Jesus: A Biography From a Believer. (10 page)

Here is a case where the moral is excellent, but the story leading up to it is mysterious. The story of the five foolish and five wise virgins and their oil lamps is vivid and delightful (Mt 25:1-13). But the wise virgins are mean and do not share their oil with the foolish ones; and the tardy bridegroom is unjust to shut the foolish girls out. Yet the moral is pertinent: “Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.” The parable of the talents which immediately follows (Mt 25:14-40) is akin to the story of the unjust steward in Luke. It takes as a fact of life the economics of worldliness, commends lending at high interest, and cites the wisdom of a lord who reaps “where [he] hast not sown” and gathers “where [he] hast not strawed.” It includes the notorious verse 29: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Unlike in Mark 4 : 25, in this instance Jesus is not speaking of knowledge but of property. Jesus adds: “[C]ast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: for there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

That, we take it, is the wisdom of the world. For Jesus immediately passes to the judgment where the unworldly are divided from the worldly: “And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left” (Mt 25 : 33). He tells the sheep: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you” (25 : 34). Jesus goes on to explain that those in this world who feed the hungry and the thirsty, and who take in homeless strangers, and who clothe the naked, and who visit the sick and the imprisoned shall be rewarded, and he makes the striking point that whoever befriends “the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (25:40).

The parables, taken as a whole, are a vast dichotomy of contrasts expressed in stories and images. Darkness and light, this world and the next, outward show and inner goodness, sheep and goats, material wisdom and spiritual simplicity, rich in goods and poor in spirit, cunning and innocence. There is every sign that when Jesus told his stories the people listening clamored for more. So the parables should be seen both in groups and in their totality for their meanings to be made plain and consistent. Jesus was sometimes subtle and mysterious and even obscure in detail, but his distinction between right and wrong always emerged before he had finished. He left his hearers to talk and argue among themselves. That was his intention. His gift was not only to teach but to encourage people to teach one another, to take seriously the question of what constitutes the good life and to debate it earnestly.

 

This brings us to two characteristics of Jesus which emerge strongly from the language of the Gospels. The first was his habit of asking questions. He may have acquired this from study of the sacred texts. The Old Testament abounds in questions. God often asks questions, usually awkward ones. The question is part of the artistic form of the book of Job, and is used by Yahweh to convey vast amounts of information and to delineate his power. In chapter 38 of Job alone the Lord asks fifty-eight questions, from “who is this that darkeneth counsel by word without knowledge?” (38 : 2) to “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (38:4). To ask questions was also part of Jesus’s method of teaching. He spoke with great authority and had a great deal to impart, but he was anxious, if possible, to extract the knowledge and thoughts of his auditors, especially his disciples. “Whom do men say that I am?” (Mk 8 : 27) is a characteristic Jesus question. Mark shows him asking questions constantly. Thus before the feeding of the five thousand he asks, “How many loaves have ye?” (6 : 38). On the same occasion, John has Jesus ask Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” (6 : 5). Jesus was an inclusive teacher, indeed an inclusive person generally, who constantly sought to draw all those present into the discussion, the elucidation of truth, the perception of reality. In Mark he introduces the parable of the mustard seed by a sharp double question: “Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?” (4:30). When, at the beginning of his ministry, just after his baptism, he sees Andrew and another following him, he asks, “What seek ye?” (Jn 1 : 38). His questions to his intimates are often profound, poignant, even pleading. When many find his doctrine on the bread of life too difficult—“This is an hard saying; who can hear it?”—and leave, Jesus asks, “Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?” When “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him,” Jesus said to the Twelve, “Will ye also go away?” (Jn 6 : 60-67). (Immediately afterward, referring to Judas Iscariot, he asks, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” [6:71].) He even asks such questions as “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me?” (Jn 14 : 9). And, finally, “Do you love me?” After the Resurrection, he asks Mary Magdalene, “Woman, why weepst thou? Whom seekest thou?” (Jn 20:15). What all these questions—and there are many others recorded—have in common is that Jesus knows the answers even before he asks them. Their function is to extend a hand in welcome, in interest, in affection. They are a form of embrace, even when they are critical.

Equally characteristic, though used for a variety of purposes, are Jesus’s silences. Though a teacher, an exponent, a man whose primary duty in life he regarded as discoursing, Jesus made highly effective use of both the question and the silence to get across his message. His questions, as often as not, were statements and conveyed information. Equally his silences were a form of mute speech. And often they carried a weight which words could not. There is a passage in Thomas Carlyle’s
Sartor Resartus
which has a particular application to Jesus’s ministry: “Speech is of time, silence is of eternity. Thought will not work except in silence. Neither will virtue work except in secrecy.” Up to the age of thirty, Jesus was silent, or at least unrecorded—and there is no indication he wished it otherwise. He was silent, virtually, during his temptations, until the end. He was silent during his baptism. He was silent when he changed the water into wine at Cana. Indeed, he was habitually silent during his miracles, except in bidding the lame to walk or the dead to arise. And he enjoined silence about them. He was habitually silent about his powers, except when necessary, and about his divinity, as it was important to establish the nature of his character as a man. When told “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16 : 16), he enjoins silence again. He was usually silent to direct questions. He preferred to answer the thought rather than the words. He expresses the silence of shame when presented with the woman taken in adultery: shame not at her sin but at the sins of those who wished to stone her to death. He prefers to write their shame in the dust rather than speak it. In the whole incident, one of the most vivid and moving in the entire New Testament, he uses only two sentences: “Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?” and “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more” (Jn 8 : 10-11). He is silent on horrors: at the death of John the Baptist, for instance. He is silent, with indignation, before Caiaphas. He shows the silence of contempt before Herod Antipas. In his physical sufferings he is silent with self-absorption and pity for his assailants and mockers. His silence on the cross was as striking as his rare words, the seven last sayings.

