishing concepts find application with the humblest disciple. ‘Any one’ can, by responding to Jesus’ appeal, come in for this. There is, then, a convergence between the teaching on the Messiah and the teaching about discipleship, although it is not identity. The disciple does not, for example, receive any promise that he or she will come in the clouds; rather they are come for, and received to glory. If the first term in the dialectic is the prospect of the Kingdom, the second is loss, signified by such words as ‘deny himself’, ‘take up his cross’, ‘lose his life’. The negatives are predicted, not commanded. There is no requirement of self-immolation from disciples, and only a small minority has, in the historical perspective available to us, been martyred. But the warning is unmistakable that discipleship may bring followers a fate equivalent to their Master’s. By invoking the spiritual realm, the Kingdom, Jesus counterbalances earthly and bodily loss with future, heavenly gain. The rhetorical effect is that the unseen spiritual outweighs the tangible world. But there is no suggestion of the world’s being unreal: it is the scene of election to discipleship, a place of learning and trial, populated with the neighbours and the nations to whom disciples are sent. Human life can be lost or saved, lost in earthly pursuits, saved in those of the Kingdom of heaven. Explicitly, Jesus puts himself at the focal point of the Gospel: the reward is for ‘whoever loses his life for me and the Gospel’.14 Doing so he proclaims the Gospel while taking understanding forward, giving new information to disciples and would-be inheritors of the earth, issuing an invitation, albeit one hard to accept, that they should believe and follow. Loss, suffering and death are the second term of the dialectic, and they are accepted for the sake of a better alternative. Following Jesus and serving the cause of his Gospel may lead to suffering or death, but it is a price worth paying, a sacrifice worth making. Jesus makes some use of the language of sacrifice, but more often he deploys in various contexts the language of trading and money transaction. ‘Soul’ (v. 36) is introduced so as to effect a recovery

12 The young Hegel’s early elaboration of the paradigm of thesis, antithesis, synthesis derived its last term from the Kingdom of God (The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate, 1798, publ. 1907). 13 Jesus speaks of salvation to Zacchaeus, Lk 19:9, where the future is retrojected to the present. 14 ‘Believing in Jesus is never called for’ in Mark, claims Eugene Lemcio preposterously in The Past of Jesus and the Gospels, 1991, p.14. His book usefully draws attention however to the way ‘the Evangelists produced narratives distinguishing Jesus’ time from their own.’. 111 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? from the previous riddling statement which seems to leave a man with a life lost or in question whichever course he takes: ‘Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life . . .will save it.’ Saving and loss are both transactions, both would be entered in a steward’s account book, but Jesus reverses their polarity making a virtue of the loss which yields ultimate gain in another Kingdom. A martyred disciple may lose his bodily life, but will ‘save’ it, that is, his participation in the coming Kingdom, his soul, is kept on record (in the book of life)15 for the Day when the Son of Man comes to settle accounts. Yet it would not be apt to interpret this as inviting the disciple to buy life or salvation through sacrificial service or martyrdom. Indeed the rhetorical question of v. 37 precludes such a course: there is nothing a person can offer to secure his soul for the Kingdom. Later Jesus would use the figure of a ransom paid ‘for many’ by himself to achieve such a result.16 The third term, functioning as synthesis, has already been mentioned, it is the return of Jesus, the Son of Man, to execute with the angels Judgement throughout the earth and on all generations. As suggested in the parables, the books will be opened and the people sorted. The test now mentioned is not of whether a person has ever been a disciple but of whether he has, despite trials such as persecution, remained true and resisted calls to deny loyalty to Jesus by, for instance, acceding to the emperor worship exacted a few years later by Rome. The Kingdom is reward, compensation, vindication. It is being blessed in the Father’s power and glory. The arbiter is Jesus the Son of Man. In his dialectic the disciple is attracted to all that is promised in the Kingdom, but is confronted by the challenge to go beyond the self-denial of asceticism to a loyalty to Jesus and his Gospel that may cost his life. The reward is participation in the eternal life and divine glory of the eschatological Kingdom.

The Contest with Evil Between the here and now of ‘this adulterous and sinful generation’ and the Father’s glory, presently eternal to him but future to mankind, ‘a great chasm has been fixed’.17 It is not simply a matter of time, but of death. It is not simply a matter of place, but of enormous moral difference. The human world has passed under the power of evil, on account of sin. Jesus uses personification: there is Satan, the prince of this world, and to some Pharisaic antagonists there is reference to ‘your father the devil’. But mankind, that is individuals, are held responsible by God. In the temptation in the desert Jesus engages evil in three manifestations as a human being and as one who could yield to temptation. The occasion has a quality of generality. We have noticed the correspondence with moments in Jesus’ life, to the taunt for example, that he should descend from the cross. His entire ministry, his life, can be interpreted as engagement with the evil power and with the sin that brings depredations to human life such as sickness and mortality and which, by its ill effects on our nature, renders us unfit for the Kingdom. The engagement between God and Satan is not quite the dualistic one between two more or less equal opponents found in Zoroastrianism, nor is mankind uninvolved. Jesus presents his mission as

15 Lk 10:20; Dan 12:1; Rev 20:12-15 16 Mk 10:45. 17 Lk 16:26. 112 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? adversarial, as a campaign against evil for mankind’s benefit. ‘If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.’18 It takes place on the human stage, in the world, God as a man, so that the human creation can be freed from its subjection. The possibility of this, key to Jesus’ teaching and proclamation, is good news, because the alternative must be destruction. What else is salt good for if it has lost its taste? Jesus requires repentance and calls individuals into discipleship so as to learn the way of righteousness. There is community and mutual help in the Spirit. There is waiting for the final fulfilment of Kingdom promises. But it has been a nice point for interpretation of Jesus’ teaching whether or how much the salvation of individuals depends on themselves. In some statements, such as that of Mark 8 on discipleship, or Matthew 25 on serving Christ by serving the poor, there seems to be a possibility that the disciple’s Kingdom destiny is decided by loyalty under duress or a record of meeting people’s needs in love. ‘By their fruit you will recognise them.’ But in the matter of Jesus’ conflict with evil, something on a much greater scale and a lot more radical is in question than the final score at Judgement of any individual. Jesus casts himself in a role greater than that of a teacher of righteousness. ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ This is God changing mankind’s moral universe, creating a new set of conditions, a new direction of aspiration and hope. Beyond the scope of any human individual this, yet it is done in the world of an adulterous and sinful generation so as to redeem it from the annihilating alternative. The hope is variously expressed, but once again it is the Beatitudes which project an affecting spectrum of renewal, comfort and resolution. The means must be the whole of what Jesus did in coming to the world: the stylised and part-symbolic conflict in the desert, the miraculous signs so many of which were expulsions of demons, the teaching of the way of righteousness, the arguments with antagonists and, if it can be understood so, the death and resurrection. The final triumph however, although prefigured in the events of Jesus’ life and by his resurrection, is deferred until his coming again. It is not difficult to draw a line from the encounter in the desert with Satan and the agony of prayer in Gethsemane, between the trial in the wilderness and the trial at the hands of religious and Roman authorities.

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.’ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’ (Lk 22:39-46)

Prayer, keeping to and not being deflected from the purpose of God, and asking to be spared temptation occur in both. Jesus looks back to the desert, and forward to the cross. If there is an adversary causing drowsiness and spiritual

18 Mt 12:28. C.f. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work,’ 1 Jn 3:8. 113 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? impercipience in the disciples and anguish to himself, he could be named as Satan, who puts to him a less painful alternative and brings forward an acute sense of the horror of the agony to come.19 The temptation which in the Lord’s Prayer disciples ask to be spared is an enticement to which capitulation is easily possible, it is the trial of fire or pain which proves character and reveals steadfastness, and it is being presented with an alternative course that, whatever its merits, is not God’s will. Here and in the desert Jesus, whose words to disciples contain some hard sayings, is himself taking the hardest way, a baptism of fire.20 He is tempted, but there is a difference between his temptation as Messiah and the temptations of disciples. Their prayer is to be that God will spare them a test as unendurable as his. The divergence between their struggles as disciples and his agony as Messiah brings into view the fact that what he undertakes against evil is of a different order, is with evil itself, and that his role is that of his followers’ champion. Their battles will be different as a result of the victory he must win. The narrative logic of that ‘must’ runs deeply in the process of reading. We sometimes expect, if God is the Creator and responsible for the beginning, that he will look to the end, and that we, especially if we consider ourselves more sinned against than sinning, shall be delivered from evil. The resolution we look for should include the enactment of justice, and justice should include reward and punishment. Evil not only must not win, but in the metaplot its fruits will be burnt and its powers and very essence annihilated. A new heaven and a new earth. But what can the suffering and death of the Son of Man have to do with this? At first sight perhaps nothing. John the Baptist appeared to predict a successor who would visit the earth with judgement and with fire, but Jesus disappointed such expectation when he defined Messiahship in terms of rejection and death, and then took that fate upon himself voluntarily. In the topos of contest however, we find expectation met in the signs that Jesus is Son of God with power, in his acting against various forms of evil; this is then put in doubt at the crucifixion, and at the resurrection there is a recovery. But evidently it is not the final resolution. The end is not yet, and Jesus must return in power. Meanwhile did God or Satan have the upper hand at the death of Christ? This is indeed an interpretative crux, and the Christian reader, anxious for the best, should try pondering the brute fact of it as a remarkable success for evil. At the very least a ‘great prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people’, he was crucified, ‘and we had hoped he was the one who was to redeem Israel’, admitted Cleopas and his friend on the way to Emmaus. To say that the Son of God had been put to death would sound absurd, for that must be impossible (Peter would say something similar at Pentecost). So was he the Son of God? But although at Gethsemane it was seen by the disciples that Jesus was faced with an ordeal he did not want, they understood from his teaching that it was a fate that in the Messiah was necessary. And in the anguished praying the interpretative key is the Father’s will. The mystery both of this and the final end lies with him, and is conceded to him. Jesus could have gone to his death in bitterness and so on the terms dictated by evil. Such a response would, in a manner of speaking, bow down

19 C.f. Peter’s remonstration, and the reply of Jesus: ‘Get behind me, Satan,’ Mk 8:33. 20 See ‘I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!’ and its context, Lk 12:49-50. 114 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? and worship it. As it was, he died calling upon the Father, committing himself to the Father, and committing therefore to him the whole matter of outcome, Judgement and interpretation for himself and (he was doing this for others) for mankind. If God is believed and worshipped, in any circumstances and in extremis, Satan is cast down.

Titles Of the various explicative titles, perhaps Son of God and Son of Man have most to do with the role of champion in the contest with evil. Later Paul would elaborate the argument that Jesus was a representative parallel to Adam, bringing by his death, an ‘act of righteousness’, life for all mankind.21 Matthew’s Roman centurion was moved by Jesus’ death to exclaim, ‘Surely he was the Son of God.’ Presumably even more aware than the Governor Pilate that Jesus had done nothing to merit such a fate, he must have been struck by the way Jesus continued, despite the insults of religious leaders and convicted felons alike, to trust God and to pray to him. ‘My Son whom I love’, was the testimony of the divine voice heard at the Transfiguration and at the Baptism; while the devil’s temptations had sought to question the ascription: ‘If you are the Son of God.’ The miracles did provide signs of Sonship, but the very title of Son implies the Father, and as John emphasises, Jesus would allow no separation: ‘I and the Father are one.’ The unity is put to its severest test on the cross, where any power and glory connoted by the title are reversed in a negative sign of their contraries, weakness and shame. Neither Jesus nor the Evangelists seek to evade or conceal this. From the cross Jesus prays aloud in the words of Psalm 22, the first verse of which may be read as standing for what follows.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel. In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.’ . . . I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. But you, O Lord, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

21 Rom 5:18. 115 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

There is an astonishing fit, fulfilment is probably a better term, with the circumstances of the crucifixion, and it seems reasonable to assume that it is paralleled in the experience and feelings of Jesus. If so, it is remarkable how the psalm as prophecy affords a view of the inner life of the gospels’ protagonist at the most crucial moment of his time on earth. The modern reader, used to interior monologue and the exposure of fictitious (or real) characters’ thoughts and feelings by authors adopting an omniscient point of view, may occasionally feel a lack in the gospels of such inwardness. Here however the veil is drawn aside. Jesus feels abandoned by the Father. He feels the oppression of cruelty inflicted in malice and with no shred of justification. He feels the desolation of isolation (the apostles have fled) and betrayal (Judas). There is the mockery and the scorn of bystanders, the shame of nakedness and the sharing around of his clothing. And there is a combined effect on strength, morale and feeling of the physical torture until death. With assistance from the psalm the gospels, indeed Jesus, and the Inspirer of the psalmist, report the fact and the sense of the experience. The interest is more than aesthetic, but is to plot where the Son of God went and to document the descent to levels of engagement with the human condition and with evil that otherwise would not have been believed. But the psalm adopted by Jesus as his prayer has another function. There is not only the expression of anguish, but also an appeal to God. That is, it is utterance predicated on the existence of God and his receptivity. It assumes his preference for what is just over what is unjust, and his power to deliver now as in times past. The prayer also consists of worship, ascribing to God in v.3 place and power that remain intact despite the present horror, despite the absence, or deferment, of deliverance. And it expresses faith, both generally in turning to God rather than elsewhere, and specifically in the hope of future blessing which dominates the second half of the psalm. For example

