Simply Jesus - Chapter 10a "Battle and Temple"

Chapter 9 ended with Wright's observation that the four Jewish leaders whose story he recounted all had two major parts to their kingdom agenda, and those were "battle" and "Temple". Jesus too had these great themes in His understanding of God's kingdom, so "what did Jesus do with those great interlocking themes of the battle and the victory, on one hand, and the building or cleansing of the Temple (the place of God's presence), on the other?" Chapter 10 attempts to answer this question; I will cover this chapter with two posts, one about the "battle" and one about the "Temple."

"...wherever we look, it appears that Jesus was aware of a great battle in which he was already involved and that would, before too long, reach some kind of climax." However, the battle that Jesus was involved in wasn't what His contemporaries were expecting him to fight. It was different because the enemy was a different kind of enemy.

The author proceeds to talk about "the satan", which means in Hebrew "the accuser." By the time Jesus appeared, the words being used for this source of evil were words such as "Beelzebul/b", "the evil one". The early followers of Jesus believed that He defeated "the satan" in His personal wilderness temptation, in His exorcisms of demons, and in His death. Revelation 20 assures us that there will be final victory over this enemy but meanwhile, there are still fierce struggles for Christians.

The battle that Jesus waged was against this spiritual power. The influence of modern skepticism has made western people confused over the existence of such evil; on the other hand, as Wright warns, "the shrill retort from 'traditionalists', insisting on seeing everything in terms of 'supernatural' issues, hardly helps either...Despite the caricatures, the obsessions, and the sheer muddle that people often get themselves into on this subject, there is such a thing as a dark force that seems to take over people, movements, and sometimes whole countries, a force or a set of forces that can make people do things they would never normally do."

Wright goes out of his way to emphasize that without the understanding that evil is a dark force behind human reality, then the issue of "good" and "bad" becomes "fatally easy"; in other words, if we don't understand that there are real and dark forces behind institutions and groups and nations, we naively fall into categorizing and typecasting people like "us" as the basically good people and people like "them" as basically evil.

We must understand that there are non-human forces capable of using "us" as well as using "them" in the service of evil. This makes things more complicated but also more realistic and no longer allows us to be simplistic about who is being used by these forces..."If there is an enemy at work," says Wright, "it is a subtle, cunning enemy, much too clever to allow itself to be identified simply with one person, one group, or one nation..."  (This is one of the great dangers in aligning oneself strongly with a political party since all political groups have dark forces at work behind them.)

In this spiritual battle Jesus was redefining who the enemies were and who the friends were. "Traditional enemies were suddenly brought, at least in principle, within the reach of the blessing of God's great jubilee. And traditional friends - those who might have thought that they were automatically on the right side - had to be looked at again. Perhaps one can no longer simply identify 'our people' as on the side of the angels and 'those people' as agents of the satan. That's why Jesus was run out of town and nearly killed. He had suggested that foes could become friends and by implications was warning that the 'good people' might become enemies..."

Jesus' battle was with the root problem - not people but "the satan," the dark force that works and uses "us" and "them". The early victory was won in the wilderness temptation when the satan failed to get Jesus to grasp the right goal by using the wrong means, thereby bringing Jesus over to his side (Matt. 4; Mark 1; Luke 4). This victory made possible Jesus' announcement that God's kingdom was beginning, and it "created a space in which God's kingdom can now make inroads, much as the early victory of Judah the Hammer created space for the Temple to be cleansed...But this kingdom, God's kingdom, can only finally be established through the final battle. The enemy troops will mass again, close in, and do their worst to repair the earlier damage."


The final battle was Jesus' confrontation with "the satan" on the cross where victory was won by allowing darkness to do its worst. Jesus didn't allow Himself to be distracted from the real battle by identifying the satan with the humans involved (Rome, Herod, the chief priests). 

"Jesus has redefined the royal task around his own vision of where the real problem lies. And he has thereby redefined his own vocation, which he takes to be the true vocation of Israel's king: to fight and win the key battle, the battle that will set his people free and establish God's sovereignty and saving rule, through his own suffering and death."

