Jesus Revealed: Messenger of the Kingdom of God

The key word for this week is "Prophet." To say that Jesus is a prophet--or, rather, The Prophet--is to consider him in terms that would have been familiar to most of the ancient world. The Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans--every ancient culture had its own version of the prophet. Moreover, the particular prophetic tradition with which Jesus was most readily associated, that of Israel's prophets, already had a very long history that was well known to Jesus' Jewish contemporaries and disciples. Some 500+ times our English translations render Hebrew (nabi`) and Greek (prophetes) nouns in the Bible with the word prophet(s). A quick study of these occurrences reveals much about Israel's prophetic tradition and the things that would have been expected of Jesus the Prophet.

An outside resource to consider this week is The Works of Josephus, as we continue with Part IV of a 12-week sermon series based on Jesus Revealed, a book by Dr. Mark D. Roberts. In the introduction to this week's chapter Dr. Roberts recounts the story of "Jesus the son of Ananias" from Josephus, The Jewish War (6:300-9). He tells the story of this other Jesus to remind us of the extent to which Jesus was a first-century Jewish prophet. Later in the chapter he will quote NT scholar Gordon Fee's reminder that we do not know Jesus at all if we ignore those aspects of Jesus' ministry that are the work of a prophet, especially his preaching of the kingdom of God.

So, what is a prophet? Or, more to the point, how can we better understand Jesus because we know that many people thought of him as a prophet?

The crowds were saying "This is the prophet Jesus, the one from Nazareth in Galilee." (Matthew 21:11) They sought to arrest him but they were afraid of the crowds because the crowds considered him a prophet. (Matthew 21:46) But others were saying, "He is Elijah"; and others were saying "He is a prophet like one of the prophets" [of old]. (Mark 6:15)

Jesus may not have claimed the title "prophet" directly, but neither did he correct those who wanted to call him by that name. And at times he even appears to embrace the designation, at least implicitly: Besides, I must keep on going today and tomorrow, because it is unimaginable for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem. (Luke 13:33. See 4:24, "No prophet is welcome in his own homeland.")

So, what sort of people were the "prophets of old"? What did they do? What sort of ministry did they have?

• Messengers. Ancient Israel's prophets were considered messengers, mail carriers (2 Samuel 12:25) and eye-witness reporters, who were privileged (blessed or cursed) to have overheard or overseen (1 Samuel 9:9) something of importance that took place in the divine courtroom or throne room of God. Usually the thing heard or seen (sometimes in dreams, Numbers 12:6) had to do with a divine decree or decision about some person or group of people, often about earthly kings and nations. (For example, see Job 1-2, where Job was not given even the dignity of a prophet to warn him about what is about to happen; or 1 Kings 22:1-38). The message these prophets bring is not their own; they are merely the conduit for a word from the Lord. Hence the opening or closing line of many an oracle, "Thus says the LORD..., the word of the LORD."
  
• Warn-ers and Bearers of Good Tidings. Often the message sent is one of warning or alarm (2 Kings 17:13-23). At other times the message is one of Good News (Isaiah 40:1-9).
  
• Intercessors. Perhaps because of their proximity to the throne room of God, it is presumed that prophets have God's ear. E.g., Abraham (Genesis 20:7) and Moses. Their prayers are part of the routine of divine correspondence, sort of like sending a message express mail, or having a direct access line.
  
• Anoint-ers. Prophets marked God's choice of a person to be king (or prophet, 1 Kings 19:16) by anointing him: e.g., Samuel anoints Saul (1 Samuel 9:16, 15:1), Samuel anoints David (1 Samuel 16:12-13), Nathan (together with Zadok, the priest) anoints Solomon (1 Kings 1:34, 45), an unnamed prophet is sent by Elisha to anoint Jehu (2 Kings 9:1-13).
  
