The Scandal of Jesus

No Roman citizen could be crucified. Romans didn't even discuss the subject; they pretended it never existed. The great senator and orator Cicero declared that "the very word 'cross' should be far removed not only from the presence of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears."

Crucifixion was a way of obliterating not only victims but the memory of them. A crucified person had never existed. As a result, not a single ancient historian pays serious attention to any crucifixion. It is in this world that we meet a group of men and women announcing throughout the Roman Empire that among its forgotten, crucified nobodies had been the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

This message, if true, subverted the world of religion. It claimed that if you wanted to know what God was like and understand his purposes for his world, you had to go not to the lofty specu- lations of the philosophers or the countless religious temples and sacred groves that dotted the Empire but to a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem. For the Jews a crucified Messiah (Savior) was a contradiction in terms, expressing not God's power but his inability to liberate Israel from Roman rule. For pagans, the idea that a god or the son of a god could die as a state criminal, and that human salvation should depend on that particular historical event, was not merely offensive - it was madness.

I cannot overemphasize the foolishness of such a message. If you wanted to convert the educated and pious people of the Empire to your cause - whatever that cause may have been - the worst thing you could do would be to link that cause to a recently crucified man. Such an association would be, to put it mildly, a public relations disaster. And to associate God, the source of all life, with a crucified criminal was to invite mockery and sheer incomprehension.

The message these men and women were spreading also subverted the world of politics. It claimed that Rome's salvation would come from among those forgotten victims of state terror. Caesar himself would have to bow before a cruci- fied Jew. Having crucified the Lord of the universe, the much-vaunted civilization of Rome stood radically condemned. Little wonder that the Christians' "good news" was labeled a "dangerous superstition" by educated Romans of the time. It is the madness of this "word of the cross" that compels us to take it seriously. No one can say that this was some pious invention, for the cross runs counter to all notions of piety. And no one can dismiss the message as mere self-promotion, for the early believers gained nothing from telling their story. There is something so absurd, so topsy-turvy about the Christian message that it gets under my skin. I am a Christian today because it has the ring of truth in it.

We cannot understand the significance of Jesus apart from the Jewish world of the early first century. Fundamental to every Israelite's identity was a sense of belonging to a "called out" people. The Israelites were conscious of having been called by the living God to be a priestly nation, namely, one that would mediate the purposes of God to the rest of his creation.

Israel was a confederacy of nomadic tribes forged into a nation after their deliverance from slavery and genocide in ancient Egypt. They knew this God who had redeemed them by his covenant name, Yahweh (from YHWH, Hebrew for "He is" or "He will be," cf. Exodus 3:13-15). For the people of Israel, Yahweh was not one among many tribal deities in the West Asian pantheon; he was no less than the creator and sustainer of the entire universe.

Devout Jews in the time of Jesus wondered if Yahweh, the God of their forefathers, had abandoned them. Although they were living in the land of their forefathers - the land promised to them by Yahweh - they were ruled by a people who did not worship Yahweh (the Romans). The Jews longed for the day when Yahweh would cleanse the land of the Roman idolaters and reestablish his own rule (Yahweh's kingdom) through his anointed priest or king (messiah in Hebrew, christos in Greek; literally, "anointed one").

Jesus broke down social barriers in forming around himself a community drawn from the marginalized peoples of Palestinian society. What the Pharisees - an influential school of Judaism - saw as sinful disregard of covenant ideals, Jesus saw as the birth of a new covenant, the visible expression of God's liberating reign. In the table fellowship that Jesus and his disciples celebrated, to which outcasts and sinners were invited unconditionally, Jesus was enacting a parable. Here was a foretaste of the messianic banquet, when "many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 8:11; cf. Luke 13:29). Life with Jesus seemed, for those who followed him, like a continuous celebration.

For Jesus, the kingdom of God - the great hope of Israel for God's saving presence - was breaking into the world, taking shape in and through Jesus' words and deeds. He offered men and women unconditional forgiveness for their sins. His teaching was not based on the invocation of rabbinic authority (the "teaching of the elders") or the classical Old Testament prophetic formula: "Thus says Yahweh." Jesus spoke on his own authority. Jewish tradition did not invest the Messiah with the right to forgive sins. The Messiah, according to contemporary Jewish understanding, would exterminate the godless in Israel, crush demonic power and protect his people from the rule of sin, but the forgiveness of sin was never attributed to him. Jesus did not speak as a priestly or prophetic agent assuring God's forgiveness on the day of final judgment, nor did he offer a provisional pardon to be later ratified by a higher court. He forgave sins on the spot, boldly and freely, without appeal to any authority beyond himself.