The chapter finishes with a section on the Temple, the second major theme of the kingdom agenda that Jewish leaders understood to be imperative. More on that in a day or two...

God's Confidants...

I posted this quote by George MacDonald last year. It's from the book, "Discovering the Character of God":

"Terribly has the gospel of Jesus suffered in the mouths of the wise and prudent! How would it be faring now had its first messages been committed to persons of great repute, instead of those simple fishermen? From the first we would have had a system founded on a human interpretation of the divine gospel, instead of the gospel itself. As it is, we have had one dull miserable human system after another usurping its place. But thank God, the gospel remains!

"Had the wise and prudent been the confidants of God, the letter would at once have usurped the place of the spirit, and a system of religion with its rickety, malodorous plan of salvation, would have been put in place of a living Christ. The great Brother, the human God, the eternal Son, the living One, would have been utterly hidden from the tearful eyes and aching hearts of the weary and heavy laden.

"But the Father revealed his things to babes, because the babes were his own little ones, uncorrupted by the wisdom or the care of this world, and therefore able to receive them. The babes are near enough whence they come to understand a little how things go in the presence of their Father in heaven, and thereby to interpret the words of the Son. Quickly will the Father seal the old bond when the Son himself, the first of the babes, the one perfect Babe of God, comes to lead the children out of the lovely 'shadows of eternity' into the land of the 'white celestial thought.' As God is the one, only, real Father, so is it only to God that anyone can be a perfect child. Only in His garden can childhood blossom."

Simply Jesus - Chapter 9 "The Kingdom Present and Future"

Wright begins the chapter in this way: "When Jesus healed people, when he celebrated parties with all and sundry, when he offered forgiveness freely to people as if he were replacing the Temple itself with his own work - in all these ways it was clear...that this wasn't just a foretaste of a future reality. This was reality itself. This was what it looked like when God was in charge...But there are constant hints...that the coming of the kingdom would depend on future events yet to be realized. He speaks again and again of a coming cataclysm - a great disaster, a judgment, terrible events that would turn the world upside down...
So how can the kingdom be both present and future? What was Jesus trying to say?..."

The rest of the chapter is a study of four men (two of them who lived before Jesus and two who lived after Jesus). By looking at the careers of these four leaders of Israel, Wright is showing how this present-and-future tension was a common reality. The four men are:

Judah Maccabeus, "The Hammer"

1.  Judas Maccabeus ("Judah the Hammer") who rose to prominence during the 160's BC crisis, almost exactly 200 years before Jesus' public ministry.
2.  Simon bar-Kosiba ("Simon the Star") who rose to leadership in AD 132, just about 100 years after Jesus' public career.
3.  Herod Antipas ("Herod the Great") who was placed in power as the "King of the Jews" by Rome in 40 BC.
4.  Simon bar-Giora who appeared at another time of social and political chaos when the great revolt against Rome's rule started in AD 66, ending in the Temple's destruction in AD 70.

For the sake of brevity, I will look only at the first of these leaders, Judah the Hammer, as an example of the "present-and-future" tension commonly at work in these leaders. (Wright's study of the other three is very interesting and is further support for the point he is making about Jesus' kingdom.)

The crucial period of Judah's career was a 3-year campaign that ended in a triumphant entry into Jerusalem and a cleansing of the Temple. It was Syria that was the enemy; Syria's king, Antiochus Epiphanes, had desecrated the Temple by rededicating it to the god Zeus; he attempted to crush the resistant spirit of the Jews by forcing them to eat pork, thereby breaking their sacred law. Judas was the figurehead leader of the Hasmonean family which led the resistance movement. He waged a 3-year guerrilla war at the end of which he purged the Temple of the pagan elements. (It is this victory that the Jews celebrate each year in the festival of Hanukkah.)

Judah's victory "sharpened up the ancient story line: the wicked tyrant oppressing God's people, the noble and heroic leader risking all, fighting the key battle, cleansing the Temple, and setting Israel free to follow God and his law once more. This was the story of Moses, Egypt, and the Exodus. It was the story of David, Solomon, the Philistines and the Temple. It was the story of Babylon overthrown, of return from exile...Some people believed it had all come true in and through Judah and his brothers..."

