Jesus Christ alone. Apart from Jesus Christ we know not
what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.
—BLAISE PASCAL 1
FOR THREE YEARS, JESUS TRAVELED THE KINGDOM OF HEROD with twelve envoys and an entourage of women and men He had healed. He traveled from place to place with His disciples, walking the roads connecting the cities and villages of Galilee to the north, Samaria in the center, and Judea to the south. The team of twelve was mostly dependent on the hospitality of others,2 although they did have their own treasurer.
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Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
—JESUS 3
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They often met in private homes,4 but one of Jesus’ favorite places to preach was on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus pioneered voice amplification for large crowds by using a boat as His podium, the water as a sounding board, and the sloping hills and curving coves where people would sit as a natural amphitheater.5
Jesus’ beginning message was an oxymoronic mixture of good news and bad:
• “Repent”—the bad news
• “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”—the good news6
Herod’s patch of the planet was about the size of Massachusetts, but it was a micro mosaic of the universe that showcased the whole with green Galilee, rocky Judea, desolate Negev and the desert south of Jericho, the sunken Dead Sea, the lush coastal plains of the Jezreel Valley, the mountains of Tabor and Meron, and the balmy shores of the Mediterranean and Sea of Galilee.
THE TEACHING OF JESUS
It is hugely significant that Jesus left us no writings, no “book” or “words of the founder” to read. This is why bibliolatry does not fit with Christianity. You can’t worship a book when the Founder didn’t give us a book, only Himself and stories from others about Him. Jesus was killed by the Scripture-toting-and-quoting people of His day. A literalist treatment of the Torah (which included oral traditions) is what got Jesus killed.
Yet Jesus is steeped in the Scriptures. In fact, the Second Covenant knows the First Covenant: the Second Testament quotes the First Testament more than 320 times, and that does not include times when biblical writers, searching for the scriptural reference, were reduced to admitting that “somewhere” it reads thus and so.7 Scholars have made the mistake of not identifying Jesus in terms of the Judaism of His day. In fact, it is the thesis of this book that the life of Jesus was the Hebrew story déjà vu. In what some believe to be the earliest Christian creed, Paul affirmed that everything Jesus did was “according to the Scriptures.”8 Or as the German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling said in the eighteenth century, the life of Jesus “had been written long before his birth.”9
A couple of examples will suffice.
First, in the feeding of the five thousand, Jews saw Moses in Jesus and the Exodus Israelites in themselves, stranded in a “deserted place.”10 The story of Jesus feeding barley bread (barley was the poor man’s wheat) to empty bellies not only was the story of Moses and manna redivivus but also echoed the story of the prophet Elisha, who fed a hundred people with twenty loaves of barley.11 It was the one time we know for sure Jesus fed the crowds that followed Him till their bellies were full. In the Beatitudes, Jews saw Moses in Jesus, especially as “He went up on a mountain.”12 Moses climbed a mountain alone to receive the laws of the old covenant, written on tablets of stone and delivered in a cloud that hid God from their eyes. Jesus climbed a mountain with a crowd of followers to reveal the laws of a new covenant, written on the heart and revealing how God could be.14 When Jesus raised the cup of wine at the Last Supper, a quasi-Passover meal, He toasted the “new covenant”: “This cup is the new covenant between God and His people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.”15
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I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre. 13
—THE SONS OF KORAH
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Second, when Jesus argued that healings should be allowed on the Sabbath because circumcisions were permissible,16 He was demonstrating His knowledge of a ruling (halakah) that is found not in the Hebrew Bible but only in rabbinic literature.17 The same for His insistence that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,”18 an almost exact quote from Rabbi Simeon ben Menasia. While these statements can be found in later rabbinic tradition, some scholars believe they reflect early Jewish thinking.
JESUS’ RADICAL APPROACH TO THE SCRIPTURES
There were three differences from the other rabbis in Jesus’ approach to the Scriptures.