• Anointed. Prophets were marked as God's chosen by anointing, not always with oil perhaps, and in fact most often by the Spirit of YHWH, which could at times result in forms of ecstasy (e.g., Numbers 11:23-30; 1 Samuel 10:5-13, 19:20-24) or illness (the hand of the LORD is upon me). This in turn set prophets up to be the punch-line of many jokes: prophets were sometimes viewed as teched, partly or completely insane (prophecy is akin to madness, Hosea 9:7).
  
• Makers of Powerful Enemies. (Often killed!) It should not come as a surprise that prophets had enemies. After all, "killing the messenger" is commonplace parlance. Some of the enemies of a prophet could be: rivals or false prophets (Deuteronomy 18:20-22, 1 Kings 18-19, 22); those whom the prophets caught abusing their power (Nathan to David, 2 Samuel 12; Elijah and Elisha to Ahab and Jezebel, 1 Kings 18:4); kings and officials who had fallen into disfavor with God, and the like.
  
• Performers of Symbolic Acts. For example, Ahijah puts on new clothes and then cuts the new cloth into 12 pieces, giving 10 to Jeroboam to symbolize the division of Israel into two kingdoms. (1 Kings 11:29-31)
  
• Performers of Great Works. Here we have in mind especially feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and reviving those who were dead. E.g., Elijah with the widow's son (1 Kings 17:18-24) or Elisha with the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:31-36).

The Prophet

Jesus' contemporaries expected not just another in a long line of ordinary prophets; their expectation had been enlarged to the point that they longed for a final, extraordinary prophet, who would usher in the Kingdom of God. This expectation had roots in exemplary Hebrew prophets from Israel's "golden ages" and in the promise that God would some day again raise up their equals:

• A prophet like Moses. A prophet from your midst, one of your brothers, one like me, YHWH your God will raise up for you. You shall listen to him. (Deuteronomy 18:15) Perhaps the reminder that God still had not raised up a prophet "like Moses, whom YHWH knew face-to-face" (Deuteronomy 34:10; Numbers 12:6-8) served to increase the anticipation of the fulfillment of this promise.
  
• A prophet like Elijah. Behold I am sending to you Elijah the prophet before the coming great and fearful Day of YHWH. (Malachi 4:5)

The question becomes, of course, how Jesus compared to the expectations of his people. How did Jesus fulfill their expectations and how did he "break the mold" and crush their stereotypes and preconceptions about God's prophets? And how does knowing Jesus as our prophet help us see him more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly?

One key may be Jesus' proclamation that the Kingdom of God is near. That sounds very much like the proclamation of some of his predecessors. (E.g., as Dr. Mark Roberts suggests, in Isaiah 33:22, Malachi 1:14, Zephaniah 3:14-20; though, as he also remarks in footnote 15, the exact phrase "the Kingdom of God" does not appear in the OT prophets. Perhaps this is in part because of the pronounced ambivalence of Israel's and Judah's prophets toward the notion of earthly kings and their problematic relationship with God, Israel's one true King. Perhaps it is because the prophets of old viewed every earthly kingdom, especially those of Israel and Judah, as by definition God's Kingdom, though the evidence of God's rule might be hidden, or apparent for a time only in God's judgment against Israel and Judah. The expectation had surely been heightened by Jesus' day and long before that God would some day take the reigns of the world firmly in hand.) Jesus shared his predecessors' notion that God would work God's will on earth--and he announced the message that the time announced by the prophets of old had come. Jesus came into Galilee announcing the Good-News-Message of God and saying that the appointed time has arrived and the Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the Good-News-Message. (Mark 1:14-15)

By conveying God's message about the arrival of the Reign/Kingdom of God, Jesus is fulfilling the role and cultural expectations for a prophet. So is it any wonder he earned that name? Can we be more specific about the nature of the message Jesus brought?

Dr. Mark Roberts does a good job of talking about the Kingdom of God, what it is and what it is not--and how it both is-and-is-not already here. I'll not belabor the points he makes here, but simply list them: 1) the Kingdom of God is more than internal (interpreting Luke 17:20-21 as "the Kingdom of God is among you"; i.e., Jesus is saying that he is exhibit number one for the advent of that Kingdom); 2) God's Kingdom is "already" (Luke 11:20) and "not yet" (Mark 14:25); 3) Jesus' Mighty Works are evidence of the Kingdom (Matthew 11:3-5; Isaiah 35:4-6); 4) the unexpected politics of the Kingdom (Rome remains in power); 5) the enemy of the Kingdom; 6) from self-rule to the rule of God.

Finally, I enjoyed discovering this week at the prompting of Kathy Rockey an Orthodox podcast on the names of Jesus, one of which is specifically about this week's topic. I thought readers of this blog might also enjoy listening to that broadcast: http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/namesofjesus/jesus_-_the_prophet.

National Endowment for the Humanities funds development of new World of the Bible Web Site

The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL, founded in 1880), the oldest and largest international scholarly membership organization in the field of biblical studies, has received an NEH planning grant to develop a website called “The World of the Bible." It will be dedicated to exploring people, places, and passages in the Bible. The site is intended for general audiences and will share scholarly views and encourage critical engagement with the Bible, including its ancient contexts and interpretive legacy.

I encourage followers of this blog to take the survey SBL has prepared to explore the interests of people who are not bible scholars. The goal is to gain a representation of the intended audience and to assess their current level of familiarity with and interest in the Bible.

Survey Link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NH3V5ZZ

If you have any questions about the project, contact Moira Bucciarelli at moira.bucciarelli@sbl-site.org.

Jesus Revealed: The Challenge of Naming

There is a connection between baptism (as in the Baptism of the Lord, which we celebrate this week) and birth/re-birth, naming/re-naming. This is Part II of an introduction to a 12-week sermon series based on Jesus Revealed, a book by Dr. Mark D. Roberts.

The subtitle of the book makes clear the guiding impetus for this study: we want to "Know Him Better to Love Him Better." In the Preface (p. xiii), the well-known song from Godspell ("Day by Day"), originally attributed to St. Richard of Chichester, gives voice to this overwhelming longing we have to know Jesus better, and to this irrepressible desire we have to love him more. Our prayer of supplication is that we be able to follow Jesus as his disciples, as nearly as we are possibly able to follow:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly.

(Image source, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Richardofchichester.png)

The focus of chapter 2 of Jesus Revealed is "Unpacking 'Jesus'." In other words, the first title or name we will study in depth is the primary one, "Jesus." What does it mean that the messenger of God tells the adoptive father, Joseph, to name the baby "Jesus"? You might say that Joseph has been given a divine assist in one of the more challenging aspects of pre-fatherhood, the question what sort of name to give the kid. Go wrong and you could scar the child for life, as in "A Boy Named Sue." Often these days parents will spend months deciding what to name their baby, not with divine aid, although some prayers may be offered up, but with the aid of a book of baby names to guide them on their quest. These baby name guides often provide variant spellings and other information for 100,000 or more names, citing the relative popularity of the name, along with something about the origins of each name and its meaning.



But the messenger who came to Joseph provided all the information that was needed for this naming: call him Jesus, "for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

My own name, Gregory, peaked in popularity in the decade 1960 to 1970 as #23 on the list of 1,000 most popular names for a boy. It is a Greek name that means "watcher," but it is used mostly in English speaking countries. By the end of 2008 it had slipped to #454 on the overall list of 1,000 most popular baby names. Maybe that is because after Gregory Peck, the list of famous people with the name diminished significantly. Who can you think of today with this name? Gregory Goyle (Harry Potter) and Gregory House (the TV series "House"). Even the original namesake, Pope Gregory, has lost some cachet. Who wants to be named after the patron saint of students? (Source, Nickelodeon: Parents Connect) Much better now to be called "Barack," "blessing," a Swahili name, from an Arabic root, sometimes confused with the Hebrew name Barak (baraq, "lightning"). The actual Hebrew equivalent of Barack is Baruch or Beracha ("blessed," "blessing"). (Source, Namipedia, the Baby Name Wizard.)