However, with the passing of time, the reality that prophecies had not been fulfilled and utopia had not arrived with Judah's victory began to dawn on the people. The fact was that the Hasmonean family were themselves far from perfect as rulers of the Jews. And so pressure groups, most famously the Pharisees, arose to try to force the issue. The Pharisees were deeply loyal to their understanding of ancient traditions and fervently expected God to act once more. So once again, when Jesus of Nazareth appeared on the scene about 200 years later, the hopes and prayers of the people had all the elements of Israel's dream: the wicked rulers, the people's suffering, the hero, the battle, the victory, the rule over surrounding nations, the establishment of God's dwelling.

The author's point in exploring the careers of leaders on both sides of Jesus historically is to clarify two things about Jesus' public career: first, that there was always a "well-recognized set of expectations for a 'king of the Jews,' with roots extending all the way back to the Exodus...victory over the pagans and cleansing or rebuilding the Temple were high on the list" of the expectations.

Model of Temple built by Herod the Great

The second thing clarified by examining these leaders is it was expected that any such campaign would have at least two "'key moments': first, the time when the flag was raised, and then the moment when the final battle was won and the Temple was rebuilt. Such movements would expect to live between these two moments, between an initial announcement and a final victory."

David exemplifies this in his being anointed as king long before he was finally enthroned..."Once we learn to think the way Jews of the time thought and indeed take into consideration the real political situation (rather than just a set of religious ideas or beliefs), the idea of a kingdom that is both emphatically present and emphatically future is not a problem..."

All of the 4 characters in this chapter had two major parts to their kingdom agenda: the battle(s) they fought or hoped to fight, and the Temple they cleansed or rebuilt or hoped to rebuild. "What did Jesus do with those great interlocking themes of the battle and the victory on the one hand, and the building or cleansing of the Temple (the place of God's presence) on the other?"

Chapter 10 answers this question about these great themes of battle and the Temple.

Boiling it All Down and Summing it All Up

One of my favorite bloggers is Brant Hansen who wrote the following recently about what it means to belong to God. (This is a portion of his post. If you want to read all of it, you can find it here: http://www.air1.com/blog/brant/post/2011/11/07/Does-Falling-in-Love-with-Jesus-Skeeve-You-Out.aspx)

"I'm not the one who chose the 'bride of Christ' metaphor.  The Great Wedding Feast is going to happen, and you're not invited just to attend.  You're invited to be standing up, front and center...And I didn't write the Song of Songs, or Hosea, who got to understand how God feels as a jilted lover.


'But there's a lot more to Christianity than 'falling in love' with Jesus.'
 
I used to agree with that.  Now?  Not so much...Jesus was the one who boiled it all down, and, you can bet, the religious folk didn't like it one bit, when he said that all the rules could be summed up with one, and another like it.  "LOVE the Lord your God..." 
 
Love God.  With all your heart, soul, mind, strength... love.  Jesus said that.  Too simple?  Yeah, it still bothers religious people.  We desperately want to make this a pure intellectual exercise, checking off beliefs and arguing doctrine.  We want our religious educations to mean something, all those hours at seminary, or in Sunday School, or listening to sermon after sermon, or reading Christian books.  And then someone comes along and "sums it all up" with love?
 
Some didn't like that, and some don't like that.  And then he went and picked a bunch of uneducated types to be his disciples.  Rabbis don't do that. It's a point no one could miss, and the religious didn't like it.
 

'But it makes things too simple.  It sounds like something a young Christian, who doesn't know much, would say.'

Maybe.  But you know what?  It also sounds like something a very old Christian would say...We start with 'Jesus loves me, this I know,' and then we complexify everything, and debate pre-destination and women's roles in the church or whatever, but when we're sitting on the front porch, in our twilight, watching our great-grandchildren, we're not into debating anymore.  It's back to 'Jesus loves me, this I know.'