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfil my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the Lord will praise him − may your hearts live forever! All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

With the psalmist Jesus is saying that the Kingdom blessings will, following his death, be extended to the ‘ends of the earth’, a phrase used in respect of the Great Commission. It is a short step from saying that blessings follow the agonising death, to saying that they do so on account of it. Paul was to make a similar connection in Philippians 2: ‘Therefore God exalted him’. The Son of Man is the title most commonly used by Jesus to refer to himself. In Ezekiel the epithet is commonly used for ‘man’ or ‘human being’, and in one aspect of Aramaic usage it seems neutral, roughly equivalent to the reflexive ‘one’ (‘One prefers . . .’ for ‘I prefer’). Its reference to humanity soon acquires for Jesus ironic overtones, particularly when the Son of Man is predictively raised from the dead, or ‘to come in his father’s glory with his angels [to] reward each person according to what he has done.’22 These are hardly the doings of a mere man, and the parallel title Son of God soon

22 Mt 17:9; 16:27-28, c.f. Dan 7:13-14. 116 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? suggests itself. Yet all the while, as we have noticed, Jesus is explicitly, and by the use of this device, restraining disclosure for the time being to the world at large of his identity as Son and Messiah. A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise at the judgement with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here. (Mt 12:39-42) This, to Pharisees and teachers of the law, proclaims the role while postponing the personal claim. ‘Who is this “one” greater than Jonah and Solomon?’ they might have asked. ‘Does he mean himself?’ Disciples and readers know, but the antagonists did not, for the time of public announcement had not yet come. Through the period covered by the gospels the title was used by Jesus to sharpen perception of himself, to undermine entrenched assumptions, to set in play the ball of interpretation: ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ Other dicta and other titles continue the process, while the allusion to the prophecy of Daniel remained covert. ‘Lord’, with its connotation of divinity, is used both by disciples and, for example, by a man who approached Jesus from the crowd with a petition concerning his son.23 It expressed respect and more, for the powers and the authority exercised by Jesus were impressively unique. It is also used in the authorial voice by Luke (‘The Lord appointed seventy-two’), sharing both point of view and interpretation with reader-disciples.24 But Messiah, for which Christ is the Greek equivalent, is held in reserve until the time of proclamation. In private Jesus confirms the ascription made by Peter in Caesarea Philippi, but immediately invokes ‘Son of Man’ to speak on this and other occasions of the suffering that lies ahead. The Son of Man stands in for the Messiah until the truth can be told. Authorially, Luke will use the title (‘He would not allow them to speak because they knew he was the Christ’25). There is reference to it in the infancy narratives, and some puzzling speculation, e.g. Mark 12:35-37, about whether the Christ was identical to the Son of God, but the announcement is not made until Jesus goes for the last time to Jerusalem. Then the public entry and acclamation of crowds of disciples is a form of declaration, and before he is sentenced to death, perhaps in part because of it, Jesus explicitly allows that Messiahship is a title to which he lays claim.26 As was explained to Pilate, the Christ was a Jewish king. But the tendentious definition was made by those who were seeking Roman authorisation for a judicial killing. That Jesus had taught about a kingdom of heaven and had predicted the destruction (some forty years ahead) of the Temple, was held to be opposition to Roman rule and Jewish order. In Luke Pilate asks, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ When Jesus replies, ‘Yes, it is as

23 Mt 16:22; 17:15. 24 Lk 10:1, c.f. 7:13; 17:5. 25 Lk 4:41, c.f. Mk 1:1; Mt 1:1. 26 Mk 14:61-62. See below, p.143 . 117 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? you say,’ Pilate understands enough to conclude that there was no threat, and finds there is no case to answer.27 Although there was a widespread sense of anticipation in Jesus’ generation that God would undertake through great events to help his people once more as in the past,28 and although the title Anointed or Messiah was heard in this connection, there seems to have been no precise idea of the Messiah’s role nor a clear understanding of what he would do. There were those, and Barabbas seems to have been among them,29 who wanted action against the Roman presence, and some may have linked the Messiah to leadership of such action. John records an occasion when Jesus avoided a crowd that tried to make him king.30 But Jesus eschewed all suggestion of a political role, and famously advised people in Jerusalem to pay both their Temple dues and their Roman taxes. The Messianic title was a scarcely formed instrument which Jesus could shape to his own purposes. Using ‘Son of Man’, he painstakingly taught the disciples that suffering, death and resurrection were the Father’s purpose for him. Then at the end, he effects the changeover to Christ. ‘Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ he asked, and by doing so improved on the Emmaus disciples’ ascription of the role of powerful prophet.31 The rhetorical gain from the changeover is one of scope. Disciples may have become accustomed to reading ‘I’ for ‘Son of Man’. Messiah however connoted the Servant of God in Isaiah, obliquely referred to in the heavenly words at the Baptism and Transfiguration, who acted or would act, powerfully and poignantly in the Spirit on the national and the international stage.

Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. This is what God the Lord says − he who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it: ‘I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.’ (Is 42:1, 5-7)

The first lesson from Jesus was that in the divinely appointed role he would be rejected, killed, raised and glorified. The second was that this was to bring ‘justice to the nations’ and ‘light’ to the Gentiles, because these things were done and endured as the Christ. ‘He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’32 The gospels stop short of giving the

27 Lk 23:1-4. 28 Lk 7:16. 29 Lk 23:19. 30 Jn 6:15. By contrast with the Synoptics, John represents Jesus as forthcoming with the title Messiah from an early point in his narrative. While the declaration of Andrew in 1:42 to his brother may not be quite conclusive in context, the word of Jesus to the woman of Sychar is. ‘I who speak to you am he’ (4:26). Similarly Martha’s declaration of faith in 11:27 is that she believes ‘that you are the Christ.’ However it might reasonably be maintained that these do not constitute (premature) announcements by Jesus to his primary audience of his Messiahship. 31 Lk 24:26,19. 32 Lk 24:27. 118 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? explanation in discursive form, but they provide unmistakable signals of where explanation is to be found. ‘Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’33

Contexts We must give attention, then, to the contextual tradition in which Jesus acted. In the macrocontext are the history and scriptures of Israel which he invites us to examine for the explanation we seek. Then there is the microcontext of events and incidents which the gospels report and where he is seen directing in significant measure what happened and how. With the microcontext we also consider more closely the projection, more than a backcloth rather an end, which he made concerning the future. So far we have made an effort to resist readings back into the gospels from later writings, and accorded primacy to the trail as laid. We have maintained conditions in which, for the sake of analysis, the subject is to some degree isolated. Impossible though it is to proceed without assumption and hypothesis (God, Son of God, good, evil, etc.), we nevertheless postpone the theologies of later generations, considering it rewarding to uncover the foundation on which these elaborate ramparts have been built, and to try to make sense of the ideas that were in the minds of protagonists, audiences and authors. The idea of examining the bare facts of what happened before proceeding to their interpretation runs, admittedly, into difficulties from the beginning. The Baptism and Temptation were themselves interpretations. But the organisation of this book remains indebted to the investigative model, and to the fundamental dichotomy of word and deed, even as the corollary of the hermeneutic circle becomes evident that a fact has no existence independent of (prior) understanding. Always privileged as regards interpretation, endings tend to reward attention, and this applies as much in the gospels as anywhere. The apostles would have it so, glad of their role as witnesses of the resurrection. Jesus routinely directed his listeners’ attention to outcomes. The portent of the ending in narrative generally seems entwined with the deep structure of the human mind and, in later Judaism, with notions of judgement and a Last Day. We have noticed that all four gospels complement the crucifixion with the resurrection, and that while this is evidently an astonishing and welcome dénouement, there is, with the possible exception of John, no discursive explanation of the death. Condensed allusions are available in the titles, and there are some equally dense dicta which we have yet to consider, such as those to do with the ransom and new covenant. But we find, near the end of the gospels, that the signs direct us beyond their confines to other texts of the scriptural record. When Luke reports Jesus’ words on fulfilment, and John the words on the explicative work of the Holy Spirit, we are sent as readers to what is already written, already explained. This hermeneutic, set down centuries before the event, is in its way as mighty an act as any of those by Jesus at which the crowds marvelled. When the Kingdom’s reach is extended in the post-resurrection era to the ends of the earth and of the age, there is the sense, in John’s conclusion at least, that the world may be filled full with the

33 Lk 24:44. 119 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? proliferating harvest of what Jesus did and does.34 Readers are sent not only back, but on and outwards as well. What sort of explanation does the prophetic detour afford? It is for the most part a matter of fit and of thematic consonance, as we have noticed with Psalm 22, used in prayer by Jesus on the cross. In other places too the psalms provide shafts of prophetic illumination of the things gospel readers might ponder. ‘God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself,’ says the psalmist of Psalm 49 in words that go the distance with the Evangelists as regards the resurrection, and which with reconciliation turn the tables of abandonment. From a gospel point of view the most important text, if one has to be selected, must be Isaiah, whose writings in the eighth century BC give early expression to the Messianic figure who was to be so important to gospel interpretation. The prophecies in a fragmented and often elusive way that is largely unconcerned with narrative conventions, generate an outline figure, variously the King (Chapters 1-37), the Servant (38-55) and the Anointed Conqueror (56-66).35 Isaiah’s was a time of defeat and exile. Israel’s royal line, the remaining focus of national identity, was to be lost after the defeat by Babylon; and Isaiah’s prophecy, from somewhere between the experience of defeat and the hope of return, makes a new and complex music counterpointing melodic lines relating to God, his people, their King and God’s Servant; and mingling sadness, regret, contrition, moral anger, repentance, longing and visionary hope. The figures dissolve into one another, so that the King may be as the Servant, the Servant as the Anointed Conqueror, the King as God, the Servant as the nation of Israel, and they, who had been put away, restored to God as his bride. More than any other prophet, Isaiah’s scope is international, the renewal and the hope he poignantly conveys is good news too for the Gentiles. When in the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus gave a reading from Isaiah, he introduced his explanation by announcing the fulfilment of prophecy. ‘In your hearing,’ he told his audience, ‘this scripture is today fulfilled.’36 It was the auditory equivalent of ‘before your eyes’. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Is 61:1-2) Isaiah’s Anointed, predicted in prophecy, was present (‘is on me’, ‘has anointed’). Jesus is referred to, and the acts of proclamation, healing, liberation and blessing are from now on to be undertaken. Recently John the Baptist, last of the prophetic line, had preached to the crowds about One, not unlike Isaiah’s composite figure, who would come with power and the Holy Spirit. At his baptism Jesus had been anointed to preach good news, and the Spirit had come upon him in some visible form ‘like a dove’. The poor, prisoners, blind and oppressed are those most especially to whom he is sent. They correspond to the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those hungry for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted, to whom Jesus calls in the Beatitudes. By means of the Spirit, the Lord is his Sender and his power. Thus

34 Jn 21:25. 35 See e.g. J A Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah, 1993. 36 Lk 4:14-30. 120 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? he is able to perform the acts of healing and liberation that are signs of God’s grace and indications that the ‘year’ of his favour has come. The appointment made in Isaiah is kept by Jesus. All the same, as the delayed reaction of the Nazareth congregation shows (‘all were furious’), there were boundaries. Wonders were not wrought on all sides and on demand. Those Jesus did do were signs of something yet greater, here called the Lord’s favour, elsewhere his Kingdom. The same goes for the freedom for prisoners and good news for the poor: the attention of the beneficiary, the audience and the gospel reader is directed back onto the human figure of Jesus and then on to God. From Isaiah the good news is that the man Jesus performs the role of the Anointed, and in him the Spirit of God acts in power to bring hope and to effect salvation, the favour signified by the signs. Repeatedly Jesus explained his role in terms taken from Isaiah. If the Son of Man was the Messiah, as Peter had perceived, that was to be understood not only according to the figure of the Anointed Conqueror, or not at first at all in such terms, but rather the figure of the Servant. ‘I am among you as one who serves.’ ‘If any one wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.’37 Jesus meant his disciples literally to serve the needs of the brotherhood, parents and neighbours, and to emulate him by doing so; but figuratively too there was a conformity to the type set out in Isaiah, so that the one complements the other, the literal service being interpreted by reference to the type, the type actualised in service and, as would prove inevitable, in suffering. However, Jesus was uniquely the Servant, going to lengths not possible to his disciples. And it is the mystery of his suffering and death which Isaiah most illuminates. After the Last Supper and a few minutes before he was arrested, Jesus quoted Isaiah, again speaking of present fulfilment. ‘It is written: “And he was numbered with the transgressors”; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfilment.’38 Isaiah’s Chapter 53 with its account of the Servant’s suffering is invoked not merely to make the point that a felon’s death is imminent, but that Jesus is going yet further to keep an appointment made by God and noted by Isaiah. The allusion is to a text that not only predicts the suffering, death and resurrection in detail, but also goes beyond anything in the gospels to explain it, and to show what its function was. The Servant is introduced with a reference to lifting up that anticipates the double entendre of John 3; indeed the multiple perspective we are taking gives multivalence. First is the renown of Isaiah’s Servant, achieved despite or because of catastrophe, then the fame in and beyond Galilee of Jesus as the mighty prophet who is the Lord’s Servant, then the elevation in crucifixion referred to by John, and followed by two stages of exaltation − resurrection and ascension.

