Anyone who wants to know what the kingdom of God and the coming of this kingdom mean in Jesus’ preaching must read and meditate on the parables. There he will learn what the kingdom is all about. The kingdom of God comes by coming to individuals, making entrance into their souls, and being grasped by them.

This reading, as well as countless others, addresses Jesus’ Kingdom inaugurating mission in individualist Western eyes in light of the Christian church, thus failing to incorporate Jesus’ Jewishness; that he was, as we saw above, offering covenant renewal to God’s chosen people, Israel. In discussing whether Jesus came to start a church, Gerhard Lohfink rightly corrects Harnack’s individualist presupposition, that “[a]fter a history of more than a millennium, the people of God could neither be founded nor established, but only gathered and restored.” (Jesus and Community, 71)

This was done, of course, by Jesus’ reaching out to individuals for the purpose of the larger community. Interestingly, however, Jesus did not offer this covenant renewal on his own, but gathered the Kingdom community from within a discipleship community. The Gospels assert that Jesus called disciples – a subversive, upside-down practice of its own – which included those from completely divergent political backgrounds. Lohfink states,

The Twelve must have been an odd mixture – from Matthew the tax collector (Matt. 10:3) to Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15). Including both a tax collector and a Zealot in a single group united the most opposed forces that existed anywhere in Israel at the time, for the tax collectors collaborated with the Romans, while the Zealots emphatically rejected the Roman occupation as incompatible with the reign of God. (Jesus and Community, 11)

These disciples were, of course, meant to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Common understanding of these disciples often misses the reality that the twelve were appointed from among the crowds who were already following Jesus. Note, in particular, Mark’s account: “Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” (Mark 3.13-15)

Commenting on this passage, Lohfink notes, “At that time, Mark intends to say, Jesus instituted twelve of the disciples as the Twelve.” (Jesus and Community, 9) These twelve, as well as the many others who were incorporated into the Jesus community, were to join Jesus in proclaiming and enacting his kingdom. This was, thus, a “learning community”;

[t]hey must learn all that he teaches them so that they can proclaim it. They must receive the power that only the can give so that they can challenge the powers of the world in the name of the Sovereign Jesus… Thus they learned the how of Jesus’ mission as they learned the what and the why of good news. (The Incarnation and the Church’s Witness, 5)

Thus, this community learned from Jesus’ subversive teaching addressed above and continued his kingdom-centered mission, often outside of the institutions of first century Jewish faith. Scot McKnight thus notes,

[w]e are similarly bound to think that this society will spread justice in this world. Nothing could be clearer from the prophetic denunciations of Jesus against the leaders (Matt. 23), Peter’s revolutionary, insubordinate response to the Jerusalem officials (Acts 4-5) and his summons of the Asia Minor parishes to live the gospel responsibly, and Stephen’s prophetic explanation of what God was doing through Jesus (Acts 7:51-8:3) – and what else could be said about the apostle Paul’s relentless preaching of the gospel to Gentiles? Jesus and his many followers created an alternative society, but not simply in a sectarian sense. Instead, they took their message of the kingdom of God, the ecclesial body, into the public square as both proclamation and performance.” (A Community Called Atonement, 131)

The appointing of twelve disciples seems, at first blush, to be anything but subversive in light of the Hebrew Scriptures. This fails to take into account, however, the perspective of the first century Temple cult, which Jesus sought to challenge by said renewed covenant community. Horsley and Silberman note,

Jesus sought to turn the People of Israel away from that Herodian vision toward the tradition of an independent Israel, and it is significant, in this connection, that the gospel traditions stress “twelve” as the number of the core group of disciples, with Jesus proclaiming that his twelve closest followers were commissioned with establishing justice for all the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:29-30). (The Message and the Kingdom, 63)

The twelve, then, as devoted members of Jesus’ community were meant to function as the bearers of this new society committed to justice for Israel. While it is common to separate their communal activities from symbolic destruction of the Temple, they go hand in hand, as N.T. Wright asserts, “Jesus’ action in the Temple was a symbolic destruction… these words and this action followed with a close logic from the rest of Jesus’ agenda, the programme enacted in healings and meal-sharings.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 61) Horsley and Silberman likewise note, “Jesus’ healings and exorcisms were, in fact, merely part of a larger program.” (The Message and the Kingdom, 52) It is to these healings and meal sharings that we now turn our attention, in seeking to examine Jesus’ community building activity.