'But isn't it going too far to say it comes down to just 'loving' God?  Just 'loving' Jesus?  What about all the stuff we're supposed to do to prove our love?'

Jesus said there would be impressive-sounding religious people who will say to him, in the end, 'Lord, didn't we do all this awesome religious stuff for you?' (my paraphrase) and he's going to say, 'I didn't know you.'

He wants our hearts.  We are to love him.

'But that sounds almost childlike, like just anyone could do that, and -- '
 

YEP."

Simply Jesus - Chapter 8 "Stories that Explain and a Message that Transforms"

In chapter 7 N.T. Wright talks about Jesus starting the "campaign" of God becoming King through His announcements of the coming of the kingdom of God and through His actions that reflected what the Jews would have known to expect of God's Messiah (the healings and miracles and parties and the choosing of twelve disciples). All of this was compelling to the Jews who knew in their bones from their history what all of this signified.

In this chapter Wright deals with Jesus' stories which He told as part of His campaign. It was His main way of explaining what was going on. "They were stories designed to tease, to clothe the shocking and revolutionary message of God's kingdom in garb that left the hearers wondering, trying to think it out, never quite able (until near the end) to pin Jesus down. They were stories that, eventually, caused some to decode his deep, rich message in such a way as to frame a charge against him, either of blasphemy, sedition, or 'leading the people astray.'"

Jesus' stories were echoes of the ancient scriptural promises and they reminded people of Israel's future hopes and implied that those hopes were now being fulfilled even if in a different way than they expected. The parables  are stories that give kingdom explanations for Jesus' kingdom actions and are saying, "This is what it looks like when God is in charge."

This chapter of the book is rich with examples of different types of stories that Jesus used, such as:
1.  Heavenly stories ("other-worldly goings-on") with clear earthly meanings to convey the message about things that ought to be happening now on earth, not just in heaven. (Example: Luke 16:19-31)

2.  Many of His stories pick up Israel's story from the past - the Exodus, the creation, God and Israel, the Exile... (Ex: Matthew's parable about the sower, also told in Mark 4:1-20 and Luke 8:4-15).

3.  Stories that include apocalyptic vision, and the book of Daniel plays an important role in understanding Jesus' use of apocalyptic vision in His stories. Daniel's visions are about the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the world, which is what Jesus was talking about too! "The book of Daniel was designed to be subversive, to act as 'resistance literature' to help the Jews as they faced persecution. Jesus seems to have designed his parables a bit like that too - though now to help his followers understand the deeper and stranger point, namely, that he was calling into being a renewed 'Israel' over against not only the might of pagan empire, but the official structures of Judaism itself (Herod, the chief priest, and so on)... Apocalyptic visions of this sort are about the coming of God's kingdom on earth as in heaven. The point of 'apocalyptic' is that the seer, the visionary - Daniel, Jesus - is able to glimpse what is actually going on in heaven and, by means of this storytelling technique, the strange-story-plus-interpretation, is able to unveil, and therefore actually to set forward, the purposes of heaven on earth. The very form of the parable thus embodies the content it is trying to communicate: heaven on earth."  (Ex: the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 includes this dimension.

4.  Pithy sayings and extended metaphors. (Ex: Matthew 9:14-17)

5.  Stories that show Israel's lack of interest in Jesus' kingdom. (Ex: Matthew 21:33-46)

Jesus' stories all contribute toward the wider narrative of His public life: the long-desired kingdom of God is coming  on earth as in heaven but the very "children of the kingdom" are missing it! Any idea that Jesus' teachings were simply moral/religious teachings about a new pattern of spirituality is a way of domesticating Jesus and His message. His stories were highly offensive to both the religious and the political powers of His day (and are the same today). "...If God was to become king it would be - it could only be - by some kind of a confrontation with these forces...Jesus' campaign was never going to be a smooth, easy ride to power...Jesus had grasped that, if God was to become king on earth as in heaven, something deeper than outward reformation would be required. It wouldn't do simply to tighten up existing laws and regulations and enforce them more strictly. That's what the Pharisees wanted to do; they were a popular pressure group urging a moral reformation as part of their own vision of how God might become king..."

