Jesus
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All of this explains, in large part, why Jesus was so vehemently opposed and frequently run out of town. He loved and embraced “sinners” while declaring that the “righteous” were strangers to the kingdom of God. He ate with the “wrong people” and dismissed the “right people.”
BETWEEN THE “ALREADY” AND THE “NOT YET”
Jesus taught that the kingdom had now arrived, and He was the embodiment of it. But we live between the “already” and the “not yet.” With Jesus, the future has broken through and is “already” here. But the fullness of fruition is “not yet,” requiring our participation for the “already” and the “not yet” to become one. Jesus gave a foretaste of this paradoxical already-but-not-yet kingdom in His healing ministry, an earnest of the eschaton, where there will be no more suffering, no more alienation, no more tears. It was said of the Messiah that He would do certain healing functions: giving sight to the blind, cleansing the lepers, and giving other signs of the kingdom breaking in.
Jesus spent His whole ministry doing three things: preaching, teaching, and healing. Of the three, we tend to forget His healing ministry. But in many ways, it was Jesus’ most important ministry. All three of His ministries were ministries of signs. He taught in signs. He preached in signs. He healed in signs.
There is one story of the feeding of the five thousand. There is another story of the feeding of the four thousand.54 Some scholars say they’re the same story told differently. We don’t think so. When Jesus was talking to His disciples later about the bread of life, He said, “When I fed the five thousand, how many baskets were there left over?” And they said, “Twelve.” Jesus continued, “And when I fed the four thousand, how many were there then?” In other words, Jesus was saying, “How many times do I have to do this before you get it or are convinced?”55
Jesus healed at least thirty-five people—at least that’s the total number of healed people mentioned in all four Gospels. He probably healed hundreds, if not thousands, more. When talking about Jesus the Healer, it is important to distinguish between healing and curing. Jesus never met a disease He couldn’t cure. But He didn’t promise to cure every disease. Every person Jesus cured eventually died. But, as we mentioned in chapter 10, God always heals. Sometimes death is the final healing act.
JESUS’ TEACHING WAS AUDIENCE-SPECIFIC
Third, the greatest communicator who ever lived had a nontraditional communication style. Jesus did not speak as other speakers or as an exegete. He did not present Himself as a footnote to other rabbis (such as, “Rabbi Gamaliel says on the authority of Rabbi Hillel”). He did not engage in “Midrash Pesher” on Hebrew Scripture.56 What He is, however, is a storyteller, metaphor maker, and sage57 who is always ready with a proverb, aphorism, riddle, and other one-liners. Whether the Sermon on the Mount was one cohesive unit delivered on one specific occasion or a Matthew miscellany of Jesus’ favorite sayings, the whole “sermon” can be found mostly in Psalms and Proverbs. Whatever form of communication Jesus used, He was audience-specific, highly participatory, and scripturally tethered.
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What do you seek?
—JESUS, TO HIS DISCIPLES 58
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Jesus began with His listeners. For example, Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for a drink. Then He gave her the metaphor of Living Water. Jesus resurrected Lazarus, having announced, “I am the resurrection and the life.”59 More than half the time, Jesus derived His preaching from the people more than He delivered a message. The people set the agenda. Ralph Lewis calls it “Jesus’ start-from-scratch, listener-centered attitude.”60
Jesus didn’t preach to a “point,” the thing teachers strive to get to eventually. The crux of what He was really saying was seldom a point, sometimes a conceptual truth, but most often a metaphor or story. Jesus “made known” God. Or put differently, Jesus is God made known.61 The word translated “made known” (exēgeomai) traditionally means “to draw out in narrative.”62 Jesus reasoned with people, not through argument and points but through symbols, signs, stories, and sometimes simply silence.63
Jesus taught with more than words. He used meals and feasts, walks and signs, questions and conversations as favored ways of enacting biblical stories in a new guise. Jesus is always ready to parry a criticism with a biblical story and reference. For example, when His disciples were criticized for plucking some grain on the Sabbath to eat, He countered with the story of David and company fleeing from Saul and eating the bread that only priests were allowed to eat.64
Jesus often asked questions. Jesus was second to none, not even the master questioner Socrates, in asking great questions:
“Who do people say I am?”65
“What are you doing more than others?”66
“What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”67
“Why are you thinking these things?”68
“What do you think?”69
“What is written in the Law?”70
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Jesus does not have Q and A sessions. He has Q and Q sessions.
—TOM HUGHES 74
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One biblical scholar has argued that if you were to meet Jesus on the street, He would be more likely to ask you something than tell you anything.71 Another scholar notes that 153 of Jesus’ questions have been preserved.72 In fact Jesus was more likely to answer a question with a question than an answer.73
But the Gospels are all about affirmations, not queries or even answers to questions. And all the affirmations orbit around one central question: “Who do you say that I am?”75 The number one affirmation of the entire Bible is this: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the Messiah.
TEACHING IN PARABLES
There are two things to keep in mind in any exploration of Jesus’ unconventional teaching and preaching methods. First, Jesus was a Jewish preacher, not a Greek preacher. He majored in images and stories, not in ideas, syllogisms, and propositions. But Jesus chose to communicate biculturally: He had to speak to Greco-Roman linear thinkers and to Hebrew nonlinear thinkers. Jesus, Paul, and Peter showed us how to do crosscultural communication. Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney once said that preachers learn to preach in Greek when we ought to learn to preach in Hebrew. By that he meant that Greek is the language of words while Hebrew is the language of images.
Second, a more holistic way of knowing God had always been a hallmark of Hebrew piety. For example, every item of Passover food symbolizes a key feature of the Hebrew story so that to eat one meal is to experience the original Passover once again. In the Sukkoth (which can mean “circle dance” as well as “hut”) festival, there is the elevation of one simple fact of life: everything a person does should be connected to God.
But Jesus took this even further until, you might say, every one of His parables is a miracle, every miracle a parable. Jesus’ “parables” were designed to give birth to the very thing they were talking about: not matter-of-fact truths, but life-and-death truths.76 There are about twenty miracles recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As discussed in chapter 10, John reported seven miracles, each one a “sign” that Jesus is the Messiah and a parable about what His messiahship birthed and put to rest:
1. Jesus turned water into wine—joylessness is dead.
2. Jesus healed a boy long-distance—distance is dead.
3. Jesus healed the lame on the Sabbath—time is dead.
4. Jesus fed the five thousand—hunger and thirst are dead (Jesus is the Bread).
5. Jesus walked on water—laws of nature are dead.
6. Jesus healed the blind—disease is dead.
7. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead—death is dead.
In Jesus’ public ministry, Mark wrote, Jesus never taught without using parables.77 Jesus Himself said that parables fulfill a prophecy: “I will open My mouth in para
bles; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world.”78 What did Jesus use to lift the veil of the secrets of the universe? Not philosophical reasoning. Not mathematical formulas. But parabolic storytelling.
In fact, Jesus’ parables are part of the secret of the kingdom. Jesus refused to explain His messages. They contained hidden meaning, partly to keep the authorities at bay, partly as a means of winnowing out those who sought the Presence from those who sought presents.79 Those who got it found new insight and intimacy with Christ. Those who didn’t get it found resentful alienation and incomprehension.
Jesus’ parables refused to yield up ready meanings to the hearer, even the disciples. Jesus spoke in public through parables. But Jesus conducted private tutorials with the disciples: “when he was alone with his disciples, he explained everything to them.”80 During these seminars, Jesus often asked questions to judge whether or not His followers understood. And vice versa: the disciples asked Him questions and asked for further clarification.81
In the Jewish language chain, Hebrew is the language of the Torah and thus “the language of holiness”; Aramaic is the language of the Talmud and thus “the language of explanation.” Torah and Talmudic study fostered an inquisitive mind-set. The basic unit of discussion for the Talmud would come to be known as the sugya, which focuses not on consensus around and submission to definitive doctrines and laws but on an ongoing conversation (which often sounds like an argument) that is built around questioning the Scriptures and finding new ways to look at stories and practices.
Professor Marc Bregman, distinguished professor of Judaic studies at the University of North Carolina–Greensboro, gave the best description of sugya when he wrote that for a really accomplished Talmud scholar,
a sugya is like a whole symphony and the scholar is like the conductor or even composer. It is said that Mozart and others like him could conceive of a whole symphony, not in the time it takes to play it, but in an instant—the whole complex piece of music completely present in their minds. That’s the way the master scholars do Talmud. A sugya is not a linear discussion but a whole organic mechanism that they see working and then analyze where something unusual is going on—like master mechanics.82
You can see what would come to be the sugya at work with Jesus’ tutorials with His disciples, although for Jesus, too, many of the questions of the Pharisees (there was one in rabbinic Judaism about how many stars must be visible before reciting the evening prayer) majored in minors and minored in majors. When the disciples wanted to know the difference between “clean” and “unclean,” Jesus answered them, but He also pushed back on their dullheadedness and dimwittedness.83 Even with all this back-and-forth, there was a lot the disciples still didn’t get. “Have you understood all these things?” Jesus asked. “Yes, Lord,” they replied, not always with utmost honesty.84 When Jesus’ disciples asked Him why He taught using such a teaching method, He said, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given.”86
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Have you ever wondered why some of Jesus’s stories seem to complicate or even obscure truth rather than clarify or simplify it? Perhaps it’s that God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, is not content to speak simply to the rational intelligence, but informs us instead through imagination, intuition, wonder, and epiphany.