In declaring to people the forgiveness of sin Jesus bypassed the temple with its divinely instituted priesthood and sacrificial system. If we keep in mind that the temple represented the very identity of Israel as a nation (it served as the focal point of Israel's political, cultural and religious uniqueness), then this revolutionary disregard posited an unprecedented authority. To add to the provocation he performed a symbolic act of divine judgment in the temple precincts, following it up with a message of impending doom on Jerusalem (Mark 11:12-19; 13:1-2). Israel had failed in its calling to be God's agent of healing for the nations, and its temple had become an object of national idolatry. Here Jesus parted from Jewish nationalists who advocated fanatical violence against Rome. Jesus saw the present occupation and future destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies as God's just punishment of a people who had forsaken him, the very God whose name was constantly on their lips.

Jesus further expressed his identity by reshaping Israel - the covenant people of God - around himself. In choosing and commissioning twelve disciples to be his apostles (authorized representatives), he created a representation of the twelve tribes of Israel. He even declared these twelve to be future judges of Israel (Matthew 19:28; Luke 22:30). He did not include himself among the twelve but stood above them, implying that he understood himself to be sent by God to gather and liberate the true Israel to fulfill its calling in the world. His apostles, unlike the prophets of old, would actually taste the power of God's kingdom through their association with him: "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it" (Luke 10:23-24).

Even to call men and women to personal loyalty, expressed in costly discipleship, is to make implicitly an outstanding claim. Jesus drew sharp lines between loyalties to him and to others: "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead" (Matthew 8:22); "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37-38; cf. Mark 8:34-35; Luke 14:25-27).

How high a self-understanding is involved here can be seen when such words are read in their monotheistic, Jewish context. The words of Jesus reinterpret the Old Testament traditions which shaped the pattern of Jewish national and individual life for centuries. His word is set above the law of Moses and the tradition of the elders as the means to life (cf. Matthew 5:21-47; 7:24-27). He calls people to put him before every other relationship in life and even to be willing to give their lives away for his sake. And he makes his case in a culture imbued with the passionate conviction that God is the source and owner of the whole world and that allegiance to this God comes before everything and everybody else. Moreover, Jesus spoke of himself not only as judge of Israel but as the one to whom all nations will give account at the end of history (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). Even more remarkably, the basis of judgment will be the nations' response to him - and expressed in their response to those with whom he has identified himself. The matterof- fact way in which Jesus assumed the rights and prerogatives of Yahweh startled his contemporaries and often provoked the indignation of the religious authorities.

Although Jesus anticipated that his suffering and death would resemble what had befallen other prophets in Jerusalem, unlike them his death would be the climax of his God-given vocation, having redemptive significance for Israel. It would be a "ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45), the inauguration of a new covenant between God and his people through the forgiveness of their sins (Matthew 26:27-28; cf. Isaiah 53:12; Jeremiah 31:31-34). At his last meal with the disciples before his crucifixion Jesus spoke of his coming death as a new exodus, freeing his disciples from the slavery of sin and bringing them into a new relationship with God. His shed blood would be the sacrifice to end all religious sacrifices. Thus we cannot separate the teaching of Jesus about what was involved in following him from how he saw himself in relation to God, Israel and God's world. Jesus' pronouncements on discipleship imply a profound self-understanding.

Avoiding Jesus' challenge by attributing all his truth-claims to the pious imagination of the early Christian community does not get us very far. It still begs the question: What was it about Jesus of Nazareth, compared to other messianic claimants and charismatic figures in Palestine and elsewhere, that led to such outrageous claims about him being made - and believed - within a generation of his death? We are faced with the same choice, this time with regard to the Christian church: Someone said the things attributed to Jesus, and that someone was true, false or deluded.

Even the most skeptical of scholars accepts that the four New Testament Gospels were complete by the end of the first century, while a great many would bring that date forward to a little over one generation after the crucifixion. This small time gap between the events reported and the writing down of the tradition (parts of which, of course, were circulating orally and even in written form well before their final compilations) is itself unique in the history of religious movements. We search in vain for parallels of such rapid developments among followers of other significant leaders. Moreover, consider modern leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, Oscar Romero or Stephen Biko. They had large public followings and died as martyrs for their beliefs and practices. They were deeply mourned, but any group today attributing to these leaders either miracles or claims to divinity would have to contend with living contemporaries who knew better. Similarly, the Christian church could not have made the outlandish claims that it did about Jesus while his contemporaries were still alive - unless those claims were admitted by a wider audience to go back to Jesus himself.

