Jesus of Nazareth

by Gerhard Lohfink

  Jesus is now about just one thing: proclaiming the reign of God. He travels through Galilee in a restless itinerant course, totally and utterly surrendered to God’s will and plan. He lives for Israel, for the eschatological gathering of the people of God. He spreads blessing and salvation around him but also the blade of decision. In word and deed he makes the reign of God present. He now lives definitively that final and radical filial obedience to God that was already glimpsed in the story about the twelve-year-old and that extends deeper than all ties to a natural family.

  Apparently this sloughing off of his old ties began when, one day, he went with many others to the Jordan where John the Baptizer was preaching and baptizing. Mark recounts the decisive events that, besides his crucifixion, are among the most historically certain in Jesus’ life; the account is as brief as it possibly could be: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (Mark 1:9). This is the precise beginning of Jesus’ public history. He must have heard about the Baptizer and his preaching of repentance, and he must have been deeply moved by it. He leaves his parents’ house in Nazareth to be baptized by John. That created enormous difficulties for the early communities. How could he who was much greater than John have gone to the Jordan and joined the Baptizer’s renewal movement? How could Jesus put himself within the crowd of those who publicly confessed that they wanted to change their lives? How could the Sinless One subject himself to a “baptism for the forgiveness of sins”? The enormity of these difficulties is evident from the fact that Matthew builds into the baptism scene a little dialogue in which John at first hesitates to admit Jesus to baptism at all (Matt 3:14-15).

  The apocryphal “Gospel of the Nazarenes” (first half of the second century), which survives only in fragments, proceeds much more radically. According to that gospel, Jesus was urged by his mother and brothers to go to the Jordan with them: the whole family want to be baptized by John. But Jesus refuses, saying, “How have I sinned, that I should go there to be baptized by him?” (Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos III, 2). That is freely imagined, but we see in it the problem the early church had with Jesus’ baptism.

  How could the Son of God be baptized? In the past it was often said, in answer to this difficulty, that Jesus wanted to give the people a good example. But that kind of song and dance is woefully inadequate. Jesus went to the Baptizer because he sensed that God was acting through him. Israel was now entering the crucial phase of its history. For him that meant he had to be at the place where the fate of the people of God was being decided; he had to be on the spot where God was now acting in Israel. He had to be where the eschatological gathering and renewal of Israel was beginning. So he listened to God’s appeal. The moral question of whether he considered himself a sinner is not to the point. Jesus’ concern was with God’s plan, with the Father’s will. By being baptized he surrendered himself wholly to that plan.

  Jesus’ Temptations

  According to the narrative sequence of the first three gospels, immediately after his baptism Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit of God to be tempted there (Matt 4:1; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-2). In Matthew and Luke the story of the temptations that then follows is an artistic composition. Let us be plain about it: it is a fictional story. But it was this use of fiction that presented the possibility of telling something that was full to the brim with reality: Jesus was tempted more than once.

  The end of Mark’s much briefer story echoes the theme of Paradise. He writes that angels served Jesus in the desert (Mark 1:13; cf. Matt 4:11). There were already Jewish legends circulating in New Testament times that told how the first humans in Paradise were served by angels. So Mark intends to say that because Jesus followed the will of God without reservation, Paradise was beginning to dawn. But in the midst of this dawning of Paradise he is tempted just as everyone else is tempted if she or he wants to serve God alone. He is tempted to will not God’s plan but his own.

  In Matthew’s and Luke’s versions the tempter approaches Jesus three times. Three times he tries to get Jesus to fall away from his assigned task. Three times Jesus answers with a saying from Scripture and thus shows that he is remaining faithful to his duty. These are not primarily temptations to which everyone is exposed, such as greed or pleasure or the arrogance of power. Instead, they are about the basic sin of the people of God, the specific temptation with which believers in particular are confronted.

  The temptation of the people of God, and therefore of Jesus also, begins in the task itself—in the heart of what Israel is sent to do: to live in the world as a people that gives honor to God alone, acknowledges God as its only Lord, so that others can see and understand from this people what faith is. But if the people of God lives not for God but for itself, if it seeks not the honor of God but its own, and if in the process God is even made an instrument for the accomplishment of its own interests—then the task and the mission are perverted in their inmost heart. Then what happens is not proclamation but self-exaltation, and in place of service to others comes service to one’s own interest. The story about Jesus’ temptations illustrates in the most sublime form the potential sin of all those who are called.

  In the first scene people make use of the new possibilities opened up by the mission of the people of God for their own interests. They get bread for themselves (Matt 4:2-4). The history of the church will show that it is possible to earn money through the Gospel.

  In the second scene people serve not God but their own project by putting themselves on display. Throwing oneself down from the pinnacle of the temple is an extravagant display to test what possibilities God has to offer that one can make use of for one’s own self-presentation, misusing Sacred Scripture into the bargain (Matt 4:5-7).