According to the Social Security Administration report of most popular baby names, Jesus ranked #79 out of a 1,000 in 2008 of popular baby names in the U.S. (a Spanish name, it ranked #35 in Spain). Gregory, #236. Barack, #12,535 (2007) and #2,409 (in 2008; doesn't even make it into the top 1,000, though the projection for 2009 was that it would rank well up in the list [Barack climbs the list.]). And Joshua, the un-shortened English equivalent of the Hebrew-to-Greek-to-Latin name for Jesus? #4 in 2008. There is a Facebook app that has been very popular among my "friends" the last couple of days that answers the question "How original are my parents?" It claims that it will find out how original your parents were in naming you. It gives letter grades: A+, A-, B-, D. I've never seen an F on any of the names of my friends in Facebook, but Mary and Joseph might have gotten an "F" for originality in naming Jesus.

There is an astounding debate (internet chatter) these days about the appropriateness of giving a baby born now the name Jesus: for example, one reader says "I dont think that anyone wants to name their child Jesus (as in Christ) that would be saying that your child is Jesus and there was only ONE" (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006050510670; see also the reader comments at http://www.babyhold.com/list/Spanish_Baby_Names/Jesus/details/). As Dr. Mark Roberts points out, "We tend to hear the name Jesus with sacred overtones" (p. 15), so we English do not tend to use that name for our babies, for fear of committing some sort of sacrilege.

But there were many, many babies, both before and after Jesus of Nazareth (Jesus the Christ), who had the Hebrew name Yehoshua. The name was formed from the combination of the Hebrew name for God (YHWH, or Yah, Yahu, Yahweh) and the word for salvation (Yeshu`ah). Sometimes the generic word for God ('el) was used instead of Yahweh, as in the name Eliysha` (Elisha) to mean the same thing: "God is salvation." Before the exile of Israel and Judah to Assyria and Babylon, these names appeared commonly in Hebrew with great variation: for example Yesha`yahu (Isaiah), Yesha`yah (grandson of Zerubbabel; name occurs in Ezra and Chronicles), and Hoshea` (the original name for Joshua). When the name of God (Yahweh) was added to the front of the word for salvation (rather than after the word, as it was in the previous examples above), the spelling and pronunciation of the name would undergo contraction, especially in later usage: for example, Yehoshua` (Joshua), through contraction becomes Yeshua` (still Joshua) in Hebrew/Aramaic, especially in Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles.

So how do we get the name Jesus? It comes to us via Greek. The name Joshua (in both forms, and also the name Hoshea`) was translated in the Septuagint (the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible completed in Alexandria, Egypt, by the exilic Jewish community in the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C.) as 'Iesous. 'Iesous is the Greek name for Jesus in the New Testament. It arrives in our English Bibles via transliteration of the name from Greek into Latin as Iesus. But Jesus and Mary and Joseph probably spoke Aramaic, as is clear from some of the direct quotations of Jesus in the New Testament (for example, his use of the words mammon, talitha coum, and most famously, abba). As Dr. Armstrong (my Aramaic teacher) used to say to his students, "Aramaic is like Hebrew, only different." You can think of Aramaic as related to Hebrew in the same sort of way that French is related to Spanish. So, when Mary was happy she probably called for Yeshu' or Yeshua` and when she was angry for Ye-ho-shu-a` bar Yo-sep! (Though it must be used with care, Wikipedia has a fine article on the name Yeshua.)

What is the point of all this naming? There are several:

• Jesus was a common man, an ordinary man. He carried a common name, one of the most common in the Second Temple period. (For a notion of the commonality of the name, see Pfann's article on the recent controversy over the so-called Jesus tomb.). Jesus was a carpenter; he must have occasionally hit his thumb. It hurt. He must have known what it is to suffer a headache. To cry. Many of us want to respond to such a description of Jesus like this: "Jesus most certainly was not ordinary!" (p. 17) If we aren't careful, we will begin to think that Jesus only pretended to be human or "seemed to be" human. Like the docetists, heretics of old (maybe not so old), we will begin to deny that Jesus ever really knew what life as a human being is like. We'll deny that he wept or was ever angry or ever really sick. We'll say that it wasn't really a struggle for him to obey God, that he could not ever have faced real temptation. (Hebrews 4:15) But this naming allows us to see Jesus' "ordinariness" and to establish a closer relationship with him. After all, I'm ordinary. I have a common name like Jesus. It is the sort of relationship Joseph Scriven writes about in the second verse of "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," a friend who "knows our every weakness," who has experienced our trials and temptations.
  