In recent history, the church has examined and defended Jesus’ healings and exorcisms in light of an Enlightenment dualism instead of a first-century Jewish worldview. Lohfink, therefore, is right to link Jesus’ healings with his eschatological preaching: “[s]ince the eschatological horizon of Jesus’ activity has reentered consciousness, it has been clear that Jesus’ miracles of healing must be seen in connection with his preaching of the kingdom of God.” (Jesus and Community, 12) A example of this inherent connection is found in the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark:

They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!’
‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. (Mark 1.21-26)

Notice not only Jesus’ authoritative teaching – which is unlike “the teachers of the law” – but the authority by which he casts out the evil spirit, as well as the implicit connection between the two. Commenting upon this episode, Ched Myers asserts that at the very outset of his ministry, “Jesus’ practice – specifically his healing, exorcism, and solidarity with the socially outcast – brings him into conflict with the authorities.” (Binding the Strong Man, 140)

As Jesus journeys toward Jerusalem, to borrow Luke’s literal and metaphorical reminder, this tension is heightened. In another healing event, Jesus “forgives” a paralytic in full view of the scribes. (Mark 2.1-12, Matthew 9.1-8, and Luke 5.17-26) Again, Ched Myers offers a helpful examination:

In choosing to introduce the language of the debt code, Jesus is elaborating the symbolics of hierarchy. The man’s lack of bodily wholeness would have been attributed to either his own sin, or, if a birth defect, inherited sin; he was thus denied full status in the body politic of Israel. Jesus summarily releases him from all debt – hence restoring his social wholeness and thus his personhood, which in turn is equated with the restoration of physical wholeness… The scribes are incensed, and for good reason. Their complaint that none but God can remit debt is not a defense of the sovereignty of Yahweh, but of their own social power. As Torah interpreters and co-stewards of the symbolic order, they control determinations of indebtedness. (Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 155) Note also Horsley and Silberman: “In many cases, the painful symptoms of illness were subject to cure through personal atonement, a prayer of supplication to God, or the contribution of a free-will offering to the Temple in Jerusalem.” (The Message and the Kingdom, 48)

Thus, it was not only Jesus’ later symbolic temple action that pronounced judgment upon the first century religious system, but his continual healing ministry of bringing wholeness back to the broken both bodily and socially.

Another element to Jesus’ community building was his practice of table fellowship, which, like it’s corollary, healing, “became seen as a further way in which the kingdom was actually being inaugurated.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 149) Unlike contemporary Western culture, where mealtimes are at best occasions for individuals to eat together, in first century Jewish culture meals were consumed within the context of the extended family, alongside others from their own social class. S.S. Bartchy notes,

[a]nyone who challenged these rankings and boundaries would be judged to have acted dishonorably, a serious charge in cultures based on the values of honor and shame. Transgressing these customs consistently would make a person an enemy of social stability. (Table Fellowship: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 796)

This is, of course, exactly what Jesus did in proclaiming and enacting the Kingdom of God.

The Gospel of Mark provides an interesting example of these eating habits. After calling a tax collector as a disciple – another subversive action – Jesus is immediately pictured as having dinner in his home:

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the ‘sinners’ and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2.15-17)

Ched Myers asserts that

Jesus’ concluding maxim in 2:17 unmasks the Pharisaic duplicity: for all their rhetoric about extending holiness to all of Israel, their practice betrays their commitment to rigid social boundaries between the “righteous” and the “sinner.” This boundary Jesus flatly rejects, and his mission is specifically aimed at transgressing it. (Binding the Strong Man, 159)