  In the third scene everything that is going on in the depths finally comes to light: those who do not serve God alone and with all their strength, in fact, serve themselves and thus the chaotic powers of the world (Matt 4:8-10).

  Only those who have understood how narrow and exposed is the path by which God is truly honored, and how quickly faith itself falls into self-help, giving oneself honor, making oneself master or mistress—only they understand the explosive point of the Matthean and Lukan temptation story: it is especially those called who can misuse their calling to serve their own persons, glorify their own deeds, and seek not to serve but to exercise religious power. And misuse of power in the name of God is the most terrible of all violations.

  The stories about Jesus’ temptation immediately after his baptism are intended to say that Jesus too was repeatedly tempted by all these things, in the deepest depths of his existence. But he resisted the tempter, and he did so with ultimate clarity and determination. He could do so because he held fast to the word of God. Therefore he thrice quotes Sacred Scripture, the collected wisdom of Israel about how to distinguish and decide.

  What the temptation story had summarized and distilled at the beginning of the first three gospels happened again and again in the course of Jesus’ public activity. To take one example: in the course of the Markan narrative Jesus asked his disciples who people said that he was. They answered that some took him for the Baptizer redivivus, others for the return of Elijah, and others for earlier prophets of Israel. Then Jesus asks the disciples who they themselves think he is, and Peter answers with his messianic confession. But what does the word “messiah” mean? In order not to be misunderstood, Jesus tells the disciples prophetically of his passion and execution. Then “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter [in turn] and said, ‘Get out of my sight,6 Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’” (Mark 8:32-33).

  It is out of the question that this little scene could represent a fictive narrative constructed after Easter to encourage the community to follow Jesus to the cross. Without a historical background, no one would have attached Jesus’ appellation “Satan” to Peter. The historical
location was probably Jesus’ stated intention to go to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Apparently it was clear to all those involved how dangerous that would be, and Peter must have reacted accordingly in the situation. We can easily picture his attempt to talk Jesus out of making the Jerusalem pilgrimage. Probably he argued quite rationally. Perhaps he said, “Not to the capital, not now! Let’s stay in Galilee. We don’t have to go to this particular festival. Let’s hold back a little until the whole fuss has died down.”

  Whatever Peter may have said, Jesus reacts with unbelievable harshness. He addresses the disciple he had once called and who has followed him to this hour as “Satan,” the tempter, the opponent of God, the one who confuses all people. And he does so because Peter is not thinking about what God wants but what matches his own ideas and desires.

  So this profound conflict is about the will of God. That will does not mean always keeping the norms of conduct. It is not timeless. It has its moment. It has its hour, again and again, and that hour can very quickly become the moment of truth. Peter has suddenly entered into this moment of truth, just as Jesus uninterruptedly enters into it. Note: the “will of God” is not that Jesus should be killed in Jerusalem but that Israel everywhere, including in the capital city, should be confronted with the Gospel of the reign of God.

  Once again Jesus acts with ultimate decisiveness. When it is a matter of the will of God, of the reign of God, everything else takes a back seat for him; he permits no compromise, even if it should cost him his life. It is true that he himself is tempted to the most profound depths of his being. The scene on the Mount of Olives shows that. And yet he possesses an inerrant consistency. Jesus went his way in an unconditional determination focused entirely on God. That unconditional attitude is revealed also in a matter that cuts deep into the life of every person: having a life partner.

  Jesus’ Celibacy

  We spoke in the eighth chapter of this book about Jesus’ sign-actions: for example, the creation of the group of the Twelve and the establishment of a new family. We set aside one fundamental sign-action in Jesus’ life, namely, that he did not marry. But it must be discussed in this book, because it is an essential part of “who Jesus was.” Luke 9:57-58 reports the following: “As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” That is: if you want to follow me you may have to live as I live. You will have no nest of your own full of comfort and safety. You will have no building in which you are sheltered and protected. You may even have your own family against you and all your relatives too.

  The Son of Man has nothing on which to rest his head. We can easily think of the spouse who can embrace her husband, in whose love he can breathe, in whose understanding he can rest. Jesus had none of that. Why? Because he wasn’t mature enough? Or out of hostility to the flesh? Or rejection of sexuality? Or fear of women? Or some kind of rigorism or fanaticism? Hatred of the world? The right answer is found in a saying of Jesus transmitted in Matthew 19:12:

  There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.

  This saying, typical of Jesus in its extreme sharpness and almost ironic play of language, needs an explanation of its own. The Greek text speaks of “eunuchs” and “being made eunuchs,” that is, castrati and castration. Jesus lists three possibilities: there are men who lack sexual organs from birth, others who have been castrated against their will, and still others who have castrated themselves. We have to translate this drastic speech in order to be clear about what Jesus means. He is saying that there are people who are incapable of marriage from birth. Others are made incapable of marriage in some way by their environment. But there are also people who remain unmarried freely and by their own decision.

