by Jack Miles
Historically, early Christianity faced a difficulty, if not a scandal, in the fact that Christ, for whom it was making such large claims, had gone so nearly unnoticed during his lifetime. Yes, he had attracted followers in some number, as well as a few powerful enemies, but neither his nation nor the world had been brought to a stunned halt by his arrival. In interestingly different ways, all four of the canonical Gospels make literary art of this lack of recognition by pitting Jesus’ own knowledge of who he is against the ignorance of even those closest to him: his family and his disciples. The interactions that result from this create much of the forward narrative momentum in the Gospels as the reader begins to strain forward psychologically, seeking an interlocutor who will finally realize the truth. This effect is enhanced by three factors.
First is the fact that somewhere between Jesus’ knowledge of himself and others’ bafflement stands the partial knowledge of privileged third parties like Gabriel, Simeon, and, paradoxically, Satan. Their statements are always pregnant with a knowledge that they never fully share. They provide the associates of Jesus a hint or a clue and then pass from the scene.
Suspense is served, in the second place, by the fact that what these privileged observers do reveal often has something menacing about it: Simeon’s sword, the demon’s shriek, or—in the Gospel of Matthew—Herod’s attempt to kill the infant Christ by killing every male child two years old or younger. An angel warns Joseph in time, but the reader is reminded of what Jesus’ parents, unaided, cannot see—namely, that murderous intentions toward Jesus are written into the script. Of Herod’s slaughter, Matthew writes:
Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying:
In Rama was there a voice heard,
lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
and would not be comforted
because they are not.
(KJV; Matt. 2:17–18, quoting Jer. 31:15)
His adding this quote does nothing, immediately, to clarify the identity of Jesus, but it does much to darken the mood. At this early moment, Jesus is already being hunted.
The third factor complicating the dialogue between knowledge and ignorance that so shapes the Gospel narrative is the intermittent, though always ambivalent, suggestion that Jesus may not fully apprehend his own divine identity. We have seen his odd restraint in dealing with the Devil at the time of his desert temptation. Was he refraining from the use of his power, or was he uncertain himself just how much power he had? We have seen as well his reluctance to perform miracles on request. He faults the petitioners, but does he, despite his confident—not to say arrogant—manner, have some buried doubt about himself? In the Gospel of Mark, he warns the demons who address him as “Son of God” not to make him known (3:12) and gives the same warning repeatedly to his own disciples. Of course, standing in danger of assassination from so early a point, Jesus has a plausible enough motive for secrecy; yet he seems to have deeper, more personal reasons for reticence. On the one hand, he is his own most compelling topic. He brings himself up again and again, saying, for example, to the Samaritan woman: “If you only knew … who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink’ ” (John 4:10). On the other hand, when his words or deeds attract the spotlight, he wants it turned off. His ambivalence and the reader’s uncertainty about what that ambivalence implies deepen both the mystery and the suspense that surround him.
The impression that Jesus’ awareness of his own identity progresses through the course of his life is nowhere clearer than in the episode that ends the so-called hidden life of Jesus:
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him.
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. (KJV; Luke 2:41–50)
Jesus, who in his twelfth year believes that he “must be about [his] Father’s business,” evidently did not entertain this belief about himself when he was eleven. He knows something about himself now that he did not then. Almost equally revealing is the fact that, naively, he expects his parents to know about him what he knows about himself; he expects them not to be surprised. Mature self-understanding always includes a hard-won appreciation of what others are likely to miss of what one knows about oneself. In a single, subtle stroke, Luke tells us that Jesus lacks that kind of maturity. Later, dealing with others, even other intimates, he will anticipate ignorance as here he anticipates knowledge. Later, on the stormy visit to the Temple that we have already reviewed, he will anticipate rejection as here he anticipates acceptance. But at twelve he is different. For now, the boy who can astonish the Temple rabbis with “his understanding and answers” is still just a boy.
HE REPUDIATES HIS WARRIOR PAST
“Is this not Joseph’s son?” the men of the synagogue asked when Jesus proclaimed at his inaugural appearance in the Nazareth synagogue, “Today this scripture is fulfilled even as you listen” (Luke 4:21–22). But more, we saw, was involved than the fact that “a prophet is without honor in his own country” (John 4:44). Jesus, reading their minds, knew that they were not pleased that his miraculous cure in neighboring Capernaum had come at the request of an official working for Rome. His response to their resentment had been not to apologize but to compound his offense by reminding them that, centuries earlier, Elijah and Elisha had performed miracles for a Phoenician woman and a Syrian man. Though this was true, the meaning that he seemed to draw from these precedents so enraged them that they attempted to throw him off a cliff.
During the ensuing weeks, Jesus has preached in various Galilean synagogues, performed other miracles, and attracted a growing number of disciples. He has also begun to attract disapproving attention from “the Pharisees and their scribes,” the leaders and scholars of a religious movement stressing strict decorum and exact observance of Jewish law. The Pharisees and scribes object, for example, that
“John’s disciples are always fasting and saying prayers, and so also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours keep eating and drinking.” Jesus replied, “Surely you cannot make the bridegroom’s friends fast while the bridegroom is yet with them. Still, the time will come when the bridegroom is taken from them. And in those days, they will fast.” (Luke 5:33–35)
Though weddings are occasions for joy and festivity, this bridegroom is a marked man. The effect of Jesus’ foreboding allusion is to render the scene both darker and more mysterious than it would be as merely a discussion of asceticism versus indulgence. Jesus is clearly becoming something of a celebrated figure, yet he is preoccupied with his own demise. What is his mission? Does he intend to remain in Galilee indefinitely, preaching in one synagogue after another, curing one invalid after another, until his enemies overcome him? If he is the Messiah, the fulfillment of the prophecy that he has claimed to be, then he must intend something more than that, but what will it be? And if this “bridegroom” is not the Messiah, then who or what is he?
The answer comes only when the question has reached critical mass. Because of Jesus’ fame as a healer, a great crowd has gathered “to hear him and to be cured of their afflictions. People tortured by unclean spiri
ts were cured as well, and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him since a power came out of him that healed them all” (6:17–19).
The demons tormenting the possessed should be imagined as shrieking like the demon in the Capernaum synagogue. As for the physically afflicted, Luke tells us that they have come from as far south as Jerusalem and as far north as Phoenicia. In all their distress, these people have been on the road for days. A great crowd of such sufferers not patiently waiting their turn but all trying to touch Jesus at once makes for a scene of extreme emotional and physical agitation.
Mingling with these suffering pilgrims is the growing number of Jesus’ local disciples. Just before addressing the throng, he has spent a night praying in the hills and then selected from among them twelve whom he calls “apostles,” or emissaries, recalling—inevitably in this Jewish context—the twelve sons of Jacob for whom the twelve tribes of Israel are named, and thereby endowing his personal vocation and this already charged moment with national significance.
In the Nazareth synagogue, the prophecy of Isaiah that Jesus said was being fulfilled even as he spoke was
The spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me
to bring good news to the afflicted.
Since the base meaning of the word messiah is “anointed,” a defensible translation of Isaiah 61:1 is “He has made me Messiah to bring good news to the afflicted.” Very well, the afflicted have gathered in unprecedented numbers: What good news does this messiah have for them in the public address that Christian tradition regards as the most important statement of his ethical teaching?
The news he has for them, whether it can be called good or not, is little short of astonishing, for it is a virtual repudiation of what on innumerable previous occasions God has taught his people to expect of him. Addressing his disciples directly but surrounded by the diseased and insane, Jesus says:
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who now hunger, for you shall have your fill.
Blessed are you who now weep, for you shall laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, shun you, insult you, and slander your name for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes, and dance for joy, for, lo, your reward shall be great in heaven. This is the way their forebears treated the prophets.
But woe to you who are rich, for you have had your consolation.
Woe to you who are sated, for you shall hunger.
Woe to you who now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you, for thus did their forebears treat the false prophets. (Luke 6:20–26)
In Deuteronomy 27–28, speaking through Moses, God served notice on Israel that if it was obedient, it would be blessed, and if disobedient, cursed. The nature of the blessings and curses, however, could not be more unlike the blessings and “woes” listed above. Obedient Israelites were not to be blessed in the two stages that Jesus speaks of. They were not to be, first, poor, hungry, weeping, hated, shunned, and slandered; then, later, sated, laughing, and joyful. On the contrary, God guaranteed them prosperity and hegemony from the start:
The Lord shall make you abound in possessions: in the fruit of your womb, in the fertility of your herd and in the yield of your soil, in the land that he swore to your forebears that he would give to you. For you the Lord will open heaven, his treasure house of rain, to give your land rainfall in due season, and to bless all your labors. You shall lend to many nations, yet borrow from none. The Lord shall put you at the head, not at the tail; you will always be on the top and never on the bottom, if you heed the commandments of the Lord. (Deut. 28:11–13)
As for the curses on the other side of the ledger, God swore to inflict a bloodcurdling assortment of horrors if Israel transgressed against him, and he listed the transgressions he had in mind. To name just a few:
Accursed be anyone who moves a neighbor’s boundary marker.…
Accursed be anyone who leads a blind man astray on the road.…
Accursed be anyone who violates the rights of the alien, the orphan, or the widow.…
Accursed be anyone who has sexual relations with his father’s wife. (27:17–20)
The list of possible transgressions was long and detailed, but wealth, satiety, joviality, and good repute—the “woes” of Jesus’ list—were not on it.
Speaking through various prophets, God has decried the abuse of wealth, but he has never denounced wealth itself. Through Amos, for example, God said:
For three transgressions of Israel, and for four,
I will not revoke the punishment;
Because they sell the righteous for silver,
and the needy for a pair of shoes,
They trample the face of the poor into the dust of the earth,
and force the afflicted off the road.
(Amos 2:6–7)
But one may search in vain among all God’s earlier utterances for a statement like “Blessed are you who are poor” without the promise that God will someday make these poor rich. And as for the poor, so, analogously, for the hungry, the mournful, and the scorned. Though smug self-satisfaction and a self-righteous sense that one is beyond the reach of judgment are condemned, usually because they accompany other, more serious offenses, satiety, happiness, and good repute are consistently regarded as blessings.
It may be objected that Jesus does not really invert the traditional values; he simply expands the time frame in which God may deliver good and ill to all according to their merit. Punishment will still be punishment, on this reading, and reward will still be reward; the delivery of each will simply come in heaven rather than on earth. Yet if even this much is true, Jesus must be seen to have sharply revised the emerging meaning of his miraculous cures. The diseased and disturbed have gathered in such numbers because they expect immediate relief. The claim that Jesus has made for himself is that, more than an ordinary healer, he is the fulfillment of the grandest promises that God has made to his people rather than yet another postponement of it. Those already suffering so grievously have surely not come so far simply to be told that their misery is their blessing inasmuch as, further along, their reward will be so great. Can this redefinition of weal and woe really be the fulfillment of the promise the Lord made through Isaiah?
Jesus, preaching frankly against the promise, does not hesitate to say that indeed it is. His words serve notice, in effect, that he has not come to perform mass healings or mass exorcisms. His healings are mere demonstrations. Most of those who are racked with illness or tormented by demons should not look to him for miraculous healing; rather, they should embrace their affliction as analogous to the mistreatment that his own disciples will encounter for their devotion to “the Son of Man.” Whatever his miracles portend, it is not simple, direct, or, least of all, universal relief from pain.
What follows on this surprise, however, is a far greater one:
But to you who are listening I say this: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who scorn you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek as well. If someone takes your outer garment from you, let him have your undergarment as well. Give to anyone who asks of you. If someone takes your property, do not ask for it back. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Why, even sinners love those who love them! And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Again, even sinners do that much.… Instead, love your enemies, and do good to them, and lend without any hope of return. Then you shall have a great reward, and you shall be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you … because by the measure that you use will you b
e measured. (Luke 6:27–38)
In this sermon, Jesus preaches what he will practice when his enemies come for him and he does not resist them. “Turn the other cheek” has rightly been taken to be his signature teaching. The phrase is used by millions who might not be able to quote anything else that Jesus said and by millions more who do not know that it was he who first said it. It defines him didactically as the Crucifixion defines him dramatically. Yet the popular reception of this sermon, for all the fame it has conferred upon Jesus, has been such as to obscure his deeper originality and his more radical revision of the tradition he inherited.
This has been so because discussion of his ethic of nonresistance to evil has so consistently focused on the application of this ethic rather than on its premise—namely, that human beings must do thus because God does thus. But does God in fact do thus? This is a question that interpretation of this passage generally does not ask. Jesus assumes a positive answer to that question without ever asking it, but his assumption elides a drastic revision of the divine identity. When we recall how God has in fact conducted himself in the face of opposition or insult from past enemies, it becomes clear that, though Jesus speaks as if God is now as he always has been, he is in fact revealing (or enacting) an enormous change in God.
God, to repeat, is the model whom Jesus would have us believe that we imitate when we love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and so forth. If we do all this, he says, we “shall be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” When urging mercy, Jesus does not say “Be merciful because mercy is better than vengeance.” What he says is “Be merciful as your Father is merciful.” But how merciful has the Father shown himself to be in his previous career? How kind has the Most High typically been when confronted with the ungrateful or the wicked?