We see Jesus’ eating practices, then, in a very similar light to his healing mission: to restore the outcast as a part of the covenant people. As in his teaching, these community buiding activities were done outside of the Temple system, with blatant disregard for its requirements. N.T. Wright concludes,

What Jesus was offering, in other words, was not a different religious system. It was a new world order, the end of Israel’s long desolation, the truth and final ‘forgiveness of sins’, the inauguration of the kingdom of god. This, I suggest, was what was implied when Jesus announced ‘forgiveness of sins’ to particular people. The effect was the same as his eating with ‘sinners’: he was celebrating the coming of the kingdom, and those who shared this celebration with him were benefiting from this great ‘forgiveness of sins’. There is, in fact, no tension, no play-off, between the personal and the corporate at this point. (Jesus and the Victory of God, 272) Toole puts it this way: “Jesus thus made possible a new community that refused to be founded upon the exclusion of the other.” (Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, 246)

1) This Sunday, February 21st, I’ll be preaching at the church in all three services, after which there’ll be a congregational meeting, where they’ll vote.

2) Then, on Thursday, February 25th, I’ll go before “the floor” of the Presbytery (which is made up of all the pastors and delegated elders in the area) who will examine me, asking me any theological question they’d like. And I get to answer it! How fun.

So, if you’re in the LA area and would like to swing by – especially Thursday’s meeting – it’d be really great to have some familiar faces in the crowd.

3) Then, if I get through all that, we’re throwing an ordination service/party on Sunday, March 21st, in Los Alamitos. Put it on your calendar.

At that party you can jokingly refer to me as “pastor.” After that, it’s back to Curtis.

Calling me pastor is flat out unbiblical. Really. Check out Matthew 23.

Jesus’ Parable of the Fig Tree functions as one of the most obviously subversive kingdom-stories, depicting a man who has planted a fig tree, a common image for Israel throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. After not finding any fruit for three years, the man exclaims, “Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?” (Luke 13.7) His servant, clearly representing Jesus, asserts “leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it an fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” (Luke 13.8)

N.T. Wright notes that Jesus is here offering covenant renewal, which, if it is not heeded, means “judgment falling on the nation.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 193) Later, of course, it “becomes an acted parable… where it clearly symbolizes the same as the action in the Temple, i.e. the imminent judgment that will fall on impenitent Israel.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 193)

It should be noted in light of Jesus’ parable, however, the owner of the vineyard is to cut it down. Thus, in enacting the parable, Jesus is not simply revealing his own distrust of the Temple cult, but rather acting on behalf of the vineyard’s Owner.

These kingdom-stories continue throughout Jesus’ mission to reform God’s chosen people, with one of the most striking occurring after his prophetic judgment of the Temple. Each of the Synoptic gospels record The Parable of the Tenants, wherein Jesus uses familiar imagery for God’s people in foreshadowing his own death, as well as God’s judgment of the Temple authorities.

He tells of a man building a vineyard, hiring tenants to watch over it and sending servants to retrieve some fruit from the farmers. Each of the servants, however, is killed. Finally, the Owner sends his own son, though his fate is the same as the servants. Jesus’ conclusion is striking, especially in light of his now previous prophetic temple action and the Hebrew Scriptures he quotes:

What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this scripture:

‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’? (Mark 12.9-11)

Mark’s explanation deserves mention as well: “Then [the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders] looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.” (Mark 12.12) Commenting on this parable, N.T. Wright states,

the prophetic narrative symbolism of this parable belongs to Jesus’ awareness that his challenge to the Temple would result in his own death, as the guardians of Israel’s traditions refused to respond to the message which he (of course) believed was from YHWH himself. (Jesus and the Victory of God, 566)

As we have seen, from the outset of Jesus’ ministry, his message – both in form and content – has challenged the heart of the religious establishment. Jesus’ prophetic action in the Temple is thus the culmination of his subversive teaching.

Therefore, in seeking to retrieve his message, we must reexamine the mission of Jesus in light of first century Jewish culture, uncovering the inherent meanings behind his teaching, healing, feasting, and community, which will, interestingly, expose the grounds for his death.