First, Jesus taught and acted “as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”19 The rabbis said, “Thus says the Torah” or “Thus says a particular rabbi.” Jesus used neither the traditional rabbinic terminology, “Thus says the Torah,” nor the traditional prophetic formula, “Thus says the Lord.” But He did say repeatedly in His listen-up mannerism, “You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you” and “I tell you the truth.”20 Jesus didn’t hide behind the authorities. Jesus didn’t use the traditional rabbinic terminology but rather fronted almost everything He said with, “I tell you the truth.” He did this twenty-five times in John’s gospel alone. He was not passing on the teaching of some school or teacher but was on His own opening windows to the divine with a fresh reading of the ancient Scriptures. For Jesus, the “Word of God” was not Torah text or inanimate words but a latent force to be activated in the hearts of believers by the Holy Spirit of God and the communication of the Word.
You might even call Jesus “the One Who Came in His Father’s Name.” In answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” the church fathers realized early on that they couldn’t describe Jesus as an entity all by Himself because He was always bringing His Father into the picture. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”21; “I am in the Father and the Father in Me”22; “I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things”23; “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive.”24
The issue of Jesus’ teaching “as one having authority, and not as the scribes”25 is not so much Jesus’ authority to teach as the freshness of His message. In an age where the “old” was sanctified and the “new” was suspect, Jesus’ teaching reframed Judaism in a new metaphor landscape. Metaphor is not just something we use for communicating. Metaphor is how we think and reason, how we continually make sense of our continually changing world. Our actions are congruent with our metaphors. In reframing Judaism in new metaphors, Jesus generated new ways of living, thinking, and feeling.
There is a common phrase: the need of each generation to “wash the face of Jesus.” Staying faithful in the midst of persecution is, in a sense, “washing the face of Jesus.” But there is another sense in which it is used. Each generation and each culture has “dirtied” Jesus’ face by various accommodations and accretions. Succeeding generations need to rediscover His beauty and let it be seen in them by “face washing.” Jesus washed the face of Judaism and then showed that His face was God’s face.
So far from Jesus “hardly ever citing the Holy Scripture,”26 almost everything that came out of His mouth was a voicing of the Scripture. Neither the Talmud nor the Mishnah were in written form in Jesus’ day, but He knew the oral tradition well enough to argue Mishnaic principles with the Pharisees.27 Jesus never directly quoted a sacred text for a reason. The more you marinate your mind and soak your soul in the Scriptures, the more the Word becomes your words—the more its words become part of the warp and woof of your life, including your unique phrasings and idioms.
When Jesus returned to His hometown of Nazareth, the residents struggled to recognize Him.28 He went to the community center on the Sabbath. The men of
Nazareth were probably without a dedicated synagogue, and the Sepphoris synagogue was an hour’s walk away, which was too far to walk on the Sabbath. The men of His hometown handed Jesus the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, not just to read from it but to teach it.29 After reading the passage He had chosen, He looked at them and began His teaching with an announcement: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”30
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I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.
—JESUS 32
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Jesus’ messianic reading of Isaiah was so shocking,31 so presuming, that Jesus’ own family took offense at Him. His wild prophetic claims had brought so much shame to the family that they schemed to conduct an honor killing to protect the family dignity. Jesus’ family and hometown friends plotted to stone Him—to “throw Him down over the cliff.”33 To profess to be the Messiah was a crime to die for. But then, look at what He taught—not the Law, but God.
Other people marveled at Jesus’ teaching, but not His kin. “Even His brothers did not believe in Him.”34 His mother was at the cross by herself, with none of her other sons (Jesus’ brothers) by her side. He shamed a family with a proud pedigree . . . and He was buried by a non-family member, not by His brothers.35
Though they were not in Jerusalem for the crucifixion, at least some of Jesus’ brothers were present at the ascension.36 Two of Jesus’ brothers, James and Jude, the ones whose writings are in the Second Testament, saw the resurrected Christ.
JESUS EMBODIED THE TORAH
Second, Jesus didn’t trash the Torah. He embodied it. Yet He also didn’t interpret the Scriptures the way the leading Jewish scholars of the day did. Jesus knew the oral law but did not demand rigid adherence to it from His disciples and derided it at times as “rules taught by men.”37 Jesus honored those who “sit in Moses’ seat”38—but not what they did, only what they said. Much of Jesus’ moral teachings were not new. The values and norms He upheld were the best Judaism had to offer.
The adulterous woman was still guilty of adultery in Jesus’ eyes. Jesus’ life principles were strongly opposed to adultery. But there was something that trumped principles, and that was relationship. A paraphrase of the exchange between Jesus and the adulterous woman might go like this: “You are lovely. Does no one love you?” She answers, “I don’t know.” Jesus says, “I do. Let Me be enough.” She says to herself, Can He be? Can He really, truly be . . . enough? He is. When Jesus is in first place, all of life falls into place and you no longer feel misplaced.39
Sin is mentioned more than thirteen hundred times in the Bible. Sin is not something Jesus took lightly. But Jesus loved in a way that didn’t compromise the truth yet expressed God’s mercy, which is why Jesus was infamous for hanging with sinners and for loving them. He didn’t recoil in horror at their sight or plight. He loved them. But He also required those who followed Him to leave their past behind. When we follow Jesus, we will need to leave something behind. Each time we hear Jesus say, “And will you, too, leave?” what if we responded, “What do we need to leave behind to follow Jesus better?”
Jesus called both the sinners and the righteous to repent, not by doing ritual penances, like fasting and mourning and praying, all of which were good things, but by living lives that forwarded God’s mission in the world. For Jesus, it is not enough to repent and confess Him as the Christ, the Son of God.40 He taught His disciples to incarnate the divine soul of love that motivates the ongoing forgiveness that faith provides. Without this love, there is no genuine faith. Jesus, Himself, is love. Love is the nature of the divine life that Jesus so frequently talked about and lived by. (He used the words “eternal life” and “life” to describe it.) After His resurrection, that life would penetrate His followers and become the source of their living. We have no power to love others without such life. We are fooling ourselves if we think we do. Hence Paul’s words, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”41
To follow the Law makes you observant. To follow Jesus makes you a servant—one who is observant not just about fulfilling legal codes but who is observant about loving God and neighbor. They are not the same. We worship God. We don’t worship neighbors. But when people asked Jesus how to find God, He answered their question in stories that said in one way or other that if you find a neighbor to love, you will find God.
“Who is my neighbor?” asked the rich young ruler.42 The answer in Jesus’ day was, in essence, “fellow Jews and those who worship YHWH.” Jesus gave a different answer.
Jesus does not propositionalize love, give norms and precepts for what love is, give applications for its use, or spell out in detail what love looks like in every situation—because love requires imagination and creativity and customization. What is Jesus looking for in response to His teaching? Not penitential acts or a Jesus worldview but a Jesus life and a daily living of love.
One scholar has computed that the words of Jesus compose 20 percent of the Second Testament. That’s the equivalent of twelve sermons, a total of thirty minutes long.43 What makes Jesus unique is more than His words or teachings. It’s what the last Adam did: He died on the cross to save us from our sins; He rose from the dead; He ascended into heaven; He descended in the Spirit to impart His divine life to all who receive Him, thereby creating His body on the earth; and He’s coming back physically. The person of Jesus, not the red letters, is the crux of the story. The righteousness of God is revealed in red on the cross, not in red ink on the page. Even Jesus’ vision of peace harks back to the best of Judaism. Chief rabbi of England Jonathan Sacks is right about this: “The prophets of Israel were the first people in history to see peace as an ideal. The Hebrew Scriptures stand as ’the world’s first literature of peace.’”44
Jesus is God’s self-revelation in its fullest form. Not only did He teach, but He was the teaching. The Torah was wisdom for the Jews, but now Wisdom is embodied in Christ. He is the real Torah—a living person. He is the real wisdom—the Logos of God, the living utterance of deity.