• Jesus was a Jewish man. His name brings us back to his circumcision, Torah school, and Kaddish. It brings us especially to the meaning of his "people," who aren't Christian or gentile, but Jews, whom he came to save.
  
• Finally, as Dr. Mark Robert suggests, Jesus is a surprise. He was certainly a surprise to Joseph, and if we get to know him well he might just be a surprise to us.

Jesus Revealed

We begin now a 12-week series of sermons and small group studies based on the book by Mark D. Roberts. This series will take us through Lent and up to Palm Sunday and Easter. Copies of the book are available for members of the congregation in the Gathering Place. I encourage families to pick up a copy of the book and follow along, reading a chapter a week to accompany the Bible studies and sermons.

Dr. Roberts starts the first chapter with a list of places where Jesus has been seen lately, "in the water-stained wall of a house," "on a billboard for Pizza Hut," and in the skillet burns on a tortilla. His litany reminds me of "Jesus and Tomatoes," one of the first songs I ever heard by historian-turned-singer-songwriter Kate Campbell.




She is now one of my all-time favorite song writers, a real balladeer.

Kate Campbell page on Amazon.com

As Kate tells the story, the song came together when she saw a roadside sign in North Carolina proclaiming "Jesus and tomatoes coming soon!" This bit of serendipity, juxtaposed with the story of the "nun bun" (the figure of Mother Theresa that appeared in a pastry at the Bongo Java coffeehouse in Nashville, TN), led to the creation of a song in which the image of Jesus appears on a tomato, a "Tennessee Bradley, the best homegrown you'll find!" The owner of the tomato patch makes a killing until someone, either divine messenger or I.R.S. minion, shows up to shut her down.

(Image source, http://www.sustainableseedco.com/images/P/bradley-tomato.jpg)

Perhaps a better title song for this series is "Looking for Jesus," on the 2008 CD Save the Day.


You can read Kate's story along with many others in the book Girls Rock!

The point is

• Longing. There is a great desire on the part of many people to know Jesus. People will go to all sorts of lengths to find Jesus, go anywhere, do anything.
  
• Idolatry. We too often create a Jesus in our own image. We see Jesus where we want to and ban from our imaginations the sort of Jesus who might meddle in the secret places of our hearts and lives, where we hide in darkness hoping not to be found and hoping not to find the Jesus who has all of the time been looking for us. We are all-too-eager to find Jesus in an image on a tortilla and all-too-wary of finding that he wants to transform us into his likeness. We pick and choose those parts of the gospels that fit our own preconceptions and that least challenge our own way of living and make those parts we like into the Jesus we hope to discover.

Many folks have made this point, that we indeed tend to see the image of Jesus that is most comfortable for us staring back out at us from our readings of the gospels. If we are middle class capitalists, we assume Jesus was also a middle class capitalist. If we are socialists, so was Jesus. If we are non-conformists, so was he. Albert Schweitzer is famous for his formulation of this problem in the Quest of the Historical Jesus.



In his Quest, Schweitzer examined the works of more than fifty 18th- and 19th-century authors and scholars and concluded famously that they had made up their images of Jesus out of their desire for a savior who was the spittin' image of themselves. Their Jesus shared their biases and cultural mores. Schweitzer concluded more than that, of course, even contributing his own reading of who Jesus really was (a radical eschatological preacher and Jewish apocalyptic prophet) to the mix of those others he had examined. In other words, Schweitzer was a precursor of the modern questers for the historical Jesus, the Jesus Seminar and their like. What they arrive at in their pictures of Jesus is someone who is fully human (i.e., historical), but not fully divine. For people of faith--or for people who are seeking the Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ--such renderings of Jesus will always be unsatisfactory. Such pictures and biographies of Jesus will leave their longings unfilled.

