Jesus of Nazareth
Page 27
A third essential motif of the Shepherd discourse is the idea that the shepherd and his flock know each other: "He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.... The sheep follow him, for they know his voice" (Jn 10:3f.). "I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep" (Jn 10:14f.). These verses present two striking sets of interrelated ideas that we need to consider if we are to understand what is meant by "knowing." First of all, knowing and belonging are interrelated. The Shepherd knows the sheep because they belong to him, and they know him precisely because they are his. Knowing and belonging (the Greek text speaks of the sheep as the Shepherd's "own," ta idia) are actually one and the same thing. The true shepherd does not "possess" the sheep as if they were a thing to be used and consumed; rather, they "belong" to him, in the context of their knowing each other, and this "knowing" is an inner acceptance. It signifies an inner belonging that goes much deeper than the possession of things.
Let us illustrate this with an example from our own lives. No human being "belongs" to another in the way that a thing does. Children are not their parents' "property"; spouses are not each other's "property." Yet they do "belong" to each other in a much deeper way than, for example, a piece of wood or a plot of land, or whatever else we call "property." Children "belong" to their parents, yet they are free creatures of God in their own right, each with his own calling and his own newness and uniqueness before God. They belong to each other, not as property, but in mutual responsibility. They belong to each other precisely by accepting one another's freedom and by supporting one another in love and knowledge--and in this communion they are simultaneously free and one for all eternity.
In the same way, the "sheep," who after all are people created by God, images of God, do not belong to the shepherd as if they were things--though that is what the thief and robber thinks when he takes possession of them. Herein lies the distinction between the owner, the true Shepherd, and the robber. For the robber, for the ideologues and the dictators, human beings are merely a thing that they possess. For the true Shepherd, however, they are free in relation to truth and love; the Shepherd proves that they belong to him precisely by knowing and loving them, by wishing them to be in the freedom of the truth. They belong to him through the oneness of "knowing," through the communion in the truth that the Shepherd himself is. This is why he does not use them, but gives his life for them. Just as Logos and Incarnation, Logos and Passion belong together, so too knowing and self-giving are ultimately one.
Let us listen once more to these decisive words: "I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep" (Jn 10:14f.). This statement contains a second set of interrelated ideas that we need to consider. The mutual knowing of shepherd and sheep is interwoven with the mutual knowing of Father and Son. The knowing that links Jesus with "his own" exists within the space opened up by his "knowing" oneness with the Father. Jesus' "own" are woven into the Trinitarian dialogue; we will see this again when we consider the high-priestly prayer. This will help us to see that Church and Trinity are mutually interwoven. This interpenetration of two levels of knowing is crucial for understanding the essence of the "knowing" of which John's Gospel speaks.
Applying all of the above to the world in which we live, we can say this: It is only in God and in light of God that we rightly know man. Any "self-knowledge" that restricts man to the empirical and the tangible fails to engage with man's true depth. Man knows himself only when he learns to understand himself in light of God, and he knows others only when he sees the mystery of God in them. For the shepherd in Jesus' service, this means that he has no right to bind men to himself, to his own little "I." The mutual knowing that binds him to the "sheep" entrusted to his care must have a different goal: It must enable them to lead one another into God, toward God; it must enable them to encounter each other in the communion formed around knowing and loving God. The shepherd in Jesus' service must always lead beyond himself in order to enable others to find their full freedom; and therefore he must always go beyond himself into unity with Jesus and with the Trinitarian God.
Jesus' own "I" is always opened into "being with" the Father; he is never alone, but is forever receiving himself from and giving himself back to the Father. "My teaching is not mine"; his "I" is opened up into the Trinity. Those who come to know him "see" the Father; they enter into this communion of his with the Father. It is precisely this transcendent dialogue, which encounter with Jesus involves, that once more reveals to us the true Shepherd, who does not take possession of us, but leads us to the freedom of our being by leading us into communion with God and by giving his own life.
Let us turn to the last principal motif of the shepherd discourse: the motif of unity. The shepherd discourse in Ezekiel emphasizes this motif: "The word of the LORD came to me: 'Son of Man, take a stick and write on it, "For Judah, and the children of Israel associated with him"; then take another stick and write upon it, "For Joseph (the stick of Ephraim) and all the house of Israel associated with him"; and join them together into one stick, that they may become one in your hand.... "Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations...and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel...And they shall be no longer two nations, and no longer divided into two kingdoms"'" (Ezek 37:15-17, 21f.). God is the Shepherd who reunites divided and scattered Israel into a single people.
Jesus' shepherd discourse takes up this vision, while very decidedly enlarging the scope of the promise: "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one Shepherd" (Jn 10:16). Jesus the Shepherd is sent not only to gather the scattered sheep of the house of Israel, but to gather together all "the children of God who are scattered abroad" (Jn 11:52). In this sense, Jesus' promise that there will be one Shepherd and one flock is equivalent to the risen Lord's missionary command in Matthew's Gospel: "Go therefore and make all nations my disciples" (Mt 28:19); the same idea appears again in the Acts of the Apostles, where the risen Lord says: "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
This brings to light the inner reason for this universal mission: There is only one Shepherd. The Logos who became man in Jesus is the Shepherd of all men, for all have been created through the one Word; however scattered they may be, yet as coming from him and bound toward him they are one. However widely scattered they are, all people can become one through the true Shepherd, the Logos who became man in order to lay down his life and so to give life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).