  It sounds more genteel that way, and some modern versions translate it in this polite way.7 But Jesus is not so genteel. His way of speaking is extraordinarily drastic, and all the more so because castration was strictly forbidden in Israel.8 He also speaks in extreme terms in view of the fact that remaining unmarried was despised by his contemporaries. The rabbis appealed to Genesis 1:28 (“increase and multiply”) to say that begetting progeny was a duty ordered by God. “He who does not engage in propagation of the race is as though he sheds blood.”9 And Rabbi Eliezer (ca. 270) said: “Any man who has no wife is no proper man; for it is said, Male and female created He them and called their name Adam.”10 Where, then, does Jesus’ drastic and pointed formulation come from?

  There is a simple explanation.11 We have already seen that Jesus was often attacked in scurrilous ways by his opponents. They called him a “glutton,” a “drunkard,” a “friend of sinners.” Apparently they had also called him a “eunuch” to make his celibacy a matter of ridicule. Jesus takes up this calumny in a way characteristic of him and turns it to positive purpose. Yes indeed, he says, there are castrati who are mutilated from birth, and there are castrati who have been mutilated by other people. But there are also those who are castrated out of pure freedom, by their own free decision—for the sake of the reign of God. Let those accept it who can. What is crucial in our context is that here Jesus associates his own celibacy and the separation of his disciples from their families with the reign of God. He asserts that there is such a thing as a free choice of celibacy for the sake of God’s reign. Grasping that, he says, is not for everybody. But whoever can do so has understood something essential about the reign of God.

  In this way Jesus made an indirect statement about his own celibate state. Despite the drastic nature of the statement, he remains utterly discreet. But whoever wants to hear can do so: his celibacy was not blind fate, and it was certainly not accidental; nor was it a marginal phenomenon in his individual life story. It was connected with his absolute surrender to the reign of God. Celibacy is central to the person of Jesus. From that point of view it is also more profoundly understandable that Jesus can also ask others to abandon their families, breaking off their marital ties or giving up all their links to house, profession, and home.

  Nevertheless, the question remains: Does all that make any sense? What will become of someone who sets aside all natural ties? Are they not essential to human existence? What happens to someone who thinks she or he can do without marriage? These are deep questions, and very serious ones. Their virulence is evident from the way the majority of books about Jesus today are simply silent about Jesus’ celibacy. Has it become an embarrassment? Not long ago a wise man, a believer, whose judgment I esteem most highly, said to me:

  I am having a harder and harder time with Jesus. The older I get and the more I reflect on him, the stranger he seems to me. And yet Jesus is a typical case of a young person who was not permitted to grow older and thus mature. After all, he did not live to be much more than thirty. But that isn’t enough.

  It is only later that we acquire our real experience of life. Only when we grow older do we comprehend the fragility and limitedness of human existence. As we get older we become more tolerant, more generous, more lenient. By then we have learned that life without compromise is not possible. We see things with completely different eyes.

  But Jesus’ uncompromising attitude, his radicality, his harshness, his unbending nature, this “either-or,” this “all or nothing”—all that is typical of a young person who does not yet really know the reality of love and death, guilt and suffering. Jesus—no matter how great and incomparable he is—is still a typical case of a young person, and the older I get the less I know what to do with him.

  At first, when I heard that judgment, I was impressed, but now I consider it simply false, because obviously not everyone grows more generous and tolerant with age. But above all, I know people who live with ultimate certainty and radicality for the Gospel and t
he church and yet are full of kindness and concern.

  This interweaving of certainty and concern we find also in Jesus. We only have to consider his attitude toward the desperate, the lost, the guilty. Here Jesus is not rigorous, unbending, severe. In the picture of the merciful father who runs to meet his lost son, refuses to let him finish speaking his confession of guilt, and immediately restores his rights as a son (Luke 15:11-32)—in that picture Jesus portrayed himself.

  Still, there remains that other picture: of the one who “recklessly” goes his way, attacks Peter and calls him Satan, and summons individuals to follow him without any condition whatsoever. So the question must be raised again: Is this not too much to demand of human beings? Is such discipleship not utterly inhuman? Wouldn’t anyone who lived that way become a spiritual cripple? And where would anyone get the strength for such discipleship? Above all: How did Jesus himself come to terms with such a life? Or did he? We will pursue these questions in the next chapter.

  Chapter 14

  The Fascination of the Reign of God

  Where does anyone get the strength for discipleship such as Jesus demands? Is someone who abandons profession, house, and family not living contrary to every measure of humanity? Can anyone live that way? How did Jesus himself deal with such a life? Or did he? Those were the questions with which we ended the previous chapter.

  The Reign of God as a Lucky Find

  Those who try to answer these questions cannot avoid one of Jesus’ most important parables. If we want to understand it even remotely we have to listen carefully. It is the double parable of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price: