Jesus of Nazareth

by Gerhard Lohfink

  Now all of a sudden a book that is supposed to be about Jesus is talking about the early Christian communities! But the two are inseparable. In the physicality of the church, in its firm insistence that redemption must begin here and now, in its holding fast to visible community, what Jesus began with his disciples is continuing. We cannot avoid it: anyone who really wants to talk about Jesus must always have the church in view as well, because we have Jesus through the church or not at all.

  That is why it was so tiresome when older scholarly commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels continually asked whether in this or that case we were dealing with authentic sayings of Jesus or not. Obviously Jesus’ response to Peter in Mark 10:28-30 also distills the experiences of early Christian communities, and especially the early itinerant missionaries—the persecutions they suffered as well as the experience of a new brotherhood and sisterhood that far surpassed all physical relationships. But all that had begun with Jesus—with the fire he had kindled.

  Overflowing Abundance

  In the double parable of the treasure and the pearl the two actors make a hundredfold or even thousandfold gain. The pearl is incomparably beautiful and the treasure in the field will fundamentally change the life of the day laborer. The reign of God appears in an astonishing and positively overflowing abundance.

  But that is not only the case in Matthew 13:44-46. The superfluity of the reign of God is found in many other gospel texts. Jesus was continually describing it, especially in his parables. We are moved to suspect that he described this abundance so often because he himself had experienced the reign of God that way: as brilliance, beauty, overflowing riches.

  The land that was sown in the parable of the great harvest of wheat, despite all the opponents that threatened the seed from beginning to end, produced a mighty yield: one grain brought forth thirty, sixty, or a hundred more grains (Mark 4:8). From the tiny mustard seed, no bigger than the head of a pin, grows a great shrub under whose branches the birds of the air build their nests (Mark 4:30-32). On the shores of Lake Genesareth mustard bushes could achieve a height of two to three meters. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels the mustard bush even becomes a world tree (Matt 13:32 // Luke 13:19). In the parable of the leaven (Matt 13:33 // Luke 13:20-21) the small amount of leaven is contrasted with a huge amount of flour (three measures [Greek sata] = fifty kilograms). What is interesting is that Jesus pays no attention to the negative connotations of leaven or yeast in Israel. He illustrates the coming of the reign of God by describing how the trivial amount of yeast (or sourdough) leavens the whole quantity of flour.

  A man who has wasted his inheritance and tossed away his rights as a son remembers that in his father’s house even the day laborers “have bread enough and to spare” (Luke 15:17). He returns home and is immediately taken back into the family by his father, who runs to meet him. The lost son receives a signet ring and a new robe; the fatted calf is slaughtered, and a feast of joy begins (Luke 15:11-32). A king forgives a failed debtor who has wrecked his whole life by running up a debt of ten thousand talents (or a hundred million denarii). A whole day’s work was required to earn even one denarius, so the king forgives a sum corresponding to the value of a hundred million working days (Matt 18:23-35). A property owner treats the day laborers he has hired at the very last hour of the afternoon to work in the harvest in his vineyard as though they had worked all day: when evening comes he pays them a full day’s wage (Matt 20:1-16).

  Wherever we look we see that the gospels speak of overflowing abundance, extravagance, and superfluity. And it is not only the parables that do this. In Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman breaks an alabaster jar of the costliest nard oil and pours it on Jesus’ hair; some of those present are upset and speak of meaningless waste, but Jesus defends the woman (Mark 14:3-9). Peter and his companions, after having worked all night without success, put out to sea again at Jesus’ command and soon draw to the shore nets filled to the point of breaking with fish (Luke 5:1-11).

  The disciples of John the Baptizer and the Pharisees fasted regularly as a sign of penance and humility before God; the Pharisees went so far as to fast two days a week. Jesus was once asked why his disciples did not keep fast days, and he answered, “The [sons of the wedding banquet hall] cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mark 2:19). The “sons of the wedding banquet hall” are the friends of the bridegroom and all the guests at the wedding. So Jesus sees the time that has arrived with his preaching of the reign of God as a wedding, God’s wedding with God’s people—and a wedding means abundance, generosity, and superfluity. It is impossible to fast during the days of the wedding feast!