Jesus the teacher is eloquent but succinct. It is uncommon to find him using two words when one will do. The thoughts, and their intensity, conveyed in his instruction and parables are remarkable for their economy of words. Yet they give no impression of abruptness or brevity. The manner is invariably relaxed. The detail is always there when required. But the silences are an essential part of the ministry, too. His speech was silver, but we weigh his silences in gold.

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LTHOUGH JESUS constantly addressed crowds in synagogues, in the open, and in packed private houses, he spoke directly to each individual who composed them. It was his gift and also his philosophy. Each human being was a unique, priceless entity loved by God as a person, so that, as Jesus said, “the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Lk 12 : 7). Jesus’s love of people, as individuals, was in some way his most striking characteristic. He never tired of talking to them and penetrating their secrets. They were drawn to him and only too willing to divulge them. His life was a series of public meetings punctuated by casual encounters which turned into significant events. Jesus not only encouraged these encounters but treasured them. He remembered every word spoken. He clearly recounted them to his disciples, and that is how they reached the evangelists, who recorded them for us. For in most of them Jesus and the individual concerned were alone together—even if a babbling, pushing crowd surrounded them. These episodes, though often brief, form the human core of the New Testament and provide a unique satisfaction to the reader. There is nothing like them in the entire literature of the ancient world, sacred or secular.

Jesus’s encounter with Andrew, immediately after his baptism, is a foretaste. It was Andrew who came up to him (with a companion who is nameless). There was something about Jesus’s appearance, the way he held himself, the steadiness of his gaze, which attracted people. They felt he was open, that he would receive them as a friend and talk to them. Indeed, Jesus’s manifest and responsive friendliness was his most striking quality, and it was apparent from the start. He directed it to all, but made each feel selected and treasured. Yet there was nothing professional about it. It came from his heart—there could be no mistake about that. According to John 1:37-42, when Andrew and his friend followed Jesus, he turned and said, “What seek ye?” Andrew said, “Master, where dwellest thou?” To which Jesus replied, “Come and see.” They “abode with him that day: for it was about the tenth hour.” The exact time when Andrew met Jesus is not obviously relevant, yet somehow it seems so. The friendship ripened immediately, and Andrew introduced his brother Simon to Jesus the next day. There was an instant rapport, so that Jesus immediately gave Simon a new name, or nickname, Cephas (or Peter), meaning solid as the rock. He gave John and James, another pair of brothers, a nickname, too: “sons of thunder” (Mk 3:17). Jesus loved such names as a pledge of friendship or intimacy. Their use among themselves sealed their comradeship in their immense task of turning the world upside down, making spiritual values triumph over material ones. It is curious to think that this haphazard and unplanned meeting with Andrew was to begin a long story which was to end, for him and his brother, as well as for Jesus, with death on the cross: Simon Peter pinned upside down, at his request, so as not to compete with his divine master in the dignity of death; Andrew martyred at Patras in Achaea—bound, not nailed, so as to prolong the agony, on a cross whose peculiar shape has become the symbol of Scotland.

Jesus’s summoning of Matthew from his busy tax collector’s bench at the frontier with Syria is another striking encounter. This official, powerful but hated, followed immediately. It was an instant friendship, silent—no exchange of words is recorded—but strong, and it brought Jesus into the center of another world. For Matthew, clearly at Jesus’s invitation, brought many of his colleagues and friends to an impromptu feast at the house where Jesus was staying. It was a huge success and attracted critical attention from the orthodox Jews and Pharisees, who asked the disciples, “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” (Mt 9 : 11). To which Jesus replied, “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

This calling, followed by a feast, illustrated Jesus’s habit, springing from his partly private, partly gregarious temperament, of mingling close encounters with communal ones. He loved to teach at mealtimes. So many of his images concerned bread and its breaking and distribution, as well as the cup and its drinking. The Last Supper was merely the awesome climax of these sacred convivialities. With the exception of spreading news of his miracles, Jesus was always open. He enjoyed food. The wine circulated. The talk flowed. But he respected the need of others for privacy, even secrecy. One of the most striking of his encounters was with Nicodemus, a Jew of high position, a Pharisee and a spiritual ruler who was prominent in the hierarchy (Jn 3 : 1-21). He “came to Jesus by night,” so as not to jeopardize his position, and Jesus did not rebuke him for cowardice. On the contrary, he received him kindly and explained to him, in memorable words, much of his inner message. A man must be “born again” to see the Kingdom. Nicodemus asked, “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus’s answer was a plea for faith: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life.” He told Nicodemus that he had not been sent “to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” But, he hinted, he must sooner or later come into the open. He must not shun the light: “For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” Nicodemus should “cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest.” This advice was eventually taken, for when Jesus’s body was taken down from the cross, Nicodemus “brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pounds weight.” With this Jesus was anointed, and his body wound “in linen clothes with the spices” and buried in “a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.” We assume that Nicodemus had prepared it for himself (Jn 19 : 39- 42), though it may have belonged to Joseph of Arimathaea, who also assisted at the burial and had the stone rolled in front of the tomb. He, too, was a Jewish dignitary, a member of the Sanhedrin, or governing body of the community, who was a secret disciple.