—LUCI SHAW 85
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A parable was not a new communications device with Jesus. Plato and Aristotle had used parables as well. Historians have identified some two thousand parables from ancient Jewish sources, the most famous being Nathan’s parable of the lamb before King David. Some scholars have even claimed to have found more than thirty-five parables from first-century rabbis.87
But no one used parables with more mastery than Jesus. And no one but Jesus used them as the defining mark of His teaching technique. Jesus told between thirty-one and sixty-five parables (depending on who’s counting). Scholars can’t agree whether some are parables or not.88 But most will admit that at least one-third of Jesus’ teachings are parables. They were His brand signature.
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By blood and origin, . . . I am Albanian. My citizenship is Indian. I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the whole world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the heart of Jesus.
—MOTHER TERESA 89
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The parables of Jesus are not heroic legends or tales of the heavens. They are ordinary stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things, like fishing, farming, tending sheep, and gardening.
This appeal to the common and the use of the common touch is hard for us to appreciate today. One of the most cutting slurs to sling at an academic is, “How common!” The worst thing that can be said of a scholar is that he or she “plays to the galleries.” A teacher deemed common is often considered to be inferior and weak. To “play to the galleries” is to use nonlinear methods of persuasion or suprarational attempts to “move” one’s audience. We pat ourselves and others on the back for preaching that is standoffishly alien.
In contrast, Jesus prized the common, especially the common people and the common touch. Jesus respected the burble of everyday life, the bauble of everyday things. The Master’s touch was the common touch. Jesus’ conviction that God has “hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children”90 was also symbolized in the rending of the curtain. God is no longer guarding the entrance to the garden, symbolized by the cherubim on the ark of the covenant (Tree of Life), for which the entire temple was built in the first place. And the Holy of Holies is no longer reserved for the elite but is available to all. Indeed, Jesus’ experience of intimacy with His Father, as evidenced in the use of the familiar kinship term “Abba,” is reproducible and available to all, even the “least of these.”91
In giving us the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus built on the kaddish, or the “holy prayer.” It was not unusual that Jesus called God “Father.” Jews often did that in prayer. What is unusual is twofold: first, the oxymoronic “Our Father who art in heaven.” You can’t get more horizontal, more intimate, more immanent than “Our Father.” But as soon as those “near” words are out of our mouths, we are whiplashed in the “far” opposite direction: “ . . . who art in heaven.” Never forget God is transcendent, vertical, wholly other, above and beyond what we can even comprehend.92
Second, Jesus’ “Abba” appellation is based on an intimate relationship with God as Father and with the understanding that we are the sons and daughters of this Father God. In the First Testament, the primary metaphor for God is “King.” This image wins out over all other contenders, hands down. Only rarely is God addressed as “Father.”93 In the preaching and teaching of Jesus, however, God as Father replaces God as King, which almost drops out entirely.94 At the heart of Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom was a divine Father, not a divine despot—a loving and trustworthy “Abba,” or “Daddy.” Before Jesus, “Father” was a term of respect when used of God. After Jesus, “Father” was a term of relationship and intimacy when used of God.
In medieval German villages, a person was designated to go around the houses to awaken people to come to the synagogue service in the morning. This person was called the beadle, or more popularly, the knocker-up. The beadle would first give one knock, then two, then another one, standing for the letters alef and bet, one and two, and hence forming the word abba (“father”), as if to say: “Rise up to serve Father.” Every prayer is a knocker-up to awaken us to a deeper relationship with God.
JESUS BRINGS LIFE AND JOY
Any study of the concepts of delight and joy in the Bible gives an overall picture of rejoicing and laughter in the here and now, as well as in heaven beyond. Indeed, the reuniting of God’s people wit
h Him is likened to a bride and groom, joyfully celebrating their wedding.95
Jesus didn’t perform a wedding, but He did turn water into wine. Jesus wouldn’t turn stones into bread for Himself, but He did turn water into wine for friends. In fact, it is not surprising that the first miracle of the Jesus who said, “I am the vine,” should be turning water into wine. For that’s what every true vine does—turn water into wine.
It did not happen by chance that the miracle Jesus chose to launch His ministry was not to raise the dead or heal the sick but to bring life to a party.96 The “sign” of wine at the wedding of Cana was a sign of Jesus’ entire ministry—a ministry of pouring out, where He Himself would become body and blood, bread and wine for a hungry humanity, and there would never be a short supply—only an overabundance. In addition, the first plague in Exodus was water turned to blood. And the last plague was the death of the firstborn. Jesus’ first sign in John was water turned to wine, and His climactic preresurrection sign—the raising of Lazarus from the dead—was His last sign in John.97
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He who made wine that day at the marriage feast . . . does this every year in vines. . . . But we do not wonder at the latter because it happens every year: it has lost its marvelousness by its constant reoccurrence.
—AUGUSTINE 98
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