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him − his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness −

37 Lk 22:27; Mk 9:35. 38 Lk 22:37, quoting Is 53:12. 121 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

So will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him. For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Is 52:13-15, 53:1-3)

Crucified as a transgressor the Servant (Jesus in our reading) provokes a response of revulsion. People are appalled. The contrast with his presence and moral stature is without precedent. Yet, and here we get the first shaft of interpretation, many nations will be ‘sprinkled’. This somewhat hermetic reference seems to draw on priestly action in, for example, rites of purification or healing. ‘Sprinkle the water of cleansing on them,’ Moses tells Aaron and his descendants in respect of the Levites;39 and in Leviticus 14:7 there is a legal provision for the sevenfold sprinkling of a person with skin disease. Sprinkling connotes blessing, and more specifically the granting of the prerequisites of blessing. Gentile nations will benefit, even without witnessing the primary events which include the Servant’s suffering. These reveal ‘the arm of the Lord’ in new, scarcely credible action. The synecdoche refers to God and to his great acts of power. ‘With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,’ writes the psalmist (Psalm 77) of the Egyptian Exodus, and redemption is, in another mode, what is described here. In an unpromising environment the Servant grew up before God as a person who was in many ways, until he began to ‘act wisely’ and to be ‘raised up’, unexceptional. There were no visible attributes of royalty or of divinity, indeed his lot was rejection, sorrow and suffering. It was rendered especially hideous by the injustice involved and the fact that it was inflicted on God’s Servant. Yet in the voice of a chorus, the prophet descries a kind of transaction, a process by which ‘we’, or God’s people, are benefited by the event.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgement he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

39 Num 8:7. 122 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. (Is 53:4-10)

The event, which in our reading becomes the crucifixion, brings God’s healing and forgiving power to human needs: infirmities, sorrows, transgressions, lostness. Whereas it is normally impossible for such troubles and guilt to be transferred between one person and another, here the Servant does, by divine disposition, take them to himself. The paradigm of sacrifice is available for some part of the explanation. This is a victim offered for human sin, the death a guilt offering, its result divine acceptance of the sinner, and a cancelling of the debt of sin so that the prerequisite to God’s favour is provided. Weaving the threads of suffering endured by the Servant with the needs of all of us, the prophet embroiders the theme of salvific substitution and transfer. There are verbal echoes in the gospels. ‘Like a lamb’ in v. 7 recalls the reticence of Jesus under questioning and on the cross, and also the title used by John: ‘The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.’40 Sacrifice is evidently what this is about, and in both interpretations, Isaiah’s and John’s, the beneficiaries are many. The image of strayed sheep has no direct closure in that there is in Isaiah no recovery, while in Jesus’ parable there is; and in John there is the further statement, ‘I am the . . . and I lay down my life for the sheep.’41 The reader of John who is puzzled about what kind of benefit this death may bring can look for help in Isaiah’s broader context and composite imagery. There is a close fit between Isaiah’s Servant and the circumstances of Jesus’ suffering. Crucifixion is not explicitly mentioned, but the ‘pierced’ of v. 5 may direct the alert reader to ‘they have pierced my hands and feet’ in Psalm 22. The suffering ends in death, in which the gospels show Jesus associated both with criminals who were executed at the same time and with the rich Joseph of Arimathea, in whose new tomb Jesus’ body was laid to rest,42 so transposing a literal reading within v. 9a. Isaiah’s finding in v. 10 that all this is no calamity which God was unable to prevent, but was his will, makes the point which Jesus used to state so emphatically when he broached the subject of his coming death.43 By reading Isaiah, we can see further into the mystery: God has sent his Servant to die in order to make the guilt offering that will lead directly to blessing: ‘He will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.’ King Zedekiah, on being captured by the Babylonian forces in 587 BC, was made to witness the killing of his sons before his own eyes were put out.44 If that king’s experience lay darkly before Isaiah’s Servant, the issue of issue was an important one, hence the question in v. 8, ‘And who can speak of his descendants?’ The gospel reader finds no direct equivalence with the celibate Jesus, but may be reminded of his gathering of disciples whom he called brothers and family, teaching them to be sons and daughters of God and his Father’s heirs of the Kingdom where God’s

40 Jn 1:29. 41 Lk 15:4-7; Jn 10:14-15. 42 Mt 27:38, 57-60. 43 Implicit in the ‘must’ of Mk 8:31 etc. 44 Jer 52:10-11. 123 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? will is done always.45 After Jesus’ death the disciples would make more disciples, and the promised blessing be spread to the ends of the earth, and to the ‘many’ mentioned next.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; By his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, Because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Is 53:11-12)

There has been suffering and death, but it is followed by resurrection. The Servant who was killed with transgressors and assigned to the grave ‘will see the light of life’. Without pause Isaiah goes on to make explicit the benefits to ‘many’ (Hebrew idiom for all concerned) of the sin offering. The Servant has the satisfaction of vindication and seeing many ‘sons’ brought into a glory analogous to that of the spoil-giving conqueror, while the many are credited with what they must have to enter the Kingdom and the presence of God: righteousness. Isaiah’s phrase lays a foundation famously elaborated in Romans by Paul. ‘He was delivered over to death for our sins, and was raised to life for our justification.’46 Readers perhaps need to resist the beguiling illusion that so great an event and so profound a mystery is summarily explained by one formulaic phrase. With salvation as with the origin of evil, there are always difficult questions of regression: why did God require it so? Why was the spiritual universe so created? But Isaiah’s Servant is our best resource in the macrocontext of tradition, and provides a sustained line of interpretation supported by a quite astonishing concordance with the events of the gospels. Here is matter for proclamation, explaining more deeply and widely than do the gospels (though signposted within them) the death and resurrection of Jesus, and involving potentially any listener or reader in the good news.

In the microcontext, Jesus arranges developments and circumstances in such a way as to affect interpretation. The juxtaposition of miracles with teaching is one example. ‘Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Get up, take your mat and walk”?’47 Another instance is his arrangement to borrow a donkey for the entry into Jerusalem, so conditioning the popular acclamation of him as a Davidic figure come from God to restore the lost kingly line, as in a prophecy by Zechariah: ‘Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’48 Jesus was, and was not, the hoped-for king. While his Kingdom was the fulfilment of the prophecies, it was ‘not of this world’. When

45 C.f. ‘In bringing many sons to glory it was fitting that God . . . should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering,’ Heb 2:10. 46 Rom 4:25. 47 Mk 2:9. 48 Zech 9:9. 124 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? word reached him that Lazarus was acutely ill, Jesus surprised his disciples and disappointed the anxious sisters Martha and Mary, by delaying two days before going to Bethany. As often, John gives an explanation at the beginning of his account: ‘No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’49 In the interim Lazarus died with the result that instead of a healing, Jesus when he arrived did a more powerful sign, a resurrection, indicative of his power over life and death, a power promised to benefit ‘whoever believes’ in him. Jesus also acted to prevent things from taking place, as with the healings and miracles he did not do on request,50 and on many reported occasions told people to keep silent about his identity. He withdrew from pressing and no doubt clamant crowds, so as to be able the better to pray. He circumscribed his own preaching and healing activity, confining it almost entirely to the Jewish people. This as we have seen was the early stage of a mission that would in due time be extended to the rest of the world. The Jewish people were the holders of the macrocontext that was so important for understanding, and Jerusalem was the site where the foundation would be laid of a new thing, the Kingdom, that would transcend all locality. The injunctions and circumscription had the effect of winding a coiled spring, providing power for the subsequent movement. The gospels show Jesus leading his astonished and fearful disciples with unswerving resolution on their last visit to Jerusalem.51 ‘I must keep going,’ he said ‘today, tomorrow and the next day − for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!’52 It was a bleak statement, ironically giving the city which more than any other should afford honour to God the distinction of being the obvious, even the traditional, place for the killing of prophetic emissaries and God’s Son. A similar point is made in the parable Jesus told about his death.

‘A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. ‘Then the owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.” ‘But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. “This is the heir,” they said. “Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. ‘What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When the people heard this, they said, ‘May this never be!’ Jesus looked directly at them and asked, ‘Then what is the meaning of that which is written: “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.’ The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people. (Lk 20:9-19)

49 Jn 11:4. 50 Mt 16:1-4; Lk 4:23ff. 51 Mk 10:32. 52 Lk 13:33. 125 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

Here he illustrates the subject of his identity, which is now to be divulged and proclaimed. More than a prophet, he is God’s Son − ‘whom I love’. The ‘necessity’ of his subjecting himself to such ill-treatment, often spoken of in association with the title Son of Man, is here a matter of consistency. The owner, entitled to some return from his vineyard, has in vain sent servants in pursuit of his purposes, but rather than give up, sends his son to complete the same mission. Within the scope of the parable the killing is heinous, something to be requited. The story does not reach to some of the other elements of explanation found in Isaiah. But Jesus establishes an association between the rejection by Jerusalem Jews of the Messiah and the giving ‘to others’ of the vineyard, in other words the opening of the Kingdom to all the Gentiles. And in another association, the rejected stone becoming the capstone, taken from Psalm 118:22, he refers to the glory and exaltation of the resurrection and ascension, and the role by them implied in, for instance, Judgement, so linking to Isaiah’s Anointed Conqueror. In his early preaching Peter seems to have had this parable in mind. To the Jerusalem crowd at Pentecost and afterwards he levels charges in much the same terms. ‘The God of Abraham, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go. You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you.’ (Acts 3:13-14) The crowd’s response, of being ‘cut to the heart’ and of repentance, was in good measure due to identification with offence like that of the tenants in the parable. It is not a response based on a theology of atonement, rather one combining repentance for sins (of which the rejection of God’s Messiah was paradigmatic) with acceptance of Jesus’ jurisdiction as Prophetic Teacher, Servant of God and Lord both now and in the Judgement. Jesus selected the place for his end, and he chose also the time, the Passover Festival. In this institution was a framework for action and the interpretative remembering of action. Drawing on the macrocontext for one Exodus, Jesus created another. A dispensation of covenant between God and an enlarging constituency, also his people, instaurated and expressed by the mystery of the death of his Son. As with the mounted entrance to the city, so with the celebratory meal, Jesus made arrangements directing his disciples to the upstairs guest room within Jerusalem. The event was carefully planned. ‘I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer,’ Jesus told the Twelve when the appointed hour came and they settled down to eat. ‘For I tell you,’ he continued, ‘I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the Kingdom of God.’53 Although the imminent suffering was nothing to look forward to, this occasion by contrast was, on account of the companionship and the significance it had by virtue of its relation to past and future, and as an occasion to bring the apostles to a fuller apprehension of the entire mission, and of the Kingdom in which they had become participants. Passover was a remembrance of the flight from Egypt, a deliverance from slavery, a sparing of Israel from the passage of the angel of death, a salvation and the birth of a nation. The meal recalled the last food before departure; besides bread, unleavened because of haste, there was a dish of lamb, slaughtered according to the prescription. Luke explains that Jesus made his

53 Lk 22:16. 126 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? arrangements on the Day of Unleavened Bread ‘on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed’.54 There is in all this ample scope for interpretative examination of the macrocontext, but we shall keep to what the gospels say or where they direct us explicitly. When Jesus, for instance, speaks of not celebrating Passover again he draws the apostles’ attention to ‘fulfilment in the Kingdom of God’. It is a last meal before departure. At the Transfiguration he was heard discussing with Moses and Elijah his coming exodus in Jerusalem, making that death and the events following a thing of great importance, a leaving of one place, the world, for another, the presence of God the Father. But as he made clear, the passage, hideous and painful as it was, was effected not for his benefit but for others’. His death, for which wine and bread would henceforth stand as symbols, was for his disciples.