JESUS PREACHED THE KINGDOM OF GOD
In the modern era, the attempt was made to rationalize Christianity into a system of belief and worldview—or to turn Christianity into a system of morality with Jesus of Nazareth no more than its original teacher and model of right behavior. The story of Jesus makes both systems indefensible. It is true: Jesus’ theological fights with the Pharisees focus most often on issues of purity and holiness. But Jesus taught that the kingdom was not a list of legalisms or a menu of moralisms. Rather, He taught, “the kingdom of God is within you.”45 In essence, the kingdom isn’t a code of ethics. Jesus is the embodiment of the kingdom. And after His resurrection, He would indwell His followers.
There is a dismissive dictum that Jesus preached the kingdom of God while the church preached Jesus. What completes the loop without damaging it is the oft-forgotten fact that you can’t have a kingdom without a King, and Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Indeed, the reference is not only to the kingdom of God but also to the kingdom of Christ.46 As we argued in Jesus Manifesto, Jesus is the kingdom incarnate. In fact, the most widely quoted scriptural text in the Second Testament is Psalm 110:1, which points to the cosmic consummation of the salvation story and the restoration of the original temple: “The Lord said to my Lord, ’Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.’”47
This was the mission of His entire ministry. But for Jesus’ peers, a life of holiness, or kingdom living, involved round-the-clock vigilance in keeping oneself separate and uncontaminated from any uncleanliness. And the “unclean” in Jesus’ mind was another word for “in need,” which came with a call, not to stay away but to come close. It was in the nature of Jesus to explode boundaries between cultures, sexes, races, divine and human, pure and impure—to exalt the humble and humble the exalted.
Jesus invested most in the least “clean” people of His day. Any G
entile’s house was ritually unclean. If a Jew entered the house of a Gentile, cleansing rituals (including a bath) were necessary before a pious Jew could worship God again. Tax collectors were also unclean: “If a tax collector goes inside a house, everything in the house becomes ritually unclean and needs to go through purification rituals.”48
Jesus could not abide such standoffish, holier-than-thou attitudes, and He flaunted a reckless freedom about hanging out in “unclean” circles. Jesus was invited to a dinner party where members of the order of Pharisees were present. One of them remarked in a smug, self-satisfied fashion, “How pleasant it will be to dine in the kingdom to come.” Jesus responded, “Don’t be so sure! There’ll be surprises.”49 True holiness was an exercise not in hubris but in humility.
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The central miracle of the gospel is not the raising of Lazarus or the multiplication of the loaves or all the dramatic healing stories taken together. The miracle of the gospel is Christ, risen and glorified, who this very moment tracks us, pursues us, abides in us, and offers Himself to us as companion for the journey!
—BRENNAN MANNING 51
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In Jesus’ day, shepherds had a terrible reputation as unclean and shameful. In rabbinic literature, shepherding was often listed as one of the despised occupations. So for shepherds to be the first to hear the “good news” and the first to visit the Messiah was truly for the “last to be first.” The humble were also exalted when Jesus presented positive images of the “least” and “last,” including Himself as the Good Shepherd.50
Jesus took the holiness code of His day and turned it, like a sock, inside out until it was back in its intended form. After all, for ancient Israel at its best, holiness did not mean the achievement of kept laws; it meant the keeping of a covenantal relationship with God. For Jesus, what was inside was more important than what was outside. A pure heart didn’t always mean keeping your hands pure. Sometimes it involved putting your hands in the dirt and grime of humanity. Jesus physically touched the lepers He healed.52 Purity codes and principles of cleanliness were trumped by relationships and people in need. How many of us are like the one who, graced with the very presence of Jesus reclining at his table, could only see dirty hands?53
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