by Jack Miles
When Nicodemus visits Jesus in another scene not witnessed by the disciples, what he hears is exhilarating in its vision of a new creation in water and the Spirit, a new creation in which the curses of the first creation may become blessings again. After Nicodemus disappears into the night, however, the audience hears Jesus draw a disturbing comparison between himself lifted up on the cross and the bronze serpent lifted up on a pole in the desert (John 3:14). What disturbs is the suggestion that though by his death he may be the cure of the world’s affliction, he is also its cause.
6. Bridegroom. Having left or perhaps fled Jerusalem, Jesus and his disciples meet John the Baptist in the Judean countryside. John compares Jesus to a bridegroom and himself to the friend of the bridegroom. This image serves to cast the Baptist in a subordinate role, but its connotations go much further. In the Old Testament, God, as the bridegroom of Israel, is a betrayed bridegroom. Israel, his spouse, is unfaithful to him, though he insists that, even after punishing her, he will always be faithful to her. If the lamb is a bridegroom, then is the expiatory suffering of the lamb the suffering of a betrayed husband who, rather than punish his wife, will now passively endure her rejection? But then if that is how these two images might be combined, how do they, in combination, yield a meaning compatible with the role of messianic redeemer? The disciples, who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, have heard the prophet John acclaim him as both lamb and bridegroom. Nicodemus, possibly, and the reader, certainly, have heard Jesus say that it is love that has sent him into the world. The disciples have heard less about love, yet the inescapable prominence of love in the bridegroom metaphor must have begun to affect their understanding of what kind of messiah Jesus will be.
7. Prophet and Lawgiver (a second Moses). When the Samaritans accept Jesus as Messiah, they see him as a new Moses rather than a new David. He is the prophet who Moses promised would eventually come; but like Moses himself, he is a prophet who does not just predict the action of God but also imparts teaching, or torah, a prophet who “will explain everything.” According to a widely held popular belief, Elijah had been the promised second Moses, and therefore any further appearance of a Moses redux would have to be Elijah redux. It was Elijah who, proverbially, would resolve all disputes and answer all questions. When John the Baptist says of Jesus that “he must increase, and I must decrease,” he surrenders this role to Jesus, who recapitulates the functions of all God’s past intermediaries in himself. That the Samaritans, for whom Elijah, who lived and worked in their part of Israel, was a towering figure, accept Jesus, a Jew rather than a Samaritan, in this role means, for them, that the role is incipiently international. If this Jew, this non-Samaritan, can be accepted as their savior, then it can only be because he is “the Savior of the World.” That he agrees to be accepted in this way means that he too acknowledges that he is a Moses whose torah is intended for all mankind.
* Translations of biblical citations are my own except when otherwise indicated: KJV = King James Version; RSV = Revised Standard Version; NJB = New Jerusalem Bible; JPS = Jewish Publication Society Tanakh; REB = Revised English Bible. There is nothing corresponding to italic type in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In this book the use of italics in translations serves various purposes, which will be explained as the occasion arises. On the use of the designation “Old Testament,” see Appendix I, especially this page–this page.
PART TWO
A Prophet Against the Promise
After the two days [in Samaria] had passed, Jesus went on to Galilee. Although he had said that a prophet is without honor in his own country, the Galileans welcomed him on his arrival, having seen all that he had done at Jerusalem during the feast, which they too had attended.
He went back to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. Now at Capernaum, there was a royal official whose son lay ill. When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went and urged him to come and cure his son, who was on the point of death. Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and portents, you will not believe!”
—John 4:43–48
Believe what? Jesus does not say, for he clearly seeks more than assent to some limited set of propositions about himself. What he wants is commitment of a far more global and personal sort, an open-ended and undefined commitment that can only be compared with belief in God. Yet when Jesus asks this kind of faith, he goes beyond what even God has previously asked. As already noted, when the Lord calls Abram to venture into a strange land, the venture is linked to a great reward: Abram is to be made “a great nation.” The implication is that, absent some good reason to venture abroad, the Lord himself would have expected Abram to stay home. Similarly, after bringing Israel out of Egypt “with mighty hand and outstretched arm” (Deut. 4:34), the Lord had no hesitation in adducing this miracle as a credential and a proof that he was a deity to be reckoned with. The Lord Incarnate, however, indignantly refuses to offer such credentials or traffic in such demonstrations. Why the indignation? He was willing enough to prove himself to Abram and Moses. Why is he unwilling to do so now when, if ever, a demonstration seems called for? Or is he unable rather than unwilling?
HIS INAUSPICIOUS FIRST CURE: A ROMAN CHILD
Jesus takes offense when a royal official asks that his son be cured of a fatal illness, rebuking the man as he rebuked the Devil in the desert, his mother during the wedding feast, and the Jews at the Temple. When the man insists, Jesus yields, but he has placed a novel frame around his own action, saying (but why, exactly?), “I am doing you this favor, but you should not have asked it”:
“Sir,” said the official, “come down before my child dies.”
“Go home,” said Jesus, “your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus had said and headed for home; and while he was still en route, his servants met him with the news that his boy was going to live. He asked them when the boy had begun to recover. They answered, “The fever left him yesterday at one in the afternoon.” The father realized that this was just when Jesus had said, “Your son will live.” And so he believed, and all his household as well. (4:49–53)
Jesus seems either to be of two minds about the use of his divine power or else to be concealing something with regard to just how much power he has. Clearly, he has exceptional power of some sort at his disposal. Just as clearly, he is on guard against allowing the case for himself as an exceptional being to rest on that power.
A further ambivalence may result from the character of the man who requests the cure. As a “royal official,” this man is either a Roman or, more likely, a Galilean Jew in the employ of the local puppet king, Herod Antipas. If it was a large step to preach to the Samaritans, it is a larger one to work a miracle for this instrument of Roman oppression. This is Jesus’ first significant action since returning to Galilee from Jerusalem. Do the Galileans, who may have seen other charismatics defect to the Romans, look askance at his making his power so readily available to a Roman collaborator? There can be little doubt that Jesus notices whatever they notice. Is he also troubled by it? Is he peremptory with this official because of it?
A DEMON CRIES OUT, “I KNOW WHO YOU ARE”
From Cana in “upper” or hill-country Galilee, Jesus goes down to Capernaum on the shore of the Lake of Galilee, where, on the Sabbath, he preaches in the synagogue.
In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil, and he shouted in a loud voice, “Hah! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be still! Come out of him!” And the devil, throwing the man down among them, went out of him without otherwise harming him at all. Amazement seized them, and they said to one another, “What is it about his speech? He gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and power, and they come out.” And the news of him spread all through the surrounding countryside. (Luke 4:33–37)
Few scenes are so electrifying a
s that of a madman in a house of worship shrieking out what no one dares say: obscenities, blasphemies, unspeakable truths. When the voice of the possessed is also the voice of a devil, one of the treacherous company of devils, the blue flame only crackles brighter. This devil, trapped but defiant, taunts Jesus as if to strip off his disguise: “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” But the devil is also frightened: “Have you come to destroy us?”
The title “the Holy One” is never used in the Old Testament of anyone but God himself—sometimes alone, more often in the phrase “the Holy One of Israel.” And the devil is right to associate the designation with destruction; for when God had destruction in mind, “Holy One” is often how he chose to refer to himself. So it was when he chose to humiliate Assyria, the nation that had once been “the club of [his] anger, the cudgel of [his] rage” (Isa. 10:5). When the Assyrians had dared to boast of their victories, this was, for God, “as if a club should wield him who holds it!” (10:15). It was time to incinerate the offender:
The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame;
and it will burn and devour his thorns and thistles in a single day.
The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land
the Lord will destroy, both soul and body,
and it will be as when a sick man wastes away.
The remnant of the trees of his woods will be so few
that a child will be able to list them.
(10:17–19, italics added)
Alas, as with the promised humiliation of Babylonia after the destruction of Jerusalem, this promised humiliation of Assyria after the conquest of Galilee never came about—not, at any rate, in a way that brought vindication to the Lord’s chosen people. Babylonia defeated Assyria, Persia defeated Babylonia, Greece defeated Persia, and Rome Greece, but each time Israel simply changed hands as part of the spoils of war. Taking the gods of those nations to be, as in the Book of Daniel, demons with national assignments, we may see their presence in oppressed Israel as simply part and parcel of the oppression. This particular demon’s desire to know whether the Holy One has become incarnate “to destroy us” is the mythic equivalent of Rome’s question as to whether it will face an unstoppable Jewish rebellion.
That the Holy One regrets his failure to vindicate the children of Israel may be measured by the inner turmoil he reveals at the prospect of punishing them in the first place. His rage was uncontrollable, yet he could not deny the pain he felt at yielding to it, for
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them,
the more they went from me;
They kept sacrificing to the Baals,
and burning incense to idols.
Because of this, he had resolved to
Let the sword rage against their cities,
consume their limbs
and devour their bones.
And yet, and yet:
How can I give you up, O Ephraim!
How can I hand you over, O Israel!
My heart recoils within me,
my pity stirs.
I will not let loose my fierce anger,
I will not again destroy Ephraim;
For I am God and not man,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
(Hos. 11:1–2, 5–6, 8–9, italics added)
The Holy One in their midst was torn in two back then, but, as usual, his rage bested his mercy, and he thrashed Ephraim with Assyria, the club of his anger. Centuries have passed since then, but does God ever forget? The demon in the synagogue has reason to fear that God is belatedly about to complete the agenda he then announced. Even the human observers note that Jesus gives orders “with authority and power.” But Jesus himself, though willing enough to claim authority, has seemed reluctant to exercise power, particularly against the political establishment. God was once, with his child Israel, “like someone lifting an infant to his cheek” (NJB Hos. 11:4). But will he now use his power on behalf of his child or not? It seems not, and yet it seems equally remote from his agenda to punish his child any further. As God Incarnate, God seems to have lost his appetite for punishment. He no longer delivers furious oracles against his people, warning that because of the corruption of some—above all, of the king—all must and will suffer the most violent and humiliating of punishments. But if he has ceased to be a threat to his own people, has he ceased as well to be a threat to their enemies? And if so, then on what does he base his continuing covenant relationship with them?