After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, ‘Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’ (Lk 22:17-20)

It would not however help Judas, or those like him who reject, oppose or betray him. ‘But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.’ They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this. (Lk 22:21-23) Wine and bread were blood and body, shed and metaphorically broken in a death that would bring to others, the ‘us’ of Isaiah 53, healing, forgiveness and restoration. In his sixth chapter John reports Jesus as connecting the bread multiplied for the five thousand back to the manna provided in the wilderness after the Exodus, and forward to the death on the cross, where his life is given ‘for the life of the world’. To believe as a disciple is, in a further elaboration of the metaphor, to eat and drink the sacrificial flesh and blood in the manner of the Jewish Passover and the later Christian celebration of communion. It is to identify with those who need such deliverance, to confess Jesus as providing it, and to receive entitlement to participate in the coming Kingdom. ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’55 The ‘new covenant’ implies a previous one. Covenant is a major theme in the Old Testament, a mode of relationship between God and his people analogous to discipleship in the gospels. There were several covenants given at turning points in Israel’s history. That of Moses, for example, where God saved his people from Egyptian slavery, provided them with the Law and the calling to be by observance of it distinctively his people. In v. 20 Jesus refers to the ritualistic enactment of this covenant: ‘Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on

54 Lk 22:7. The day of the week of this meal, and whether it was in synchrony with the other Passover celebrations going on doesn’t seem to matter. What does matter for interpretation is that Jesus chose the Passover not only to commemorate the historic Exodus, but for his own death, and for the explanations of it given during the Last Supper. 55 Jn 6:54. 127 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? the people and said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you.”’56 His meaning is that his death has all the effect of a covenant, enabling and providing a framework for relationship between the disciples, who are his people, and God. Another of the ancient covenants was granted to David, whose powerful kingly role began to put in question the centrality of Temple and priesthood. When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. (2 Sam 7:12-14) Promise is a major feature of covenant, and the king was here promised to enjoy, through his descendants, an eternal reign. The connection with Jesus’ allusions to eternal life and the Kingdom of God is easily made. And his references to his sonship, taken with the heavenly voice heard at the Baptism and Transfiguration, are continuous with the promise to David that the descendant will enjoy a father-son relation with God. The Davidic covenant was a strong influence on Isaiah, and in the intertestamental period the expectation grew of a ‘Son of David’ who would bring deliverance once more to Israel. Moreover Isaiah’s composite figure comes to exercise the mediating functions between God and his people of a temple and priesthood, himself embodying the essential features of the sacrificial system; so that he is at once a king, a sacrifice and, despite that, a conqueror. It is Jeremiah who who actually uses the term new covenant, doing so in a famous prophetic word that recognises the requirements of God upon the individual’s mind and heart.

‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of . It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, ‘ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’ (Jer 31:31-34)

It tells of the new dispensation that is to follow exile and restoration and, as with Isaiah, there are visionary glimpses of a divine renewal that lies ahead. It is a moving description of an intimacy and a holiness that are, given the way of human nature, normally impossible. It is worth noticing the basis, one of forgiveness of sins. Again there is a link with one of the major interpretations of the death of Christ. By referring to the new covenant, Jesus who in the Sermon on the Mount taught about the purity of heart of the people of the Kingdom, tells his disciples both that such a change of heart is to be vouchsafed, and indicates that it is to be achieved by means of his death. Paul was to develop this in, for example, his letter to the Galations, where he discusses the transformative effect on character of close identification through

56 Ex 24:8, c.f. the sprinkling of Is 52:15 noticed above, p 121. 128 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? faith with Christ. The dictum in 1 Corinthians 5:7, ‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed’ encapsulates the interpretation of the death of the ‘Lamb of God’ as effecting deliverance from sin into the godly freedom of the fulfilled Kingdom and as opening the way to personal acceptance by God. The name Jesus, the Greek form of Joshua, meaning ‘the Lord saves’, suggests a salvation that bestows forgiveness of sins on the believing disciple, doing so against an eschatological prospect of Judgement and the Kingdom. The importance of forgiveness being that while sin disqualifies from the Kingdom and has no place in it, every human being is guilty. To gain forgiveness is to gain God’s acceptance and blessing, which proves to be possible only as a grant of entitlement under the new covenant and on the grounds of the sacrificial death. Thus the crucifixion provides sacrificial function qualifying disciples for God’s fatherly acceptance as adopted into sonship like that of Jesus. It gives a basis for continual renewal, including renewed forgiveness, as illustrated by the imagery in John of eating and drinking, for both faith and repentance are called for, and repentance must be put into effect as a new life. The death is also a departure (‘Today you will be with me in paradise’), and pioneers a crossing any disciple can make. Its objective is the Kingdom, already apprehended and in part experienced, but awaiting consummation at the Last Day. The promise of its fulfilment is given by Jesus at the Last Supper. Just as the patriarchal covenant and the covenant to David had held out promises of ample blessing, so the new covenant has promise for the disciples, who will stand in a line of continuity with the patriarchs, fulfilling the longstanding promises to them in a way that those ancients would not have imagined. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Lk 22:28-30) Jesus who had looked forward to this Passover meal would on the next occasion eat with the apostles in the Kingdom of God. Even if you read v. 16 (‘For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God’) as a reference to post-resurrection meetings (though they are not Passover meals), the language must be figurative, the thrones, the table and indeed the Kingdom not of this world. The Last Supper took place on the eve of a departure to the glory unassailably in the Father’s presence, but there is to be a return, a coming again in judgement, power and glory.

The Last Things In a way, the most important context is beyond us. The Judgement is a matter of prophecy and faith, of fear or hope. It is the last resolution and final closure, after which all readings give way to encounter and interaction face to face. Or, if we have dismissed our salvation, to our own last dismissal. When Jesus spoke of himself as a prophet57 he invoked the tradition extending from Moses through Elijah and Isaiah to John the Baptist. More than prediction was involved, for these men were emissaries from God to their own and to all generations, communicators of a recreative purpose for mankind sustained by

57 Lk 13:33. 129 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

God over centuries. Like the servants sent to the malevolent tenants in the vineyard, the prophets were all too often unheeded and ill-treated, and Jesus’ experience was of a piece with the tradition. ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and those sent to you. . . .’58 Jesus did make predictions. ‘You see all these great buildings?’ he said to his disciples when they admired some recently completed work on the Jerusalem Temple. ‘Not one stone will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.’59 His allusion, as on other occasions, was to the Roman actions against the city to take place in AD 70, actions which Jesus, like Jeremiah for for example before the Babylonian sack of the city, connected to the faithlessness and rejection with which God’s words and emissaries had been met. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace − but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognise the time of God’s coming to you.’ (Lk 19:41-44) At his trial however, there was an attempt to represent him as hostile to the Temple. When he is accused of having threatened to destroy, and then within three days rebuild it,60 there is misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise, of another saying: Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days which John explains: But the temple he had spoken of was his body.61 Less figuratively, Jesus predicted to his disciples a number of times the rejection, suffering, death and resurrection ‘after three days’ which he would face as Son of Man.62 He also predicted suffering and persecution for his disciples.63 The motifs are woven together by the Evangelists, perhaps originally by Jesus. The rejection and suffering, the death and resurrection, the persecution of disciples by Jewish and Gentile authorities, the Roman sack of Jerusalem. These mingle, while beyond them stands the ultimate prospect, its date not predicted, but whose decisive effect Jesus alludes to constantly. ‘Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell.’64 ‘Any one who gives you a cup of cold water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.’65 In the eschatological discourse of Mark 13 there is a motif of waiting, illustrated elsewhere in parables such as that of the bridesmaids, and in this context the waiting is evidently for the return in triumph of Jesus.

58 Lk 13:34. 59 Mk 13:2. 60 Mt 26:61. 61 Jn 2:19, 21. 62 Mk 9:31. 63 Lk 12:4-12. 64 Lk 12:5. 65 Mk 9:41. 130 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

Jesus said to them: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he,” and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains. ‘At that time if anyone says to you, “Look, here is the Christ !” or, “Look, there he is!” do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect − if that were possible. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.’ (Mk 13:5-8, 21-23)

The disciples must wait through a period of persecution by councils, synagogues, governors, and kings. Also large scale troubles on the international scene including violent nationalism, wars, earthquakes, for ‘the Gospel must first be preached to all nations’. If there are ‘false Christs’ the implication is that the real one must be in the offing, that is, he is waiting, and at the right time will intervene to save and gather his flock from the general destruction of the world.

But in those days, following that distress, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back − whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the cock crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’ (Mk 13:24-27, 32, 35-37)

The Son of Man’s suffering will end in manifest glory, and in the Kingdom then fulfilled all issues of guilt, injustice and need are resolved. The peace of God will constitute the new order, evil will be eliminated. John’s motif of unity enlarges on this, and Paul is eloquent in his letters on the synthesis that ensues in and through Christ.66 In Romans 8 he takes up the image of birth-pains in an eschatological context. The salvation mission of Christ is no local matter, of concern only to an elect few. Hidden in many respects now, it comes into the open at the end on the cosmic scale, for now the Creator acts to re-make the universe. ‘The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.’67 Jesus elsewhere uses the image of the labour of childbirth. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.68 The grief of incomplete fulfilment, indeed of suffering and trouble, and of the tangible absence of Jesus, is to be understood not by the pain of the experience

66 E.g. Eph 1:3-14; Jn 17; Col 1:12-20. 67 Rom 8:21-22. 68 Jn 16:21-22. 131 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? itself, but as necessary to the anticipated outcome. This orientation finds an application to the mystery of the suffering and death of Jesus, and to all the disciples of the present dispensation to whom Jesus is present, though not visible, ‘always, to the very end of the age’, in the midst of trouble. To be a disciple after the resurrection is to live in hope, hope of the Kingdom that is a new heaven and new earth, and to be assured that the suffering of the Son of God and the pain of human existence and of persecution, are in their different ways preliminaries to that renewal. Some of Jesus’ words suggest quite imminent fulfilment, and there is evidence in the New Testament to suggest that the disciples took such words to apply to the Return in Judgement,69 and that later they had to revise their understanding.70 But when we unravel the eschatological threads from those referring to first generation developments, there is no necessity to take the Return to have been predicted as imminent. Earthquakes and famines occur and are noted over longish periods of time. Miracle-working false Christs are not encountered every day. Nationalist causes smoulder and flare into violence or warfare over centuries. Words like, ‘I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened,’71 apply to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, and to the persecutions of Christians by Jerusalem and Rome. Mark 13 is paralleled in Luke 21, but Luke has some puzzling reassurance. Jesus warns his disciples: You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life. (Lk 21:16-19) Persecution must be expected to go to all lengths of perfidy, betrayal, even killing, but not a hair of your head will perish. The strong image makes a paradox in which the first statement is, apparently, contradicted. Seeking resolution the reader finds in the next sentence the promise that by ‘standing firm’, a metaphor evidently of loyalty to Christ, he or she ‘will gain life’ even though killed by the persecutors. Not only does this indicate life after death, but it privileges that life with a significance that far exceeds the circumstances and accidents of the life we know. ‘Not a hair of your head will perish’ cannot be literal, but it promises emphatically an integration or re-integration that might also be described in a phrase like the resurrection of the body. Between life in the world and in the Kingdom, there is both an either/or opposition and continuity. Just as a disciple will have lived in this age and the eschatological age to come, so the Kingdom is found in both. The continuity, though, is hidden, like the yeast mixed in dough, like the connection between standing firm under trial on earth and standing before Christ at the Judgement. Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man. (Lk 21:34-36)

69 E.g. 1 Thess and the preaching it followed. 70 E.g. 2 Thess 2:1-4; 2 Pet 3:3-13. 71 Mk 13:30. 132 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

For if he does withstand that searching examination and can show not only the profession of loyalty but its ‘fruit’, the disciple can hope for mercy from the Son of God and to be welcomed into the Kingdom in its fullness. The prayer meanwhile ‘to escape all that is about to happen’ is thoroughly realistic about the suffering and threats to life that continue on earth. Disciples are not urged to ‘go over the top’ and welcome death as glory in a no-man’s-land between earth and heaven. There is no holy war of that sort. But Jesus whose exemplary prayer contains the request to be kept from temptation, whose ‘high priestly’ prayer in John 17 is for protection for his disciples from the evil one, who prayed in Gethsemane that he might not have to drink the cup of suffering and who twice on that occasion told his disciples to pray that they would ‘not fall into temptation’, enjoins a strategy of avoidance of evil. It cannot succeed completely: ‘such things must come’ but ‘woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin!’72 Only by God is evil destroyed, but whatever oppression by it disciples undergo, they have through their relation to Jesus the promise of redemption. Indeed the oppression becomes an opportunity to stand with him who has passed that way and then subsequently to stand hopeful before him as Judge. The avoidance and escape are not an end in themselves, nor is the preservation of the body, or wellbeing in this existence. The liberation to be sought is for activity first in service of one sort and another in this life, then in a life unconstrained by time and death, one that is sometimes described as resurrection. Resurrection, which seems rarely to have precise coordinates in quotidian space and time, is prominent in eschatology. Ezekiel’s vision in his Chapter 37 of the valley of bones restored by God to life, ends with the vivid undertaking: ‘You will know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.’ The belief that there would be general resurrection, although contested by Sadducees, was widely accepted by the time of Jesus’ generation, and is reflected here and there in the dialogues reported in the gospels.73 Jesus confirms the belief and conflates it with his Return and the Judgement. He even brings forward the benefit if not the experience of it into present existence:

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out − those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. (Jn 5:24-29)

Such anticipation, expressed as present entitlement, is extended by the writer of Hebrews and by Paul, constituting a major hermeneutic development within the New Testament.74 There is, in terms of John 5, a crossing to be made from death to life, where ‘death’ is equivalent to everyday ‘life’, which is subject on

72 Mt 18:7. 73 E.g. Lk 14:14; Mk 12:18; Jn 11:24. 74 E.g. Heb 5:9; 6:18-20; Col 1:12-14; Rom 8. 133 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? account of sin to death. The transit Jesus makes possible is to a condition where this constraint is removed, for not to be condemned (if for example a ransom has been paid) is to have eternal life with God. When he says that ‘a time is coming’ when people will rise from their graves to live eternally or to be condemned, Jesus refers figuratively to an event that occurs out of time or, from our perspective, at the end of time. The open graves too are figurative, the essential being that in an encounter with the Son of Man people are selected on the basis of their earthly life for a heavenly one, that they are responsible and conscious, and that the person who is allowed to make the crossing is identifiably the person who hears, or reads, in this life. To Martha Jesus puts this epigrammatically: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’ (Jn 11:25-27) The death is as real as the living, and the life which does not end is as real as both, and more so, but it is in another mode figured by expressions like crossing, time to come, Kingdom of heaven and the resurrection. The Son of Man and the Son of God is of both realms, and his Resurrection prefigures the general, is a well-attested sighting of the crossing place which he came in order to construct. Matthew reports other sightings in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death when ‘many holy people who had died were raised to life . . . and appeared to many people,’75 a glimpse of the general resurrection. But it is the Resurrection of Jesus that constitutes the most potent sign, countering the negative of the crucifixion, and signalling success over death and evil. ‘After the suffering of his soul he will see the light of life.’76 In Psalm 2 there is an outline story in which Gentile rulers take action against the Lord and his Anointed, who then turn the tables on them. The Anointed King is recognised by God as no less than his own Son, with worldwide jurisdiction.

