The Story of Jesus. Roy A. Harrisville

suggests that he expected something from Jesus he did not get. In his initial proclamation he had given his portrait of the one to come apocalyptic, end-time features: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. . .the one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. . .His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:10, 14; Luke 3:9, 17). Had the Baptist shared the idea that Messiah would come to turn Israel’s enemies to ash, save the repentant remnant, and assume his place as ruler over all the earth? What else would have moved him to ask? Was Jesus ill-suited to the portrait he had drawn? Responding to John, Jesus lists his activity, hardly free of end-time intimations (“the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:4–5). According to the story line, John was in prison, and sent a delegation to put the question. Had he been in the dark respecting Jesus’ activity, but if so, why does Jesus conclude with a beatitude toward whomever would take no offense at him, what with all that giving sight to the blind, and on and on to raising the dead? John had to be the candidate for that beatitude. Did he see the activity of Jesus as a string of events loosed from any serious context, say, from the context three Major and seven Minor Prophets had furnished with their heralding the “Day of the Lord,” and in whose train Jesus himself had set him? (Matthew 11:11).

      Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come. (Joel 2:12)

      Till now, there is little of Jesus in that.

      Part Two

      The Begininings of Jesus’ Ministry

      Jesus’ Appearing and Preaching

      The Gospels record that Jesus begins his ministry with the summons to repent in view of the arrival of God’s Kingdom, or as Matthew persistently refers to it, “the Kingdom of heaven,” in typically Jewish fashion omitting use of the “Shem,” the Name. As always in the New Testament, “repentance” does not denote “change of mind” as in the Greek, but “return,” as in the Hebrew. As for the term “Kingdom,” “Rule of God” is a happier translation, allowing for contrast with earthly powers, as well as for emphasizing God’s Rule as a future as well as a present reality. In his summons and announcement of the Rule of God’s arrival Jesus clearly alters the preaching of the Baptist. John’s baptism is a sign of protection for those who return to a hope that threatens to be lost, hope in the future of God. More, for John this return occurs in view of the coming Judge (“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire,” Matthew 3:12). On the other hand, for Jesus the Rule of God has already broken in; change in the world has already begun. God is beginning to win back the world that he made. The Rule of God is thus the constitutive event of salvation. Further, the judgment that John preaches is only the obverse side of the grace or favor of God which Jesus announces and makes explicit in his activity and mission. To the extent the Rule of God is not only a present but also a future reality, hastening toward a final consummation, to that extent, at least in a formal sense, for both John and Jesus those who receive the “good news are ranged alongside those who wait. Thus, in Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Rule a tension exists between its having “already” come, and its having “not yet” totally overcome what opposes it.

      This Rule of God is not brought about by dint of human effort. It is not, as one noted early twentieth century theologian put it, transformed by Jesus into a “series of gifts which one is to receive by changed behavior according to the will of God,” does not occur “in such fashion that one follows the leading will of God by the deed.”9 Nor did Jesus, called to establish the Kingdom, altogether detach the idea of judgment from its future conclusion,10 totally subsuming the “not yet” aspect of the kingdom into the “now already” of an ethical action. According to the New Testament, the coming of the Rule of God Jesus brings is an event totally apart from human activity, whatever its consequences for human existence. The saving activity of God made concrete in Jesus must occur apart from human doing or willing able to taint or hinder it. One may indeed wait for it, place hope in it, long for it, as did old Simeon “for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25), but, as the Reformer wrote in his Small Catechism, “the Kingdom of God comes indeed of itself without our prayer.” Jesus may act in response to human need, as the stories of healing indicate, but that he is or that he acts in response to a need is his own affair. In reply to the leper’s plea, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean,” Jesus answers “I do choose. Be made clean!” Let that “I do choose” (Matthew 8:3) or “I will,” as the older translation has it, serve as device over his life and career. And while there is no question that an ethical action is required in view of the Rule of God’s arrival—what else could the summons to repent mean?—that ethical action is in the nature of an answer, not an accompaniment to the Rule of God. Reduction of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God to a summons to ethical action according to a series of values, current in nineteenth and early twentieth century idealism, has stood godparent for that talk of “building the Kingdom” I heard so often in my youth. In the New Testament, the call to pray in the second petition of the “Our Father” that the Kingdom or Rule of God may come “also to us” is not a call to initiate or accompany its arrival.

      Writing of the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, the Fourth Gospel records two events not reported in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. The first is Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, which may be assigned to the beginnngs of Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem. The second is his conversation with the woman at the well, in a context totally absent in the Synoptics, that is, a ministry of Jesus in Samaria. Both reports illustrate what is perhaps the greatest difference between John and his co-evangelists, that is, his recital of the language of Jesus. In John Jesus does not speak in parables, terse or brief statements, but in long, repetitive speeches which advance in spiral fashion toward a dominant theme and end in self-disclosure. Scholars tend to regard this feature as reflecting post-Easter influence on earlier Jesus-tradition. Obviously, the experience of Easter was bound to leave its mark on the Gospel tradition. Apart from that experience there would scarcely have been any gospel to record. The question is whether or not the Easter experience has so influenced the Gospel of John that it has substantially altered the memory of what Jesus actually said or did, and whether such alteration could be legitimized by invoking the Spirit who would “remind” Jesus’ followers of all he had said (cf. John 14:26). Such will always be a matter of debate.

      The dialogue with Nicodemus opens with the nightly visit of the Pharisee, who addresses Jesus as “Rabbi,” or Teacher, as did Andrew and Peter earlier (John 1:38). Initially, the address is at considerable distance from the Baptist’s heralding of Jesus as “Son of God” (John 1:34, ), but then, as also occurs with Nathaniel, it is heightened to the acknowledgement of Jesus’ unique relation to God. In Nathaniels’ case the acknowledgement (“You are the Son of God!” John 1:49) is occasioned by Jesus’ foreknowledge (“I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you,” John 1:48), and in that of Nicodemus (“We know that you are a teacher who has come from God,” John 3:2a), by a conclusion drawn from Jesus’ activity (“No one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God,” John 3:2b). To this Jesus responds that none can enter the kingdom of God without being born “from above.” Nicodemus takes the adverb to mean “again,” and in utter confusion asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Actually, in the Greek the adverb may be taken to mean either “from above” or “again.” The same is true of the adverb in the Aramaic, the language of the dialogue. Nicodemus tripped over the double entendre, conceived the “birth” as a repetition. Jesus had in mind a “birth” distinct from human activity, a birth beyond and in contrast to the earrthly or fleshly: “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what