While New Testament scholars nearly unanimously agree that Jesus’ death was the catastrophic consequence of his symbolic action in the temple, these “prophetic demonstrations in the Temple and against Jerusalem’s ruling institutions were all perfectly consonant with his larger vision of a Renewed Israel,” (The Message and the Kingdom, 73) which ultimately led to his untimely crucifixion.

N.T. Wright similarly argues, “Healing, forgiveness, renewal, the twelve, the new family and its new defining characteristics, open commensality, the promise of blessing for the Gentiles, feasts replacing fasts, the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple; all declared, in the powerful language of symbol, that Israel’s exile was over, that Jesus was himself in some way responsible for this new state of affairs, and that all that the Temple had stood for was now available through Jesus and his movement.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 436) As such, throughout this – and two forthcoming posts – I will seek to uncover the revolutionary practices through which Jesus of Nazareth sought to reform God’s chosen people.

We begin by examining Jesus’ teaching, taking account of both the style and content of his communication. N.T. Wright asserts, “that Jesus was an itinerant prophet meant, clearly, that he went from village to village, saying substantially the same things wherever he went.” (Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, 170) Indeed, we are presented with this reality early in the gospel accounts; after being interrupted in prayer by his disciples with the exclamation, “everyone is looking for you,” Jesus responds, “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (Mark 1.38) Note further this tension in Luke’s account, wherein seemingly unlikely friends warn Jesus of his impending arrest: “At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’” (Luke 13.31)

It is apparent then, even in briefly alluding to these passages, that Jesus’ message was upsetting the dominant social order. Instead of blithely writing off his teaching as inconsequential, pithy spiritual jargon, we must recognize that Jesus’ teaching was purposely communicated to and with language of the empire. John Howard Yoder notes, “The language ‘kingdom,’ ‘evangel,’ is chosen from the political realm.” (The Politics of Jesus, 28) Indeed, “[t]he fact that he was not arrested sooner was due to his itinerant style, and to his concentration on villages rather than major cities, not to anything bland or unprovocative about the content of his message.” (John Howard Yoder notes, “The language ‘kingdom,’ ‘evangel,’ is chosen from the political realm.” The Politics of Jesus, 28) While his habit of itinerant preaching may have kept Jesus’ adversaries at bay, we must ask, what was the content of this subversive message? And what was his means of communicating it?

The Sermon on the Mount functions as Jesus’ longest teaching, though the majority of New Testament scholars agree that the gospel writer assembled it in an attempt to summarize Jesus’ iterant teaching. Donald A. Hagner notes, “The ‘sermon’ is clearly a compilation of the sayings of Jesus by the evangelist, rather than something spoken by Jesus on a single occasion.” (Hagner, Donald A. Word Biblical Commentary: Matthew 1-13, 82.) The Sermon’s antitheses, wherein Jesus asserts, “you have heard that it was said… but I say to you,” (See Matthew 5.21-48) reveals that Matthew’s sermon functions for his readers – and Jesus’ followers – as a renewal teaching upon which they are to base their lives.

This is further explicated by Jesus’ assertion, “in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7.12) Note also John Howard Yoder: “[a]s soon as it was a matter of accentuating the humanitarian prescriptions of the law of Moses, Jesus became more radical than the Pharisees.” (The Politics of Jesus, 65.) Thus, the content of Jesus’ teaching is joined by the Gospel’s overall five-fold structure to be interpreted as the replacement for Torah. (See Ehrman, Bart D. A Brief Introduction to the New Testament. New York; Oxford, 81.)

Therefore, if it is true that “[t]he temple was to Judaea what the Torah was to Galilee,” we can look backwards from Jesus’ symbolic temple action, seeing that

Jesus’ actions and words in the Temple thus functioned symbolically in more or less the same way as his actions and words concerning the Torah. In neither case was there a denial that the institution itself was good, god-given, and to be respected. In both cases there was an assertion that the time had come for the institution to be transcended; in both cases there was an accusation that the institution was currently operating in a way that was destructive both to those involved and, more importantly, to the will of YHWH for his people Israel. (Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, 433)

Jesus’ teaching, then, as well as Matthew’s purposeful five-fold structure, clearly reveal the powerful implication that Jesus’ subversive proclamation sought to wholly reform first-century Jewish faith.