  This motif of superfluity that runs throughout the gospels culminates in the stories of the wedding at Cana and the so-called miraculous multiplication of the loaves. With regard to these two narratives I follow the principle I laid down in the first chapter: the historical reality cannot be grasped independently of the interpretation. Whatever lies behind these two narratives, historically speaking, they reflect, concentrate, and interpret the extravagant fullness of the reign of God as Jesus proclaimed and lived it.10

  A Wedding

  At the very beginning of Jesus’ public activity the Fourth Evangelist tells of an event that culminates in an extravagant abundance (John 2:1-12). It takes place in Cana at a wedding that threatens to end pathetically because the wine has run out. The surplus associated with Jesus’ coming is shown here in a wine miracle he performs. The narrative carefully develops the fact that he gives the wedding company a huge quantity of wine, for it is not the clay jars ordinarily used to hold wine that are filled with water at Jesus’ command, but six stone jars meant for ritual purification, therefore hewn from stone and unusually large. Each of these vessels, according to the evangelist, contained two to three metretes, or about a hundred liters. Thus in total about five to seven hundred liters of water are changed into wine. But the narrator not only states these detailed amounts; he adds very deliberately, “They filled [the jars] up to the brim.”

  Such details reveal the narrator’s intention, which is to say that Jesus’ gift is lavish. Here there is no thought of restriction, measuring, limiting, hoarding. The huge stone jars are brimful. And yet it is not enough that the abundance of wine be made evident. The narrative is just as explicit about the quality of the wine. It even introduces a separate person, the architriklinos—the one who supervises meals, and especially the mixing and distribution of wine. The architriklinos does not know where the wine in the stone jars has come from, and he is extremely offended that he is just now being told about it. The “wine rule” he pronounces (good wine is offered at the beginning and not at the end of the feast!) serves within the narrative to say modestly that the wine now being poured is a good, indeed, an outstanding vintage of the finest quality.

  Thus the fullness that comes with Jesus does not remain something supersensory, internal, purely spiritual, transcendent; it is visible and tangible; it can be tasted and enjoyed.

  A Banquet

  Another story in the gospels speaks, similarly to the one about the wedding at Cana, of the abundance of the new thing that begins with Jesus. It is the story of the miraculous multiplication of loaves, handed down to us in the gospels no fewer than six times.11 Let us follow the story on the basis of Mark 6:30-44.

  The superscription used in almost all versions of the New Testament nowadays, “feeding of the five thousand,” is not especially apt. “Feeding” is reminiscent of school lunches and charitable meals, not particularly of a feast, a banquet, a groaning board. But Mark obviously wants to tell us about a banquet, since according to Mark 6:39 Jesus tells the disciples to see to it that all those present recline, that is, take their places for a banquet.

  People in antiquity had two different styles for eating a meal. The ordinary, everyday meal was taken sitting down, just as it is today. But when they celebrated a feast or invited guests to a festal dinner they reclined at table, lying on bolsters
and pillows, leaning on the left arm and eating with the right. So when the disciples are to invite the people to recline on the ground it means that now a dinner is about to be served at which people will take their time; it will be a feast at which all may eat their fill. It is true that the bolsters and pillows are lacking, but they are replaced by rich, green grass, which Mark mentions specifically (6:39).

  That this is actually a festive banquet is shown by the end of the story, where we are told specifically that the disciples collected the pieces that were left over. That too was a fixed ritual at a Jewish banquet: after the main course the banquet hall was “cleansed” by collecting all the fallen crumbs of bread that were larger than an olive. In Mark 6:43 the disciples collect twelve basketfuls of the remnants of the meal.

  Why is there so much left over? Not because the participants in the meal did not enjoy the food or had not eaten their fill, but because it was a banquet. There are always leftovers from a banquet, as every cook knows. For a festal meal there is always more cooked, fried, and baked than is really necessary, because celebrating includes extravagance and a festal meal provides more than just enough. There can be no stinginess with such a meal; we would rather offer too much than too little. When at the end of the story of the multiplication of the loaves there are twelve baskets left over, the intention is to say that Jesus was a good host; he had presented a glorious meal and made a feast possible.

  Why did the early Christian communities tell such stories? What did Jesus have to do with festal banquets, and what did groaning boards have to do with the reign of God? According to biblical theology, a great deal! In Isaiah 25:6-8 we read:

  On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.

  This text from Isaiah presupposes that God has entered into his eschatological royal reign. This is clear from the connection to what has gone before in Isaiah 24:21-23. God’s enthronement is followed by a banquet spread on Mount Zion. At this feast Israel shines with new glory. All the nations are invited to this enthronement meal, and during it the shroud of sorrow and suffering that lies over the nations is destroyed. Eschatological joy shines throughout the whole world and it will never come to an end.

  For the prophets, what these images announce is still in the future. Jesus, by contrast, proclaims that the future has arrived. It is already present. The joy of the eschaton has begun. God’s banquet with his people Israel, which is to expand into a banquet for all nations, is now beginning. Jesus is so sure that the reign of God will now become reality in the form of an abundant banquet that he calls his poor and hungry hearers blessed:

  Blessed are you who are poor,

  for yours is the kingdom of God!

  Blessed are you who are hungry now,

  for you will be filled!