The characterization of this quest by Dr. Mark Roberts in Jesus Revealed is quite negative, especially his view of the Jesus Seminar and its founder, Bob Funk. Bob, now deceased, was a graduate of Butler University and the Christian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Indianapolis, so Hoosiers may be forgiven for viewing Bob with a kinder eye. Though something of a showman (he was known to drive a pink Cadillac as a company car, if the Scholars Press rumors are to be believed), quite an attention getter, and never at all a shrinking violet, his work has resulted in much serious attention to the subject at hand, Jesus himself, as Jesus can be known from his own words as quoted by his followers in the gospels. It seems to me that there could be worse pursuits. Yes, the pursuit is often done in such a way as to yield results prejudiced against faith, but that needn't be (and sometimes isn't) the case. Orthodoxy asks us to confess a Jesus who is fully historical and fully divine, a paradox that requires us to embrace a Brother Funk as a fellow quester. Christians believe that the very historical, human Jesus was also very God. ...while never ceasing to be fully human and historical. So Funk's work, to the extent that it reveals the "historical" Jesus, reveals something but not all of the Jesus Christ we seek.

The scriptures themselves know about this seeking for Jesus and this great variety of opinion about him. In Matthew 16:13, Jesus himself takes part in the quest: “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” During his lifetime, people from other nations sought him out (the Magi, only obvious at this season, but also the Greeks, who came to Philip in John 12:20 saying, "Sir, we would like to see Jesus").

The church continued for centuries (we must admit, continues still to this very day) to argue over the person of Jesus, carrying on with the controversies long after his death and resurrection. The Nicene Creed (see last week's blog entry) states the classic, orthodox position: Jesus is "of one substance with the Father," "very God of very God," and "was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man." The Council of Chalcedon later stated that Jesus Christ is perfectly God and perfectly human, having two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (in Latin translation, in duabus naturis inconfuse, immutabiliter, indivise, inseparabiliter). It may be possible for historians and the Jesus Seminar to divide and separate the human, historical Jesus from the Christ of faith (as per the Frontline questers for the historical Jesus), but the result is not the Jesus Christ of our confessions of faith, not the one with whom we have a continuing, living relationship as our Lord and Savior. Where the historical is separated and divided from the divine, the character and person of Jesus Christ has not truly been discerned and the revelation has been distorted. Historical (German, "scientific") dissection leaves us a Jesus who is dead, not resurrected and living still.

Dr. Mark Roberts rightly points us to the scriptures, and specifically to those "names and titles" for Jesus that are used by Jesus and by his followers to say who he is. These scriptures are our corrective. These "names and titles" for Jesus, as they are found in Scripture, will serve as our guideposts as we begin a quest for Jesus Revealed. Each name or title will serve to point out one aspect of Jesus that we will get to know better so that we can love him more. This Jesus revealed in Scripture is Jesus the Christ, the one in whom we believe, the one with whom we have a relationship. The greater our understanding of these facets of his personality that are named in Scripture, the greater the fulfillment of our longing for him, and the deeper our love for him will grow.

The names and titles to which we will turn in the following weeks are the stuff primarily of Christology, so we will spend our time delving into each title and its meaning and seeing how the names and titles are related to one another; seeing how (for example) the Son of Man, Son of God, and Word of God meet in Jesus of Nazareth.



One of my favorite books for thinking about Christology is Professor Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus through the Centuries. In the images of Jesus Christ throughout history, one finds a crystallization of the beliefs of our ancestors (and, depending on the age of the image, of our contemporaries) about Jesus Christ, who they knew him to be, and especially how they understood the names and titles used by and about him. I hope to include particularly illustrative examples from the web for each name and title as we go through this series of sermons, being mindful, of course, of the human tendency toward idolatry, toward portraying Jesus as ourselves.

Now for a comment or two about today's readings:

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Ephesians 1:3-14

John 1:10-18