Why is the charge of megalomania so difficult to stick on Jesus? The lifestyle of Jesus and the values he embodied strike even the most hardened skeptic as eminently sane, indeed deeply attractive. Here is a man who describes himself as "gentle and humble of heart" and stoops to wash the feet of his disciples in an act of menial service. No contemporary of Jesus, nor any serious thinker since, has accused Jesus of being insincere or hypocritical in his relations with either friend or enemy. Gandhi and King both drew their inspiration for dealing with those who opposed them from the example and teaching of Jesus. Jesus' lifestyle of lowly, compassionate service toward the sick, vulnerable and oppressed continues to attract many people to him from diverse cultural backgrounds. This combination of an other-oriented lifestyle with self-directed claims makes Jesus utterly unique.

When we explore the great religious traditions of the world, we come across many great figures who impressed their contemporaries with the other-centeredness of their way of life. They lived lives of exemplary courage, compassion and sacri- fice. But such people made no grand claims for themselves other than to be pointers to the truth. One noted authority on Buddhism observes that Guatama the Buddha "saw himself as simply preaching the Dharma [truth]." Indeed, in the Mahayana tradition, Buddhahood is an ideal state open in principle to all life-forms. Likewise, in Islam, Muhammad is simply a prophet, albeit the final prophet, in a long tradition of prophets and messengers commissioned by God to turn people away from idols. In these cases there is no call to personal allegiance, no claim to be communicating anything other than a word from God or an insight into ultimate reality.

We also come across many people who make great self-centered claims, but these claims do not impress us for very long. Julius Caesar, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot have disappeared into the mists of history, but their brutality and self-aggrandizement seem to fit quite naturally with the megalomaniacal claims they made about themselves. But here Jesus stands out as different. You can search the religious traditions of humankind - indeed I would go further and invite you to search all the great literature of humankind - and you will not come across one like Jesus, who makes seemingly the most arrogant claims concerning himself and lives in the most humble and selfless manner conceivable. Jesus of Nazareth simply blows our imagination.

Further, after that period he continued to guide, "indwell" and empower them through his Spirit. All the earliest accounts of Christian origins are agreed that what distinguished the new "Jesus movement" in its Jewish and Greco-Roman environment was that it proclaimed not a new religion or ethic but rather a new event - namely, the resurrection by God of the crucified Jesus - and the implications of that event for the world. Those who are skeptical about such claims have, once again, some tough questions to face. For example, although we have much evidence of anti- Christian polemic from Jewish and Roman sources in the early years of the Jesus movement, we find no one disputing the claim that the tomb in which the body of Jesus had been laid was empty. What reasonable hypothesis, other than the early Christian proclamation, can account for this? The first eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus were, according to the Gospel writers, women. Is it likely that such a story was fabricated in a Jewish milieu where the testimony of women would not have been permissible in a Jewish court of law? Also, something happened to compel the early disciples of Jesus to break with a centuries-old sabbath tradition and worship God on the first day of the week. Something happened to make these Jews, within a few years of the death of Jesus, ascribe to him titles that they traditionally ascribed to Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, and to address prayers and worship to him as they did to Yahweh.

Nor does it make any historical sense to assume that the disciples of Jesus were so crushed by his death and the failure of their dreams that they fantasized Jesus' being raised from death as a way of coping with their painful situation. The Jewish world of the first century was awash with revolutionaries with messianic pretensions, most of whom were put to death by the authorities. Nowhere do we hear of their disappointed and dispersed followers projecting their broken dreams into claims about their hero being raised from the dead. That option was not available to them. The followers of a failed revolutionary had to give up the revolution or else find another leader. Jewish language about "resurrection" was not about a private spiritual experience; it was about a physical and public event. In the Jewish worldview, "resurrection" marked the final conquest of death, the dawn of a new world order, the supreme manifestation of God's justice, mercy and power in history. The question that cannot be evaded, therefore, is this: Why did the earliest disciples use the language of resurrection in relation to Jesus if not because of the fact of his resurrection?