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, ‘I have installed my King on Zion, my holy hill.’ I will proclaim the decree of the Lord: He said to me, ‘You are my Son ; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.’

Paul would make the connection between this and Jesus’ resurrection on the occasion when he preached at Pisidian Antioch,77 alluding also to a psalm in which the Davidic persona uses in prayer the language of resurrection: ‘My heart is glad . . . because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.’78 Another such reference, used in polemic by

75 Mt 27:52-53. 76 Is 53:11. 77 Acts 13:20-37. 78 Ps 16:9-10, quoted also by Peter at Pentecost, Acts 2:25ff. 134 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

Jesus,79 also fits well with the theme of victory associated with the Resurrection. The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ The Lord will extend your mighty sceptre from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies. (Ps 110:1-2) The Resurrection is about more than rising above a specific set of difficulties. It is a guarantee of the general resurrection and, as with the death which it transforms, there is a representativeness which touches both individual histories and all human history. The one who made at Jerusalem his exodus made not only an end but a beginning. The last things, the matter of eschatology, have begun with the coming of Jesus into the world to announce and inaugurate the Kingdom of God, they continue with the resurrection, and are completed at the Parousia when he returns; while that appears from a temporal perspective to be the ‘beginning’ of eternity. ‘This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way.’80 Jesus himself said, ‘The Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.’81 In that Judgement it will be decisive that an individual has heeded Jesus. ‘Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.’82 As in the parable,83 the angel harvesters dispose of all that does not accord with the Kingdom and those who have preferred ways other than God’s are deselected. Their fate, hell, is the alternative to eternal life, of which it is the symmetrical opposite; and while it is known to us only through strong, even lurid, images,84 its significance is unmistakable. There are no grounds given for the universalist hope that in the end all shall be blessed and not a soul damned. And the argument between eternal punishment and eternal annihilation is undermined by the nature of language and indeed by the transcendence of the referent, for death in this context is as figurative as punishment,85 and just as we are left ignorant of the details of paradise, so we are ignorant, though not unwarned, of the mode of God’s condemnation. Figures like the banquet in some of the parables, and the celebratory table in Jesus’ Kingdom associated with twelve apostolic thrones of judgement over the tribes of Israel, provide disciples with some reference for faith and hope. The image links with the annual Passover which Jesus converted into a celebration of the new covenant promises through the eating and drinking of the communion he instituted (‘Do this in remembrance of me’). That institution looks forward as much as it looks back, as Paul points out: ‘Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’86 It is an interim measure and will be superseded when the event it looks forward to occurs. Then the sign will give way to what is signified, and what is hidden

79 Mk 12:36. 80 Acts 1:11. 81 Mt 16:27. 82 Mt 25:46. 83 Mt 13:39. 84 E.g. Mk 9:42-49. 85 Lk 20:16; c.f. the second death, Rev 20:6, and indeed the second birth of Jn 3:3. These are all tropes. 86 1 Cor 11:26. Liturgical practice seems out of balance, celebrating past and present rather more than the substance of hope promised in the new covenant. 135 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? on earth will be published in a universal apokalypsis in which the power and the glory of Jesus and his Kingdom are in full view before God and man. The Kingdom yeast will have affected the whole, producing a chemical change, not the cumulative effect of numerous incremental advances in righteousness and justice, but sweepingly cosmic. ‘At the renewal of all things,’ Jesus promised the Twelve, ‘when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones.’87 The divine agent, Jesus, has the universal power that follows final victory over evil and reveals the truth of the earlier claim to hold all authority in heaven and on earth.88 The Kingdom will have come as fully on earth as it is in heaven. In another image occurring in Hebrews and Revelation, the eternal city, a heavenly Jerusalem with its thousands of angels in joyful assembly, is provided by God, its architect and builder, as an environment for covenant relationship with his people in which they are no longer troubled by even the possibility of sin, pain and death.89 This, then, is what disciples hope and wait for, and what Jesus returns to complete. Although called the Kingdom of heaven and the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom is equally his. King of more than the Jews he is, as God, over all not only as Creator and sustainer but as intervening to deal finally with evil and death and to make all things new. The titles and predictions concerning God’s Agent and rule are fulfilled, and he himself through his first coming and his second expresses God to man and figures man’s Kingdom destiny with God. Salvation is a word for it, and goes beyond a large-scale refashioning by the Creator of a damaged universe, to a redemption which restores the human creation, or part of it, at great cost, offering a reconciliation with God. Moral life, and with it responsibility had been given to mankind and abused, the result an estrangement. Such is the context of the ransom in one of the most reverberative of Jesus’ explanatory words: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’90 The ransom in the partially revealed mystery of new covenant provides at a heavenly level which faith can only begin in this life to apprehend, but which is nevertheless anchored in the sweat, blood and horror of the cross, a means of forgiveness of human sin, and reconciliation between the believing disciple and God the Father. The writer of Hebrews pulls together a number of the threads thus: Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance − now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (Heb 9:15) The ransoming death is in the past, but the redemptive effect is present and indeed eternal; the new covenant promises a Kingdom inheritance at the end time and beyond. Thus the crucifixion is a gateway to a place beyond place, to a time beyond time, and to the forgiveness and welcome of the hitherto distant and estranged Father.

87 Mt 19:28. 88 Mt 28:18. 89 Heb 11:10; 12:22; 13:14; Rev 21:2-14. 90 Mk 10:45, c.f. 1 Tim 2:6. 136 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

Interpretation in John By a process which has all the inevitability of a natural law, our reading becomes a quest for understanding, a move more or less conscious towards the adoption of one interpretation or another, an establishing of whatever connections extend readerly perception towards a more complete pattern. Synthetic, ultimately, rather than analytic, such reading deploys the strategies in use whenever we avail ourselves of language and sign, looking to antecedents and contexts, to outcomes and to consonance with the known, and with present concerns. The gospels, which at first seem fragmentary, and expressive rather of questions than answers, carry densely coded information which brings the reader to a point of vantage where a whole new landscape is laid out to view. Not for mere contemplation, since a central feature is a route intended for the reader to take. As in Acts Christians are sometimes referred to as followers of the Way, so the gospels function to invite readers to become disciples, to signal to them what is involved, to explain the basis in what Jesus did and said, and to afford some view of the final destination. Of the four Evangelists John has the most rounded understanding of the gospel events providing a general, indeed a philosophical context, notably in his introduction, and addressing the crucial matter of the meaning of the death. The reader of John has an impression of more distanced perspective than there is in the other gospels, and although there is plenty of detail and immediacy in the narrative, there is a sense that the Evangelist has long turned over in his mind the matters he writes about, and is more ready to provide not only clues to interpretation but conclusions. Himself a reader of the Synoptic gospels, John has deliberately picked out a different path over the same terrain, wishing no doubt to avoid unnecessary repetition and to provide a distinctive account whose differences provide illumination, as it were, from a different angle. His narrative framework is carefully arranged to support a series of signs and a number of discourses. Within these a complex music of themes, statements, images, symbols and allusions move the reader in a quasi-dialectic process towards the goal, overtly stated, of belief in Jesus. ‘These [signs] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.’ To this is added, for the sake of explicitness about the Good News implied, ‘and that by believing you may have life in his name.’91 The preceding chapters have made clear by microcontextual sign and by reported teaching what ‘life’ means, and have pointed out the importance of having it rather than its dark alternative. But John’s distinctive approach and style, although inviting a description of his as the most literary of the gospels, do not imply a less historical or veridical account of Jesus. Whatever his name ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ gave John access to the innermost councils of witness.92 And a subject as polysemic as the Word gives rise, as John himself ends by saying, to any number of responses, accounts and styles, so that, we might add, no amount of writing or reading will exhaust the subject or do final justice to it. The Good News is news of the availability of salvation. Like the other Evangelists John uses the word ‘save’ figuratively. ‘I mention [the Father’s

91 Jn 20:31. 92 Jn 13:23. 137 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? testimony] that you may be saved.’93 But in the discourses other themes and motifs are in play, linked, or merely associated, but contributing to the total dialectic, often in a way that is distinctively Johannine. Light, for example, is a major theme and a symbol of God, ‘truth’ and the knowledge of God. In the Prologue the theme is linked with life and with new life, with the Word and with God’s grace. Jesus who is God, comes from God in order to ‘make him known’. The response of mankind, a matter of free choice, is to an offer of news of entitlement to ‘become children of God’.94 Later, to know God, which is the privilege conferred by Jesus, is equivalent to having eternal life with him.95 With the theme of disclosure is associated one of sending. Jesus’ coming to the world is, from heaven’s point of view, his being sent here with the mission to reveal God, to save mankind, and then to extend the mission to the world by re-sending the disciples with the word of salvation.96 There is close resemblance to the missions and the Great Commission of the Synoptics, as also in motifs such as Judgement, resurrection, obedience, servanthood, love and the Kingdom.97 One of the recurrent motifs of the Synoptics is drawn on to explain Jesus’ mission as a worldscale exorcism in which the devil is expelled from the earth.98 Jesus in another theme is the provider, as shepherd, a parent, or God the author of all, of life. Life takes many forms, has different degrees or levels and, as with sight and light, ‘lower’ or physical forms can symbolise higher ones. John yokes together in this major theme eating and drinking,99 and as we have noticed, in the discourse of Chapter 6 at Capernaum after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus makes connections both with the Exodus when manna was provided in the desert, and with the sacrificial death which achieves a new form of Passover blessing. To respond in faith is to receive more than sustenance or the renewal of physical strength. Eternal life is given and the Judgement passed thanks to God’s grace in Christ following the experience of being ‘raised at the last day’100 by Jesus himself. A detail of the crucifixion narrative makes a backward link to this theme when a soldier’s spear pierces Jesus’ side, to make sure of his demise, and produces a flow of blood and water,101 two substances for which the narrative has earlier established symbolic value, the blood signifying life,102 water the Holy Spirit.103 The effect is that the reader is provided at a nadir, which in some readings is aporia, with signs carrying a positive charge, indications that the Kingdom and the glory of God are nevertheless present and even, to seeing eyes, are especially present at what is properly understood as fulfilment and climax.

93 Jn 5:34 c.f. Mk 10:26; Mt 10:22; Lk 8:12. 94 Jn 1:1-18. 95 Jn 17:3. 96 Jn 17:18. 97 5:22; 5:28-29; 8:51; 13:15; 15:12; 3:3. 98 ‘Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out,’ Jn 12:31. 99 2:10-11; 4:14. 100 6:40. 101 19:34. 102 Adapting Lev 17:11, c.f. Jn 6:54f. 103 7:38-39, c.f. 6:63. 138 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

John reveals multiple connections between the suffering of Jesus including his death, and glory.104 It is as though he wants his reader to look on past the death to what follows, and to discern beyond catastrophe an achievement for which no single image is sufficient. The death is not an obstacle, but a precondition, a means, to the triumph and the salvation that follow from it. ‘I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.’105 On first encountering these words a reader may wonder, among other things, what is beyond the gate. As the hermeneutic circle closes, the saying is perceived as within the orbit of a number of others, Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Where I am, my servant also will be.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.106 and of the signifying events of the suffering. The result of the process is that the death does not stand alone, or remain unexplained. Availing himself now of one image, now of another, the reader pieces together a significance that reaches beyond particularity. His reading is however a perception as much if not more than an imaginative re-creation. No ludic free play this, but apprehension of the transcendent Kingdom. In this logocentric reading the reader follows a course that although shrouded in mystery is laid down. ‘Whoever serves me must follow me.’ ‘The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him.’107 The multiple images are grouped in Chapter 12 in a dense cluster where a number of themes are present including the death, the offer of eternal life, the Father’s approval, glory, the driving out of evil from the world and the salvation for mankind consequent upon the crucifixion.

‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me. ‘Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name!’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.’ The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, ‘This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgement on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.’ He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die. (Jn 12:23- 33)

Equivalent to the words in Mark 8 where Jesus calls would-be disciples to take up a cross, this directs attention to the function and significance of his dying. In

104 12:27-28; 13:31-32; 17:1, 4-5. 105 10:9. 106 12:24, 26; 15:13. 107 12:26; Mk 14:21. 139 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? nature it is an essential part of a cycle of growth and reproduction. The image evokes parabolic sayings in the Synoptics about growth and transformation in respect of mustard trees and yeast. But the transcendent beyond is named here as eternal life, and has a figurative location, ‘where I am’. The death makes possible the Kingdom not only for Jesus, but for any one who becomes his servant or disciple. Although the term is used infrequently in John,108 the Kingdom is here as multiplication, new life, eternal life, the Father’s honour and glory. And it is in this context of explaining the death that, in a way reminiscent of the Transfiguration, the Father’s voice is heard in confirmation of Kingdom glory, for the benefit of the crowd of listeners. Interestingly, there was room for more than one interpretation, rather as with Matthew’s account of the post-resurrection meeting in Galilee where ‘some doubted’, which suggests that the volitional element implied in terms like faith and belief must be engaged if the transcendent is to be experienced. ‘Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.’109 As in the Synoptics, the death is undergone as a matter of divine necessity: ‘For this reason I came to this hour’. The lifting up on a cross in shame is, in another light, an elevation from the earth that proceeds to glory, to a glory bestowed in the place ‘where I am’ and on people throughout the world: ‘I will draw all men to myself’. Spatial imagery is used for what lies beyond the life and death of unillumined experience, and for the realms of the Kingdom, of the Spirit and the devil. For the death, as well as being a gate, a sacrifice, a solar movement of vast gravitational attraction, is judgement on the world and expulsion of its evil prince. The idea recurs in the dense triptych of Chapter 16. Unless I go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgement, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. The way to understand this seems to be to take the connectives ‘in regard to’ and ‘because’ as devices of construction providing a pretext for association, then to untie the knot. Men do not believe in Jesus as Son of God. He is going to the Father (rather than merely being killed). The unbelief and killing exposes the world’s evil, in effect condemning it. The Holy Spirit, conferred to enable understanding and proclamation of Jesus’ mission, exposes the rejection both as sin in itself and as typifying the sin that pervades the world. He reveals Jesus, visible and invisible, as the supreme exemplar of righteousness. And he intimates the condemnation of evil in the Judgement of God. In the series of ‘I am’ statements, usually counted as seven, Jesus makes such highly generalised predications that it seems inevitable that they should be read as bearing upon his entire mission, as offering understandings of it. The bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way, truth and life, and the vine,110 − these, like the Beatitudes, are comprehensive enough to gather the aspirations and hopes of any and all of mankind, and they do so in order to proffer hope. Only provisional images seem possible for the blessing, but Jesus offers a variety of

108 3:3; 18:36. 109 12:36. 110 6:25; 8:12; 10:7,11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1. 140 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? them, risking confusion by doing so. ‘Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech,’ exclaim the disciples when he states that he is to return to the Father in heaven from whom he came.111 Yet the figures are necessary, for between heaven and earth a gulf is fixed, the experience, thoughts and language of mankind are not those of heaven. They are pressed into service as symbols; and there is only one Sign that functions fully in both history and eternity: ‘Before Abraham was born, I am.’112 What differentiation do we find in John of Jesus’ messages to the various audiences? The question has interest since the theologically fuller statements, the explanations in terms of mission and the indications of the function of the death and Resurrection would, in Synoptic patterning, be made rather to disciples than published to the crowds. John does signal the composition of audiences, often by geography. In Jerusalem the people who heard Jesus in the Temple area, or who went two miles out to Bethany, are referred to as ‘the Jews’, with more than a hint that antagonists were to be found among them. At the triumphal entry the crowd was composed largely of festival visitors, many of them from Galilee. They made free with their Hosannas and Davidic ascriptions, yet even Jesus’ disciples did not see any significance beyond the superficial. ‘His disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realise that these things had been written about him, and that they had done these [prophesied] things to him.’113 The explanations that begin by referring to the death of a grain of wheat are by way of response to Andrew and Philip who brought a request from some Gentile God-fearers, and arguably are made to a disciple audience; yet it is ‘the crowd’ who speaks up to question the words that follow about the Son of Man’s being lifted up, and their reference to the title, not used immediately before, suggests they had been listening since the beginning. But, even more than the disciples, they are baffled, and speak only to show themselves to be in the dark. John reports that some Jews, those for example who witnessed the raising of Lazarus, ‘did put their faith in him’. But he is equally explicit about the disciples’ failure to perceive the overall picture up to the point when understanding breaks through in 16:29: ‘Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech.’ Evidently the early faith of the crowds (and in measure that of the disciples) at the triumphal entry, or at the burial place outside Bethany, was rather a response to the presence and power of Jesus than the faith of understanding of the Gospel. Yet John presents it to the reader as a prefigurement of the faith that would follow. We have already remarked the geographical connotations of the word Kingdom, and how Jesus qualified them with declarations about its being ‘at hand’ and ‘among’ or even ‘within you’. In John the imagery of place is very prevalent, and underlies categories such as coming, sending and returning, and antinomies like heaven and earth. When Jesus tells Nathaniel that he will ‘see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’,114 he is promising that the end of discipleship is understanding of his identity and role. Yet that is only one figure. Time and place are invoked to explain the mission and the death to Peter and the disciples.

111 16:28-29. 112 8:58. 113 12:16 114 1:51. 141 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

‘My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come.’ Simon Peter asked him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus replied, ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’ (Jn 13:33, 36; 14:1-3)

In the glory of the Kingdom, another place, there is a home and a welcome for Jesus’ friends, and the transit he makes in his death pioneers a way, a crossing, over which he will conduct his disciples. In John the death of Jesus is explained in various images as achieving salvation for those who as disciples believe. As in the Synoptics, the death occurs significantly at the time of the Passover festival, and the high priest Caiaphas is reported as making the unknowingly prophetic, interpretative, statement that ‘It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’115 With greater awareness, John the Baptist at the beginning identifies Jesus as providing through a process in which he is himself a victim, salvation for the world via the forgiveness of sins. ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.’116

Gospel Gradations So powerfully significant is the scroll of John’s vision in Revelation 5, that ‘no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open, or even look inside it.’ By it the resolution of all earthly issues, enigmas and injustices is indicated, together with the revelation of long deferred holy mysteries. But it is a figurative document of apocalypse, its disclosures at and concerning the end of time. To read and understand it would be to know everything, to possess all knowledge. Although it is accessible to no human being, there is a recognisable figure who is able to open it, and to him God the Father gives it. He is ‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David’ who ‘has triumphed’. He is also ‘a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the centre of the [divine] throne’. The scroll has seven seals, and in the vision they are opened successively in a symbolic, cumulative disclosure in which silence may signify as much as speech. ‘When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.’ In their more familiar genre, the gospels and Acts rehearse what must be essentially the same story of the revealing of a mystery, of the disclosure by God of an answer to the profoundest needs and questions of the human creation. ‘Good news’ and ‘the Kingdom of heaven’ are epithets that immediately connote hope and difference, and the reader of the gospels is made aware that Jesus came to carry out specific actions, to teach, and to announce news. What was announced was not, as we have noticed, the same at the end of these documents as at the beginning, for there was a progressive

115 11:50. 116 1:29. 142 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? disclosure building on elements that came into place successively, yet the term ‘Gospel’ was used by Jesus from the earliest days of his preaching. Seven stages of proclamation are discernible, seven phases of Gospel development, each of them closely associated with a historic initiative. In the summary that follows I outline seven aspects of each stage: its occasion, proclaimer(s), audience, message, the prospective event assumed, accompanying signs and the audience’s response.

The Public Ministry of Jesus Manifesting continuities with the ministry of John the Baptist, with Elijah and even with Moses, Jesus’ ministry was taken initially to be that of a prophet whose powers were from the Spirit of God. His was a public campaign from the beginning. He addressed crowds in the synagogues, in marketplaces, in private houses, in the open country and on the lakeshore. He defined this stage of mission as to Israel, and kept it mostly to the Galilean and Transjordan regions, but his audiences included people from Jerusalem, Judea, and the Gentile regions of the Decapolis, Tyre, Sidon and Syria. He moved around a great deal between towns, and although there was a pattern of avoidance of the unremitting demands of crowds of petitioners, there was also an evident intention to reach as yet unvisited centres with the proclamation. Often summarised as an announcement that the Kingdom was ‘near’, it aroused public expectation, especially as there were numerous miraculous healings and exorcisms. There was awareness that something extraordinary and unprecedented was being offered, and in God’s name. The background, or rather prospect, was, as with John the Baptist, God’s Judgement, or the Day of the Lord. This was announced as certain, and widely perceived as imminent. People responded by seeking out Jesus, by staying to listen to him so as to learn what repentance and way of life was required, and to witness his acts of power, the healings and exorcisms. When he moved on, as he frequently did, the crowds sought to keep with him, and so became in some sense followers or disciples.

The Mission of the Twelve Appointed to be emissaries, the Twelve were first familiarised with Jesus’ Kingdom teaching and with the practice of discipleship. Their briefing for mission delegated to them powers over evil exercised by Jesus, and directed them to stay within Galilee. The manner of their going, lightly provided, would illustrate their discipleship, so that their proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom, their style of mission and the signs of healing and exorcism would combine to convey the significance of Jesus’ Good News. God’s requirement of righteousness and the certainty of judgement called for repentance. The gospels note the efficacy of the powers delegated: there were many demons cast out, many healings.

The Mission of the Seventy-two In this mission, for knowledge of which we are indebted to Luke, the apostles were again sent in pairs, and although it appears Jesus directed them to towns and villages in Galilee ‘where he was about to go’, their total number had 143 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel? associations traditionally with the number of Gentile nations, so there is a coded reference by Jesus to later mission. The briefing and message are as before: they travel light, perform healings and proclaim that ‘the Kingdom of God is near you’. Both Jesus’ visit and the judgement of God impend for the audiences, and they are called upon to accept God by accepting Jesus. Once again there are numerous exorcisms, the disciples reporting, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’

The Trial When Jesus appeared before the Sanhedrin and the Roman Governor it was more an interrogation than a trial as we know it. To their surprise he was largely silent, making even more emphatic what he did say publicly to the officials concerned. To the Jewish priests he stated that he was ‘the Christ, the Son of God’ and, implying return as the divine Judge, that ‘in future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven’. To Pilate he agreed, ‘I am a king’, or ‘King of the Jews’, making unmistakable connection with the Kingdom (‘not of this world’) that was the famed subject of his teaching. The response of Pilate was ambiguous, pragmatic; that of the Jewish leaders, outrage. Both rejected the witness given, and killed the Proclaimer.

The Great Commission At the end of the period of resurrection appearances to disciples Jesus, who had appointed and trained the apostles for mission, again briefs eleven of them, sending them now to all the nations of the world. Their Gospel extends the earlier proclamation. Jesus has all the authority on earth and in heaven of God. He is alive and with his disciples. They are to make new disciples everywhere, initiating them by baptism and by passing on to them the teachings. Forgiveness of sins, granted previously to some individuals, is now to be offered publicly, together with the need to repent and the message that Jesus was the Christ. His public witness had been silenced by death, but ‘you will be my witnesses’ to continue the same mission and proclamation. The resurrection and ascension were powerful signs, but proclamation was delayed for a short time.

Pentecost The interval lasted until Pentecost, which was being observed in Jerusalem by ‘Jews from every nation under heaven’, a phrase whose hyperbole recalls the instruction of a few weeks previously. Jerusalem residents and visitors from abroad made up the audience addressed by Peter on an occasion which began with signs from the Holy Spirit discerned not only by disciples, but by the crowd. Similes for these perceptions were wind and fire, and they complemented the phenomenon of comprehension by the international audience ‘each in his own language’ of the inspired speech of the disciples. In his address Peter cited the major sign of the resurrection of Jesus, announcing not that the Kingdom was near, but that according to the indications, and the prophecies, the last days had come. Jesus who had been rejected and killed by those addressed, or by their leaders, was the Christ, was Lord, was to judge all. 144 A GOSPEL READING: What Happened to the Gospel?

The response of three thousand was to repent, to accept the identification of Jesus as Son of God, to be baptized in his name, and so to receive God’s forgiveness and the Holy Spirit.

The Gentile Mission In the following days numerous wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles, but the Spirit-impelled proclamation, although in a sense international, stayed centred in Jerusalem. In Acts Luke describes how over time, and sometimes as a beneficent effect of persecution, the Holy Spirit caused Peter and then Paul to move somewhat as in the missions Jesus had instigated in Galilee, consciously and purposively first to Jews in Gentile towns, then to Gentile audiences. The return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead was impending, and the news was that he had acted ‘once for all’, that is for Jew and Gentile alike, to enable God’s forgiveness of the repentant believer, and to hold out his gift of sonship and eternal life. The Kingdom that had earlier been declared near was historically actualised in Jesus, essentially in his death and resurrection and, after Pentecost, when his Spirit had been ‘poured out’, and the Bridegroom was awaited, Kingdom consummation was anticipated on a day that would come ‘like a thief in the night’. ‘Any one,’ Peter had proclaimed at Pentecost, ‘who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ That would mean the disciple’s admission by Jesus on the day of his coming to the Father’s presence and to his own, and participation in the life of the Kingdom. It amounted to salvation, an idea implicit in all seven stages of the proclamation. Although they adumbrate all the stages, the gospels treat only five, up as far as the Great Commission. The kerygma of scholarship is present only in the last two, Pentecost and the Gentile mission. Always the Good News is directed for response to people as individuals, however they may comprise audiences and communities before and after repentance, before and after their own or the world’s end. Repentance and faith are matters of individual decision. The content of the hope created by the Good News about and from Jesus remains a matter of hope and faith. We have to rely on figures. But none of them can do justice to the scope or the significance of what he achieved for the world, or to what God holds yet in store.