Before addressing the means by which Jesus communicated his Kingdom message, we must briefly note the revolutionary conclusion of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus states,

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. (Matthew 7.24-27)

An individualized, Western reading of this passage can miss its powerful meaning, though, N.T. Wright invites us to remember that

within [Jesus’] culture, the word ‘house’ could easily evoke the idea of ‘Temple’, and that the ‘rock’ or ‘stone’ would readily be identified as the foundation-stone of that Temple… Jesus, like some other Jewish sectarians, was inviting his hearers to join him in the establishment of the true Temple. The Jerusalem Temple was under judgment, a judgment that would fall before too long. (Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, 334)

This insight helps us see the inherent connection between Jesus’ “ethical” teaching and his enacted, prophetic judgment of the Temple system and his envisioned replacement by the Kingdom community.

The means by which Jesus most commonly communicated was not, as I alluded to above, extended speeches, but rather the telling of short, seemingly inconsequential stories known as parables. Again, instead of being understood simply as spiritually charged advice, Jesus’ parables “are themselves front and center bearers of the message of Jesus.” (Hultgren, Arland J. The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary, 8) N.T. Wright puts it this way: “The parables are not simply information about the kingdom, but are part of the means of bringing it to birth.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 176)

These terse kingdom-stories “made it clear that all and sundry were potential beneficiaries, with the most striking examples being the poor and the sinners,” (Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God, 245) who were most often excluded from the Temple cult, due to their economic inability – or refusal – to adhere to the strict regulations of the religious authorities. Many of these stories, it seems, were well known to Jesus’ hearers, though what he meant by them was quite different. N.T. Wright asserts, “[s]omeone who is telling strangely familiar stories and meaning the wrong things by them will land up in trouble.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 179)

In this way, Jesus’ reappropriation of such parables functions as a form of “violence,” as explicated by David Toole:

The practice of discourse is a ‘violence’ done to things, not by virtue of men’s ideas nor though the grammatical systems of language, but by a set of rules that determine what can be stated at a particular time and how these statements are related to others. (Toole, David. Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and Apocalypses, 161) Toole later argues, “discourse is ‘a violence we do to things, or in any case a practice we impose on them,” 190.

Indeed, Jesus’ use of familiar stories serves as a dis-course, challenging the common meaning of such parables in hopes of bringing about his countercultural Kingdom. “Jesus made a regular practice of retelling the story of Israel in such a way as to subvert other tellings, and to invite his hearers to make his telling of the story their own.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 174)

One of Jesus’ most familiar kingdom stories, The Parable of the Sower, for instance, is based on a common scene from first century Galilean life. It is similar to a passage from 2^nd Esdras 8:41:

For just as the farmer sows many seeds in the ground and plants a multitude of seedlings, and yet not all that have been sown will come up in due season, and no all that were planted will take root; so also those who have been sown in the world will not all be saved.

In Mark 4, Jesus retells this common story, subversively equating it with his own kingdom-inaugurating mission. N.T. Wright asserts that Jesus’ activity is thus revealed as

a plan of judgment and mercy; a plan to be put into operation, not through the Herodian dynasty, nor though the Pharisaic movement, nor through the high-priestly activity in the Temple, nor yet in the plottings of the holy revolutionaries, but in Jesus’ own proclamation and activity. As Mark indicates, this parable is thus itself about parables. (N.T. Wright. Jesus and the Victory of God, 238)

Of course, it is this retelling which arouses the suspicion of the religious authorities.

Simply put, I wasn’t quite prepared how it would affect me to say over and over “You are dust, and to dust you will return. But in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life.”

You are dust, and to dust you will return. But in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life.

It’s a beautiful paradox. Like Peter Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God. Or John Caputo’s The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida.

Or the Gospel.