  Blessed are you who weep now,

  for you will laugh! (Luke 6:20-21)

  As assurance of a reign of God that will come someday, some time, these statements in the Sermon on the Plain would have been utterly cynical, even a ridiculing of the audience. One may only promise the hungry that they will be filled if one expects that fulfillment not in the great beyond or in an uncertain future but in one that is already beginning. Jesus is altogether certain: that future is already present as an overflowing gift of God. He is already experiencing that future as a fascinating now.

  A Basic Law of Salvation History

  All the gospel texts quoted here that speak of abundance reveal a scarlet thread, a basic law of salvation history. Joseph Ratzinger, in an excursus, “Christian Structures,” in his Introduction to Christianity, called it the “law of excess or superfluity.”12 It runs throughout the whole of that history but it finds its clearest expression in Jesus. He himself, Ratzinger says, “He is the righteousness of God, which goes far beyond what need be, which does not calculate, which really overflows; the ‘notwithstanding’ of his greater love, in which he infinitely surpasses the failing efforts of man.”13 This basic law of salvation history is put into words most fully in the parables of the lost son (Luke 15:11-32) and of the workers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16). But it also echoes in the sayings traditions in the gospels, as when Luke 6:38 says, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” It is an image from the market. The seller has filled a measure to the brim with wheat, then pressed the grains down with her hand so that there will be no empty space, shaken the whole so that the wheat is truly settled, and in the end poured a little mound on the top so that the measure overflows; finally, she pours an abundant measure of wheat into the skirt the buyer is holding open.

  Superfluity, wealth, and extravagant luxury are thus the signs of the day of salvation—not skimpiness, meagerness, wretchedness, and need. Why? Because God’s very self is overflowing life and because God longs to give a share in that life. God’s love is without measure; God does not give to human beings according to the measure of their own good behavior or service.

  Therefore the principle of superfluity is already revealed in creation. Biologists have long since observed that quantitative and qualitative extravagance plays a striking role in nature, and that evolution cannot be fully explained by a calculus of usefulness. Nature is “luxuriant.” What opulence is shown just in butterflies and flowers! What an abundance of seeds is produced in order to bring forth just one living thing! What an expanse of solar systems, Milky Ways, and spiral nebulae! A whole universe is squandered just to beget more and more extravagant life forms on one tiny planet and make a place for the human spirit.14

  Perhaps one might continue—in shock and almost stuttering—what an extravagance of human beings, of whole peoples, until at last God found the one people to whom he could attach the abundance of his grace in the world. In the book of Isaiah God forthrightly speaks of this squandering of nations for the sake of his own people: “I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Saba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life” (Isa 43:3-4). But it also belongs to this side of divine extravagance that God—in the language of the New Testament—has given the one, the best and most precious of all human beings, has squandered him for the sake of the world. In light of the death of Jesus it is thus also clear that the extravagant abundance of salvation cannot be understood as a Neverland or utopia for consumers.

  Overflowing grace can only reach human beings if they allow themselves to be taken into the service of God’s plan. The glory that illumines Israel through Jesus is intended not to create a better life for the elect but, by way of Israel, to bring the glory of God into the world.

  Finally, while the disciples were promised a hundred brothers and sisters, a hundred houses and fields, it is only “with persecutions.” And the glory of Jesus that the miracle at Cana tells about will be made more explicit in the further course of the Fourth Gospel as a glory that finds its true shape only in Jesus’ “hour,” that is, in his suffering.15 But in any case we may say that Jesus does not enter into that suffering for its own sake, which would be masochism. He enters into that suffering for the sake of the reign of God, which he must also proclaim in Jerusalem and from which he does not subtract an iota. He knows that the reign of God comes “with persecutions,” but that does not deprive it of its brilliance and its fascinating abundance.

  Chapter 15

  Decision in Jerusalem

  Jesus’ whole existence was for the sake of the reign of God. That reign is not something vague and nebulous. Jesus was working toward the eschatological restoration of Is
rael, so that the reign of God might have a place. To create with and in the midst of Israel a space for the reign of God—that is what is at stake also in three sign-actions at the end of Jesus’ life. The three are related; not only that, they are internally interconnected to the utmost extent: Jesus’ entry into the capital city on a young donkey, his action in the temple, and the sign-action with bread and wine during his last meal. It is no accident that these particular three symbolic actions collide at the end of his life.

  Jesus’ Entry into the Capital

  The oldest1 account of Jesus’ entry into the capital city is found in Mark 11:1-11. In this narrative a good deal of space is accorded to finding the donkey on which he is to ride: it takes up no less than two-thirds of the text. Apparently for Mark (or for the tradition available to him), the animal on whose back Jesus enters into the city is of great importance. The discovery episode is meant to emphasize that it was a young donkey and that Jesus had planned this kind of entry. That entry is then described rather briefly:

  Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. (Mark 11:7-11)