THE MEN OF NAZARETH, INSULTED, TRY TO KILL HIM
From Capernaum, after performing several other healings and exorcisms, Jesus goes to Nazareth,
where he had been brought up, and [he] went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read, and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Opening the scroll, he found the passage where it is written:
The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me
to bring good news to the afflicted.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant, and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed upon him. Then he began to speak to them: “Today this scripture is fulfilled even as you listen.” He won the approval of all. They were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips. (Luke 4:16–22; passage in italics from Isa. 61:1–2)
By quoting Isaiah, Jesus claims that he is both an anointed prophet, a messianic prophet of the sort that Samaria awaited, and a messianic king of the sort that Judea awaited, one capable of setting in motion the wondrous events that Isaiah foretold. Have centuries passed? Are the cities still ruined? No matter: The moment may nonetheless be at hand, for later in the same prophecy that Jesus reads in the synagogue, Isaiah said:
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the wreckage that was.
They shall repair the sacked cities,
the devastations of many generations.
(61:4, italics added)
Can it ever be too late for God? The question cannot be more real or more current for Jesus’ hearers than it is. Christian commentary over the centuries has faulted the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus for failing to grasp that he was preaching spiritual, not material, redemption, but the Lord himself had conditioned his people for centuries to expect material redemption. The Lord made this point not just once but repeatedly, insistently, and aggressively. In the same oracle that Jesus quotes, for example, the Lord promised:
Aliens shall guard and feed your flocks,
foreigners shall be your plowboys and vineyard workers;
But you, you shall be called the priests of the Lord,
men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
You shall partake of the wealth of the nations,
and in their riches you shall glory.
In place of your disgrace you shall have a double portion,
in place of dishonor you shall have joy.
(61:5–7)
If such a thing is now to come about (and what else would the men in the Capernaum synagogue infer from “Today this scripture is fulfilled even as you listen”?), it will not come about by mere exorcisms and healings. Much more will be required if Israel is to “partake of the wealth of the nations and in their riches … glory.” God Incarnate has demonstrated his divine power, but can he be a miracle worker on this scale? Can he make political history again as he did when he crushed Pharaoh?
Jesus’ neighbors, the people among whom he grew up, are impressed, to a point, but they are skeptical as well: “They said, ‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’ But he answered, ‘No doubt you will quote me the proverb “Physician, heal yoursel
f,” and tell me, “We have heard about all that happened in Capernaum. Do the same in your own country!” ’ And he went on, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is ever welcomed in his own country’ ” (Luke 4:22–24). Jesus rebukes his neighbors preemptively. He faults them for wanting him to cure diseases and cast out demons before they have made any such request of him. If he had gone no further with his rebuke, he would have dealt with them more or less as we have seen him dealing with others who wanted to predicate their acceptance of him on his exercise of divine power. However, he goes on as if to defend himself against the complaint, which no one has voiced, that his most impressive miracle to date has been performed on behalf of a Roman collaborator.
“There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you,” he says,
in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut [rain did not fall] for three years and six months while a great famine raged throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to a widow at Zarephath, a town in the vicinity of Sidon. And in the prophet Elisha’s time, there were many lepers in Israel, but none of them was cured—only Naaman the Syrian. (4:25–27)
Jesus’ words are targeted, like a boxer’s punch, to land where they will hurt most, and they succeed in their intent. Zarephath, the first of the two places Jesus mentions, is in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon), which borders Galilee on the north; Syria, the second place mentioned, borders Galilee on the east. These are, in other words, Galilee’s nearest neighbors, the foreigners who might come first to mind. Mentioning them, Jesus reaches back nine hundred years, to the time when God sent the prophet Elijah to a widow in Phoenicia. What he does not say—but does not need to say to a synagogue audience—is that on that occasion Elijah performed a miracle very like the one Jesus has just performed for the royal official: Elijah brought a widow’s dying son back to life and health. As for Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet Elisha cured of leprosy, he was not just a foreigner but, like the royal official in Capernaum, an officer working for a foreign king. Does Jesus mean, outrageously, to suggest that the prophecy that is being “fulfilled even as you listen” will be fulfilled on behalf of Israel’s neighbors and enemies rather than on behalf of Israel? The idea is offensive in itself, the more so because it is offered so defiantly right in the Nazareth synagogue: “When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was furious. They sprang to their feet and dragged him out of town. Taking him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, they sought to throw him off the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and walked away” (4:28–30).