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The Gospel: Seven Stages of Proclamation

Occasion Jesus’ Public Mission of 12 Mission of 72 Trial Great Pentecost International Ministry Commission Mission Proclaimer Jesus 12 Apostles 72 Apostles Jesus Jesus Peter Paul et al. Audience Mainly Galilee, the ‘Lost sheep of Israel’ Galilee Jerusalem 11 Disciples Jerusalem Jews, World poor and needy in Galilee Sanhedrin, Roman visiting Godfearers Governor News/message Kingdom near Same Same + Listening to Son of Man = Son of Jesus = God. Go and Jesus (rejected and Jesus enacts Repent Jesus = Listening to God = Judge of all. ‘I make disciples of all killed) = Messiah = forgiveness/reconcil- God am a king.’ nations. Repentance God iation, enabling and forgiveness sonship eternally for believers of every race Prospect Judgement Judgement Jesus’ arrival + Parousia as Dan End of the Age Day of the Lord Return/Judgement Judgement 7:13 /End/Judgement Signs Numerous healings Healings and Exorcisms etc. Silence Resurrection, Resurrection, fire, Resurrection, Holy etc. exorcisms Ascension languages etc. Spirit, healings Response Repentance, Many exorcisms, Successful Rejection (Delayed) Mission Repentance/baptism/ Repentance, faith in discipleship healings exorcisms etc. forgiveness/Holy Jesus as Lord and Spirit Christ, his Parousia awaited

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R L Webb, John the Baptizer and Prophet: A Socio-Historical Study, (JSNTS 62), Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. A J M Wedderburn (ed.), Paul and Jesus: Collected Essays, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1989. David Wenham, The Parables of Jesus: Pictures of Revolution, London, Hodder, 1989. Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity?, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1995 John Wenham, Easter Enigma: Do the Resurrection Stories Contradict One Another?, Exeter, Paternoster Press, 1984. Michael J Wilkins, Following the Master: Discipleship in the Steps of Jesus, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1992. A N Wilson, Jesus, London, Sinclair Stevenson, 1992. Ben Witherington III, The Christology of Jesus, Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990. The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth, Carlisle, Paternoster, 1995.

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Index Abba, 92 Is 53:4-10, 124 Acts, Book of, 16, 105, 110, 143, 146 Is 61:1-2, 121 Adam and Eve, 35 Jer 31:31-34, 129 agape, 85 Jn 11:25-27, 135 Alter, Robert, 6, 27 Jn 12:23-33, 141 altered state of consciousness, 24 Jn 13:1-17, 87 anachronism, 54 Jn 13:33, 36 14:1-3, 143 angels, 83 Jn 13:34-35, 88 anger, 84 Jn 15:14-16, 94 Anointed. See titles Jn 16:7-11, 141 antagonists, 55, 68, 69, 70, 71, 97, 104, Jn 20:21-23, 106 111, 113, 114, 118, 142 Jn 5:24-29, 134 antonomasia, 67 Lev 26:1, 12 apocalypse, 26, 83, 137, 143 Lk 10:13-16, 79 aporia, 53, 140 Lk 10:1-4, 98 apostles, 95, 98. See also Twelve Lk 10:14-15, 100 archetype, 79 Lk 10:16, 100 asceticism, 84, 113 Lk 10:17-24, 100 atonement, 127 Lk 10:25-37, 85 audience, 14, 15, 16, 19, 25, 30, 36, 49, Lk 10:5-8, 98 58, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 79, 86, 89, Lk 10:9-12, 99 99, 100, 111, 121, 122, 142, 144, 145. Lk 11:2-4, 36 See also crowd Lk 12:4-5, 79 Auerbach, E, 27 Lk 13:1-5, 80 Augustine, 5, 22, 24, 85 Lk 13:18-21, 76 authority, 6, 7, 11, 29, 32, 34, 37, 41, 42, Lk 15:11-24, 81 43, 45, 46, 49, 52, 62, 64, 65, 68, 89, Lk 19:41-44, 131 90, 95, 100, 101, 103, 105, 110, 111, Lk 20:34-36, 77 118, 134, 137 Lk 20:9-19, 126 bad news, 70, 109 Lk 21:16-19, 133 baptism, 32, 33, 90, 97, 103, 115, 145. See Lk 21:34-36, 134 also washing Lk 22:17-23, 128 Barabbas, 26, 55, 119 Lk 22:28-30, 130 Beatitudes, 25, 70, 97, 110, 112, 114, 121, Lk 22:39-46, 114 142 Lk 24:44-49, 105 Bethany, 45, 126 Lk 24:46-49, 64 Bethany anointing, 25 Lk 4:1-13, 34 betrayal, 96, 117, 133 Lk 4:24-26, 40 Bible quotations (alphabetical) Lk 5:1-11, 46 1 Cor 15:3-9, 61 Lk 5:17-26, 42 1 Ki 17:19-24, 39 Lk 8:22-25, 47 2 Pet 1:16-18, 51 Mk 1:9-11, 30 2 Sam 7:12-14, 129 Mk 13:24-27, 32, 35-37, 132 Acts 1:9-11, 64 Mk 13:26-27, 83 Acts 10:34-38, 21 Mk 13:5-8, 21-23, 132 Acts 3:13-14, 127 Mk 15:1-37, 57 Deut 29:29, 13 Mk 3:13-15, 95 Deut 4:15-16, 12 Mk 4:11, 13 Eph 5:8-14, 53 Mk 4:13-20, 74 Heb 11:3, 13 Mk 4:1-9, 73 Heb 9:15, 137 Mk 5:1-20, 43 Is 42:1, 5-7, 119 Mk 5:36-43, 41 Is 45:15, 13 Mk 6:45-53, 48 Is 52:13-15, 53:1-3, 123 Mk 6:8-13, 97 Is 53:11-12, 125 Mk 8:34-38, 93, 111 152

Mt 10:17-20, 32-33, 39, 104 death, 54, 67, 80, 81, 105, 113, 127, 134. Mt 10:40-42, 14 See also Jesus: death Mt 12:39-42, 118 deconstruction, 7, 8 Mt 13:10-17, 75 Deconstruction, 20, 149 Mt 13:24-30, 72 deferment, 55, 68, 73, 77, 80, 109, 114, Mt 17:1-8, 50 117, 118 Mt 24:29-31, 104 deliverance, 36, 42, 91, 92, 117, 127, 128, Mt 25:14-30, 78 130 Mt 26:63-64, 26 demons, 42, 44. See also evil spirits Mt 28:16-20, 103 dénouement, 73, 120 Mt 5:43:48, 84 desert, 34, 36 Mt 6:9-12, 91 development of the Gospel, 110, 111 Mt 9:35-38, 94 devil, the, 21, 26, 35, 36, 44, 71, 87, 91, Phil 2:6-11, 30 113, 114, 116, 139, 141 Prov 30:1-4, 49 dialectic, 23, 26, 112, 113, 138, 139 Ps 110:1-2, 136 difference, 144 Ps 22, 116 disciples, 12, 14, 16, 20, 26, 35, 49, 53, Psalm 2, 135 54, 58, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, Rom 15:7-9, 17 75, 76, 77, 79, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 90, Rom 16:25-27, 17 91, 92, 93, 95, 98, 100, 102, 103, 106, book of life, 98, 113 111, 112, 114, 115, 118, 124, 126, 127, Bultmann, Rudolf, 18 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138, catastrophe, 80, 110, 122, 140 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 celebration, 81 disciples and descendants, 124 Christ, 67, 71, 105, 118, 119, 130, 135, disciples, women, 59 137, 145. See also Messiah discipleship, 14, 16, 19, 20, 32, 33, 38, 44, Church, 38, 89 46, 51, 63, 67, 84, 89, 111, 112 circumstances, 82 NT use of the term, 18 Cleopas, 58 discontinuity between worlds, 83 climax, 6, 93, 140 discovery in parable, 50 code, 25, 99 discrimination, 6 code, hermeneutic, 11 dispersion, gospels and, 21 Coleridge, S T, 20, 23 distinctiveness and holiness, 99 collectivities, 68. See also individuals divergence, 115 communication, 69 divine invisibility, 12. See also secrecy compassion, 81 divorce, 70 competence, 7, 23 dualism, 113 conflict, 84 E, J and P, 6 consensus, 6 Elijah, 38, 51, 111, 128, 144 contemplation, 25 Eliot, T S, 5, 23, 24, 25, 36 context, 19, 25, 26, 71, 75, 80, 91, 93, 99, emulation of Jesus, 93 100, 115, 124, 130, 132, 136, 137, 138, ending, 79, 102, 106, 120 141 enemies, 85 continuity, 83, 97, 101, 130, 133 enigma, 11, 12, 13, 16, 38 convergence, 112 epiphany, 52 convergence, the Messiah's and the Esau, 6 disciples' roles, 94 eschatology, 68, 104, 113, 132, 133, 134, Cornelius, 21 136 cosmic exorcism, 101, 114, 139 Essenes, 30, 34 covenant, 127, 128 eternal life, 24, 83, 113, 129, 135, 141 critical discussion, subject of, 6 evil, 43, 54, 72, 105 crowd, 16 evil spirits, 43, 45 crowd, the, 68, 142 evil, avoidance of, 134 crucifixion, 124 evil, contest with, 21, 35, 92, 113 Culler, Jonathan, 9, 19 exodus, 128 cut to structure, 106 exorcism, 69, 96, 100, 102, 114, 139, 144 Cut to structure, 103 explanation, 120, 121, 122, 124 Daniel, 14, 52, 64, 71, 103, 118 Ezekiel, 117, 134 date of the gospels, 17, 21, 54 failure, 91 daughters of Jerusalem, 69 faith, 20, 117, 130, 142 153 fasting, 84, 90 imagery, 68, 112, 124, 130, 141, 142 figuration, 14, 27, 53, 68, 75, 83, 93, 111, imagination, 6, 27, 74 130, 135, 136, 139, 142 individuals, 114, 146 Fish, Stanley, 19 institution, 6, 33 fit/consonance. See fulfilment intention, 19, 23, 25, 26, 72, 95, 144 following, 89, 93 intention, Jesus' use of, 25 food, 127 internationalism, 121 food traditions, 99 interpretation, 23, 25, 26, 30, 33, 35, 39, forgiveness, 20, 21, 56, 65, 84, 91, 92, 50, 54, 58, 61, 67, 105, 106, 109, 111, 100, 104, 105, 106, 111, 124, 129, 137, 113, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 123, 125, 145 129, 130, 138, 141, 143 friends, disciples as, 94 interpretative conclusions in John, 138 fulfilment, 26, 91, 95, 97, 102, 105, 110, Isaiah, 10, 18, 32, 35, 40, 53, 75, 97, 105, 116, 120, 121, 127 119, 121, 125 Galilee, 53, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 69, 89, 95, Jacob, 6, 81, 127 102, 144 Jeremiah, 84 genre, 7, 16, 18, 54, 68, 143 Jerusalem, 21, 53, 56, 58, 61, 69, 95, 105, Gentiles, 13, 17, 96, 99, 104, 119, 121, 118, 126, 127, 131, 137, 142, 144, 145, 127, 144 146 Gerasenes, 43 Jesus Gethsemane, 38, 51, 55, 92, 114, 134 baptism, 32, 35, 116, 120, 129 giving, 84 champion, 35 glory, 51, 83, 91, 112, 113 coming, 21, 104, 137 God the Father, 60, 84, 90, 91, 102, 116, death, 22, 25, 26, 53, 54, 67, 87, 109, 135, 138 114, 115, 122, 125, 127, 129, 138, Golding, William, 15, 27 140, 141, 143, 145 good news, 18 hero, 26, 54 Good News, 70, 91, 94, 97, 102, 109, 111, identity, 70, 100, 103, 104, 118, 126, 114, 121, 125, 138, 139, 144, 146 127, 143 Good Samaritan, 70, 87, 89 interpreter, 25, 26 Gospel, 5, 13, 17, 21, 22, 27, 63, 67, 83, pioneer, 35 92, 93, 97, 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, poet, 24, 26 112, 113, 132, 142, 144, 145 prophet, 69, 130 gospel and genre, 18 resurrection, 18, 21, 25, 31, 58, 65, 101, gospel witnesses, 58 105, 109, 114, 115, 120, 125, 136 gospels, distinctiveness, 18 return, 14, 61, 63, 64, 68, 77, 113, 130, Green, Joel, 22 133 hard sayings, 68, 115 teacher, 20, 26, 56, 69 healing, 76, 102, 124, 144 temptation, 25, 35, 113, 120 heaven, 50, 82, 90, 101 transfiguration, 31, 50, 70, 116, 119, Hebrews, Book of, 18, 110, 135, 137 128, 129, 141 hell, 79, 131, 136 Jesus-Paul question, 16 hermeneutic, 11, 22, 53, 120, 135, 140 Job, Book of, 10 hermeneutic circle, 23, 120 John the Baptist, 18, 69, 77, 81, 84, 97, 99, Hermes, Geza, 19 110, 111, 115, 121, 143, 144 hiddenness, 13, 15, 48, 68, 73, 75, 91, 92, Joseph of Arimathea, 58 100, 103, 111, 131, 132, 133, 137. See joy, 101, 106 also secrecy judgement, 13, 43, 50, 73, 98, 130 hina, 26, 95 Judgement, 21, 77, 90, 97, 99, 102, 144 Hirsch, E D, 23 judges, 31 historical origins, 6 justice, 26, 39, 51, 67, 73, 77, 79, 80, 84, historicism, 9 112, 115, 137 historiography, 54 Justin Martyr, 18 history, 18, 32, 35, 54, 83, 120, 136, 142 Kermode, Frank, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13 holiness, 37, 50, 53, 76, 88, 129 kerygma, 65, 106, 109, 146 Holy Spirit, 21, 22, 31, 32, 62, 64, 100, Kierkegaard, S, 20 101, 105, 106, 110, 121, 141, 146 King, 89, 105, 121, 125, 135, 137, 145 hope, 10, 23, 38, 42, 54, 67, 73, 91, 99, kingdom, 12 117, 121, 130, 133, 134, 142, 144, 146 horizon, 8, 12, 19, 23 154