From very early on--the evidence goes back to the third century--the vision of the shepherd became a typical image of the Christian world. In the surrounding culture, the Christian people encountered the figure of a man carrying a sheep, which to an overstressed urban society expressed the popular dream of the simple life. But the Christian people were immediately able to reinterpret this figure in light of Scripture. Psalm 23 is an example that comes to mind directly: "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; he makes me lie down in green pastures.... Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.... Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever." They recognized Christ as the Good Shepherd who leads us through life's dark valleys; the Shepherd who himself walked through the valley of the shadow of death; the Shepherd who also knows the way through the night of death and does not abandon me in this final solitude, but leads me out of this valley of death into the green pastures of life, to the place of "light, happiness and peace" (Roman Canon). Clement of Alexandria expressed this trust in the Shepherd's guidance in verses that convey something of the hope and confidence felt by the early Church in the midst of frequent sufferings and constant persecutions: "Lead, holy
Shepherd, your spiritual sheep: Lead, king, your pure children. Christ's footsteps are the way to heaven" (Paedogogus, III, 12, 101; Van der Meer, Menschensohn, p. 23).
But naturally, Christians were also reminded of the parable of the shepherd who follows after the lost sheep, lifts it onto his shoulders, and brings it home, as well as the shepherd discourse of John's Gospel. For the Church Fathers, the two texts flowed into each other. The Shepherd who sets off to seek the lost sheep is the eternal Word himself, and the sheep that he lovingly carries home on his shoulders is humanity, the human existence that he took upon himself. In his Incarnation and Cross he brings home the stray sheep, humanity; he brings me home, too. The incarnate Logos is the true "sheep-bearer"--the Shepherd who follows after us through the thorns and deserts of our life. Carried on his shoulders, we come home. He gave his life for us. He himself is life.
CHAPTER NINE
Two Milestones on Jesus' Way: Peter's Confession and the Transfiguration
PETER'S CONFESSION
All three Synoptic Gospels present Jesus' question to the disciples about who the people think he is and who they themselves consider him to be (Mk 8:27-30; Mt 16:13-20; Lk 9:18-21) as an important milestone on his way. In all three Gospels, Peter answers in the name of the Twelve with a confession that is markedly different from the opinion of the "people." In all three Gospels, Jesus then foretells his Passion and Resurrection, and continues this announcement of his own destiny with a teaching about the way of discipleship, the way to follow him, the Crucified. In all three Gospels, however, he also interprets this "following" on the way of the Cross from an essentially anthropological standpoint: It is the indispensable way for man to "lose his life," without which it is impossible for him to find it (Mk 8:31-9:1; Mt 16:21-28; Lk 9:22-27). And finally, in all three Gospels there follows the account of the Transfiguration of Jesus, which once again interprets Peter's confession and takes it deeper, while at the same time connecting it with the mystery of Jesus' death and Resurrection (Mk 9:2-13; Mt 17:1-13; Lk 9:28-36).
Only Matthew immediately follows Peter's confession with the bestowal upon Peter of the power of the keys--of the power to bind and loose--and this is connected with Jesus' promise to build his Church upon Peter as on a rock. Parallel passages concerning this commission and this promise are found in Luke 22:31f. in the context of the Last Supper and in John 21:15-19 after Jesus' Resurrection.
It should be pointed out that John, too, places a similar confession on Peter's lips, which once again is presented as a decisive milestone on Jesus' way, giving the circle of the Twelve its full weight and profile for the first time (Jn 6:68f.). As we study Peter's confession in the Synoptics, we will also need to take this text into account, since, despite all the differences, it does reveal some basic elements in common with the Synoptic tradition.
These somewhat schematic observations should have made it clear that Peter's confession can be properly understood only in the context of Jesus' prophecy of the Passion and his words about the way of discipleship. These three elements--Peter's words and Jesus' twofold answer--belong inseparably together. Equally indispensable for understanding Peter's confession is the attestation of Jesus in the Transfiguration scene by the Father himself and by the Law and the Prophets. In Mark's Gospel, the story of the Transfiguration is preceded by what seems to be a promise of the Parousia. On one hand, this promise is connected with what Jesus says about the way of discipleship. At the same time, however, it leads to Jesus' Transfiguration, and as such, it interprets in its own way both discipleship and the promise of the Parousia. According to Mark and Luke, Jesus' words about discipleship are addressed to all--in contrast to the prediction of the Passion, which is communicated only to the witnesses. They thus bring an ecclesiological note into the whole context; they open up the horizon of the whole situation, so that we see beyond the journey to Jerusalem that Jesus has just begun, toward all God's people (cf. Lk 9:23). Indeed, these words about following the Crucified One address fundamental issues of human existence as such.