Kingdom, 13, 16, 20, 24, 36, 37, 38, 49, mystery, 12, 18, 22, 38, 51, 56, 115, 122, 64, 68, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 81, 124, 125, 127, 133, 137, 140, 143 83, 86, 88, 91, 92, 93, 97, 99, 101, 102, mystical, the, 25 103, 105, 110, 112, 113, 120, 122, 124, myth, 10, 13 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, narrative, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 22, 134, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 26, 27, 39, 41, 47, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 146 62, 73, 82, 101, 105, 109, 120, 138, 139 as terminology, 18 amusement, 24 Kingdom dialectic, 112 climax, 11, 54 Korazin, 80, 100 closure, 11, 21, 27, 54, 56, 124, 130 language, 6, 15, 24, 67, 68, 75, 79, 83, conventions, 7, 18, 121 130, 136, 138, 142, 146 dramatic business, 86 last days, 130, 146 ending, 120 last supper, 25, 128 interest, 5, 11, 24, 50, 74, 81, 117 Last Supper, 53, 122, 130 interior monologue, 117 Lazarus, 125 logic, 115 legend, 7 markers, 55, 57, 109 Lewis, C S, 7, 23 moral, 87 life after death, 133. See also eternal life motif, 35 light, 51 nadir, 26, 140 light in John, 139 plot, 26 linkage, 41, 68, 101 tone, 16, 54, 91, 106 listening, 100 nationalism, 97, 132 Lord, 21, 75, 87, 91, 92, 98, 103, 105, 111, nature miracles, 45, 49, 70 118, 127, 129, 130, 135, 136, 144, 145, neighbour, 40, 70, 85, 112, 122 146 new covenant, 128 Lord’s Prayer, 35, 36, 69, 90, 115 Nicodemus, 58, 69 lost/found, 81 obedience, 35, 36, 37, 44, 46, 56, 62, 85, love, 33, 70, 80, 83, 88, 94, 114, 139 86, 91, 99, 103, 139 macrocontext, 29, 120, 125, 126, 127, 128 obedience and salvation, 86 Mallarmé, S, 23 parable, 5, 10, 13, 15, 24, 26, 50, 68, 70, Manson, T W, 16 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 86, marriage, 77 87, 124, 132, 136 martyrdom, 104, 113 Parable, 70 Mary Magdalene, 58, 69 paradigm, 17, 27, 68, 69, 99, 111, 124, Master, 49, 78 127 meaning, 5, 7, 10, 15, 19, 22, 27, 29, 33, Parousia, 13, 31, 63, 65, 104, 105, 111, 58, 61, 89, 90, 129, 130, 138 112, 132, 136 media, 25, 68, 69 Passover, 25, 106, 127, 130, 136, 139, 143 memory, 6, 106, 128 Paul, 7, 13, 16, 23, 26, 52, 61, 86, 87, 109, message, 14, 19, 20, 21, 25, 32, 62, 64, 69, 110, 116, 125, 129, 132, 135, 136, 146 70, 73, 79, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99, 100, 102, Pentecost, 13, 31, 33, 102, 105, 106, 109, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 144, 145 127, 145 Messiah, 26, 53, 54, 56, 67, 70, 71, 94, 96, people, 69. See also crowd 102, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 118, 119, peripeteia, 26 121, 122, 127 persecution, 14, 21, 40, 74, 104, 106, 133, Messianic secret, 13. See also secrecy 146 metaphor, 15, 20, 46, 47, 53, 63, 68, 89, Peter, 16, 21, 26, 46, 51, 58, 61, 63, 71, 110, 128, 133 99, 109, 115, 122, 127, 136, 143, 146 metaplot, 10, 26, 115 Peter's confession, 53, 111, 118 microcontext, 19, 29, 120, 125, 138 Pharisees, 16, 30, 42, 49, 55, 80, 84, 90, miracles, 36, 38, 39, 45, 49, 80, 116 97, 98, 118 mission, 13, 16, 17, 25, 38, 45, 61, 62, 63, Pilate, 55, 56, 116, 118, 145 65, 79, 88, 95, 96, 98, 101, 102, 103, place, 33, 35, 36, 50, 83, 112, 113, 135, 105, 106, 111, 113, 126, 132, 139, 144 138, 141, 143. See also time Morris, Leon, 20, 109 plurality, 20 Moses, 13, 23, 34, 50, 51, 69, 84, 105, point of view, 15, 54, 82, 86, 117, 118, 128, 144 139 multivalency, 5, 16, 122 polemic, 7, 70, 71, 136 155 poor and needy, 15, 40, 70, 84, 89, 90, 93, Samson, 54 110, 114, 121 Satan, 44, 74, 100, 103, 113, 114. See also power, 20, 21, 32, 34, 37, 38, 41, 45, 48, devil 51, 52, 56, 58, 64, 69, 72, 73, 91, 92, Saul, 54 100, 101, 106, 110, 113, 115, 116, 122, scripture, 23, 26, 55, 56, 63, 71, 92, 105, 137, 144. See also authority 120. See also tradition prayer, 25, 34, 47, 50, 56, 84, 90, 92, 100, second death, 80 114, 116, 117, 126, 134 secrecy, 13, 17, 18, 26, 70, 71, 75, 96, prediction, 14, 26, 31, 56, 59, 63, 73, 77, 102, 109, 111, 118. See also hiddenness 97, 104, 105, 109, 131 reversed in proclamation, 102, 104, 105 pre-understanding, 26, 67 Sermon on the Mount, 56, 68, 70, 84, 87, proclamation, 13, 17, 18, 20, 32, 71, 96, 88, 90, 92, 103, 129 100, 102, 103, 105, 110, 114, 118, 121, Servant, 22, 32, 35, 119, 121, 122, 123, 125, 141, 144, 145, 146 124, 125, 127 promise, 20, 27, 51, 57, 64, 70, 74, 76, 83, service, 33, 37, 78, 87, 94, 113, 122, 134 93, 94, 97, 101, 110, 114, 125, 130, sexual morality, 70 134, 138 Sheep and Goats, the, 88 Promise, 129 Sidon, 39, 79, 96, 144 prophetic tradition, 31, 40, 69, 72, 111 sign, 9, 11, 25, 30, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, protagonist, 12, 86, 94, 110, 117, 120 45, 47, 49, 51, 98, 100, 104, 118, 126, public, 16. See also crowd 135, 137, 138, 146 punishment, 42, 79, 115, 136 negative sign, 58, 116, 135 ransom, 113, 120, 135, 137 signs, 21, 69, 70, 96, 97, 101, 110, 114, reader, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 19, 23, 24, 26, 115, 116, 120, 122, 132, 138, 140, 144, 27, 31, 34, 39, 42, 50, 54, 55, 67, 103, 145, 146 104, 109, 110, 111, 115, 120, 125, 138, silence, 20, 26, 37, 53, 68, 143, 145 140, 144 Siloam, tower of, 80 reader disciple, 14, 20, 118 sin, 29, 36, 39, 41, 46, 67, 77, 79, 80, 81, reading, 6, 9, 19, 23, 24, 27, 30, 60, 68, 82, 113, 124, 130, 134, 135, 137, 141 72, 106, 109, 115, 119, 121, 138, 140 Sin, 30 reconciliation, 20, 50, 82, 121 social concern, 89 recovery, 115, 124 Sodom, 79, 99 redemption, 19, 106, 114, 123, 134 Son, 18, 20, 29, 34, 36, 38, 40, 50, 57, 85, rediscovery, 24 91, 102, 118. See also titles regression, 125 Son of God, 18, 20, 21, 31, 36, 37, 38, 44, rejection, 26, 38, 53, 63, 97, 98, 100, 115, 49, 51, 53, 54, 67, 68, 70, 71, 96, 109, 123, 127, 131, 141 110, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, repentance, 30, 47, 64, 70, 76, 81, 82, 85, 133, 134, 135, 138, 141, 145, 146 97, 99, 105, 127, 130, 144 Son of Man, 26, 52, 68, 71, 80, 83, 93, resolution, 22, 27, 55, 73, 83, 114, 115, 103, 104, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 126, 130, 133, 143 118, 119, 122, 127, 131, 132, 134, 135, resurrection, 13, 32, 33, 61, 77, 83, 125, 136, 142, 143, 145 126, 134, 135, 139. See also Jesus: sonship, 45, 84, 110 resurrection Sower, The, 25 return, parabolic theme, 79 spatial imagery, 12, 141 revelation, 13, 18, 29, 51, 75, 143 Speiser, E A, 6 Revelation, Book of, 10, 52, 53, 137, 143 spirituality, 34 reward, 13, 14, 76, 79, 82, 112, 113, 115 sprinkling, 123, 129 rhetoric, 22, 75, 78, 102, 112, 119 Stanton, Graham, 18, 24 Rhetoric, 89, 101 Steiner, George, 7 riddle, 14 Stephen, 27 righteousness, 34, 51, 70, 76, 77, 79, 88, story, 5, 9, 10, 11, 22, 24, 26, 27, 47, 54, 90, 93, 97, 99, 103, 110, 125, 141, 144 71, 72, 74, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 103, Righteousness, 84 105, 106, 109, 127, 143 sacrifice, 11, 20, 26, 112, 124, 128, 129, subtext, 26, 112 130, 141 surprise, 6, 42, 62, 68, 73, 110 salvation, 20, 52, 65, 76, 86, 92, 101, 112, symbol, 9, 11, 15, 31, 33, 47, 67, 68, 75, 114, 124, 125, 127, 130, 137, 140, 143, 85, 88, 90, 92, 98, 105, 114, 128, 138, 146 139, 142, 143 synecdoche, 25, 123 156 taxes, 72, 119 transcendence, 27, 73, 76, 81, 126, 136, teacher, 14, 16, 20, 35, 85, 87, 89, 93, 114 140 teacher-disciple relationship, 69 Twelve, 14, 69, 73, 74, 95, 100, 106, 127, Temple, 37, 45, 69, 99, 118, 119, 131, 133 137, 144 temptation, 36, 91, 92, 115. See also Jesus: two worlds, 27, 33, 74, 76–77, 83, 84, 89, temptation 90, 92, 103, 112, 125, 128, 133, 135, Tenants, Parable of the, 70, 126 142 testimonia, 13 type, 69, 122 theodicy, 80, 125 Tyre, 12, 45, 79, 80, 89, 96, 144 theology, 7, 18, 19, 40, 120, 127, 142 understanding, 5, 6, 23, 49, 67, 71, 75, Thiselton, A, 8 102, 105, 106, 110, 111, 112, 119, 120, thought, 6, 15, 67, 68 126, 133, 138, 141, 142, 143 time, 9, 30, 72, 73, 81, 82, 83, 91, 113, universal change, 114, 132, 137 134, 135, 138, 143 universalism, 136 title, titles, 71, 95, 96, 98, 103, 110, 111, Vineyard, Parable of the, 126 116, 117, 118, 119, 124, 142. See also voice, 6, 7, 22, 30, 118, 123 Christ, King, Lord, Master, Messiah, voice of God, 50, 51 Servant, Son waiting, 56, 60, 75, 77, 83, 91, 105, 114, titles, 21 132, 137 Anointed, 71, 105, 121 washing, 33, 88. See also baptism Anointed Conqueror, 121, 122, 127 Way. See titles children, 102 way of righteousness, 114 King of the Jews, 118 witness, 18, 31, 44, 49, 58, 63, 64, 70, Lamb of God, 130 102, 104, 109, 145 prophet, 97, 126 Wittgenstein, L, 24 Saviour, 45 women disciples, 69 Way, 20, 111, 138 wonders, 54. See also signs tongues, 22 Word, 13, 20, 25, 67, 139 Torah, 85, 92, 99 worldliness, 74 tradition, 19, 29, 30, 50, 51, 86, 99, 120, Zoroastrianism, 113 130