John has placed them in the context of Palm Sunday and he links them with the question the Greeks ask about Jesus, thus emphasizing the universal character of these sayings. Here too they are associated with Jesus' destiny on the Cross, which is thus presented as something intrinsically necessary and free from all contingency (cf. Jn 12:24f.). The saying about the death of the grain of wheat, moreover, connects Jesus' statement about losing one's life in order to find it with the mystery of the Eucharist, which in turn had provided the context for Peter's confession--placed by John at the end of the story of the multiplication of the loaves and Jesus' interpretation of it in his eucharistic discourse.
Let us turn our attention now to the individual components of this great tapestry woven of event and word. Matthew and Mark identify the theater of the event as the region of Caesarea Philippi (present-day Banias), a sanctuary of Pan established by Herod the Great that was located at the source of the Jordan. Herod subsequently made this place the capital of his dominion and named it after Caesar Augustus and himself.
Tradition has located the scene at a place where a wall of rock overhangs the waters of the Jordan and thus powerfully illustrates Jesus' words about Peter as the rock. Mark and Luke, each in his own way, introduce us into what might be called the interior location of the event. Mark says that Jesus asked his question "on the way"; it is clear that the way Mark is speaking of is the one leading to Jerusalem. To be on the way among "the villages of Caesarea Philippi" (Mk 8:27) means to be starting the ascent to Jerusalem--to the center of salvation history, to the place where Jesus' destiny would be fulfilled in the Cross and the Resurrection, but also where the Church had its origin after these events. Peter's confession and hence the words of Jesus that follow it are located at the beginning of this way.
The great period of preaching in Galilee is at an end and we are at a decisive milestone: Jesus is setting out on the journey to the Cross and issuing a call to decision that now clearly distinguishes the group of disciples from the people who merely listen, without accompanying him on his way--a decision that clearly shapes the disciples into the beginning of Jesus' new family, the future Church. It is characteristic of this community to be "on the way" with Jesus--what that way involves is about to be made clear. It is also characteristic that this community's decision to accompany Jesus rests upon a realization--on a "knowledge" of Jesus that at the same time gives them a new insight into God, the one God in whom they believe as children of Israel.
In Luke--and this is entirely in keeping with his portrait of the figure of Jesus--Peter's confession is connected with a prayer event. Luke begins his account of the story with a deliberate paradox: "As he was praying alone, the disciples were with him" (Lk 9:18). The disciples are drawn into his solitude, his communion with the Father that is reserved to him alone. They are privileged to see him as the one who--as we reflected at the beginning of this book--speaks face-to-face with the Father, person to person. They are privileged to see him in his utterly unique filial being--at the point from which all his words, his deeds, and his powers issue. They are privileged to see what the "people" do not see, and this seeing gives rise to a recognition that goes beyond the "opinion" of the people. This seeing is the wellspring of their faith, their confession; it provides the foundation for the Church.
Here we may identify the interior location of Jesus' twofold question. His inquiry about the opinion of the people and the conviction of the disciples presupposes two things. On one hand, there is an external knowledge of Jesus that, while not necessarily false, is inadequate. On the other hand, there is a deeper knowledge that is linked to discipleship, to participation in Jesus' way, and such knowledge can grow only in that context. All three Synoptics agree in recounting the opinion of the people that Jesus is John the Baptist, or Elijah, or some other of the Prophets returned from the dead; Luke has just told us that Herod, having heard about such accounts of Jesus' person and activity, felt a wish to see him.
Matthew adds an additional variation: the opinion of some that Jesus is Jeremiah.
The common element in all these ideas is that Jesus is classified in the category "prophet," an interpretative key drawn from the tradition of Israel. All the names that are mentioned as interpretations of the figure of Jesus have an eschatological ring to them, the expectation of a radical turn of events that can be associated both with hope and with fear. While Elijah personifies hope for the restoration of Israel, Jeremiah is a figure of the Passion, who proclaims the failure of the current form of the Covenant and of the Temple that, so to speak, serves as its guarantee. Of course, he is also the bearer of the promise of a New Covenant that is destined to rise from the ashes. By his suffering, by his immersion in the darkness of contradiction, Jeremiah bears this twofold destiny of downfall and renewal in his own life.
These various opinions are not simply mistaken; they are greater or lesser approximations to the mystery of Jesus, and they can certainly set us on the path toward Jesus' real identity. But they do not arrive at Jesus' identity, at his newness. They interpret him in terms of the past, in terms of the predictable and the possible, not in terms of himself, his uniqueness, which cannot be assigned to any other category. Today, too, similar opinions are clearly held by the "people" who have somehow or other come to know Christ, who have perhaps even made a scholarly study of him, but have not encountered Jesus himself in his utter uniqueness and otherness. Karl Jaspers spoke of Jesus alongside Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius as one of the four paradigmatic individuals. He thus acknowledged that Jesus is of fundamental significance in the search for the right way to be human. Yet for all that, Jesus remains one among others grouped within a common category, in terms of which they can be explained and also delimited.