Chapter 7 concludes with a section on transformed hearts and shows how Jesus' point in dealing with such issues as divorce and adultery (as in Mark 10:1-12) is not primarily a discussion on family ethics but (against the backdrop of Herod Antipas' adultery and consequent murder of John Baptist) to point out the hardness of heart that was behind Moses' granting permission for divorce and that when God becomes king, "he will provide a cure for hardness of heart." There is no "chance of this teaching collapsing into a private piety...To ask the question about divorce in that setting is no mere theoretical enquiry. It was inviting Jesus to incriminate himself, to say something that might lead Antipas to do to Jesus what he'd done to John..."

And so we're seeing that Jesus' campaign for the kingdom has included the elements of healings, celebrations, forgiveness, the renewed heart (and more). Now comes the question about what Jesus thought related to whether the kingdom was already here or yet to come...or might it be both in some respects??  Chapter nine will deal with this question...

The Cross and the Prodigal

As we continue our journey with N.T. Wright into attempting to grasp a bit of the first-century way of  understanding God in Jesus' actions and teachings, I will share a short paragraph from the beautiful book, The Cross and the Prodigal, by Kenneth E. Bailey (http://www.amazon.com/The-Cross-Prodigal-Through-Peasants/dp/0830832815/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339620969&sr=8-1). The context of this quote is Bailey's presentation of how Middle Eastern peasants of Jesus' day would have understood the story of the "lost son" that Jesus told - the story we typically label as "the prodigal son."

"Traditional Western interpretation has said that the father interrupted the son and didn't give him a chance to finish his speech. Rather, faced with the incredible event (his father's stunning display of love by shamelessly running bare-legged towards him), he is flooded with the awareness that his real sin is not the lost money but rather the wounded heart. The reality and the enormity of his sin and the resulting intensity of his father's suffering overwhelm him. In a flash of awareness he now knows that there is nothing he can do to make up for what he has done. His proposed offer to work as a servant now seems blasphemous. He is not interrupted. He changes his mind and accepts being found. In this manner he fulfills the definition of repentance that Jesus sets forth in the parable of the lost sheep. Like the lost sheep, the prodigal now accepts to be found."

 

Simply Jesus - Chapter 7b "The Campaign Starts Here"

The second part of chapter seven has a lengthy portion in which N.T. Wright more fully develops these themes of healing and forgiveness. He takes time to look at Jesus' first big announcement in a synagogue  when He quoted Isaiah 61 about the anointing of God upon Him (Luke 4). His hearers would have heard this declaration as a fulfillment of the Jubilee and a releasing from all debt and slavery - they would have understood this to be not only personal forgiveness but a corporate forgiveness.

Immediately after Jesus' announcement that He was the fulfillment of this prophecy, He added His own commentary to say that it was the "outsiders" who would benefit from this. This, of course, enraged those in the synagogue who viewed the gentiles as less important in God's eyes than  the chosen people. Once again, Jesus was letting people know that God was indeed taking charge, but that it was going to look unlike anything they had pictured.

Wright also touches on the forgiveness issue by telling the story of the prostitute who washed his feet with her tears and anointed His feet with perfume in the house of Simon the Pharisee; and he closes the chapter with a section about Jesus' cousin John and his death at the hands of Herod. In response to John's question from prison about His identity (hinting that John may have wondered why Jesus wasn't delivering him since He was the expected Messiah), Jesus' explanation about who He was picked up a strand in the ancient Jewish expectation that went along with their dreams of the final battle and the rebuilding of the Temple and the return of their God to Zion. "When he tells John's messengers that the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, and so forth, he is quoting directly from Isaiah's vision of a 'return from exile' that would also be nothing short of a new creation." (Isa.35:5,6)


"Jesus was well aware that what he was doing didn't fit with what people were expecting. But he believed that he was indeed launching God's kingdom campaign...The campaign isn't about someone running for office as happens in our modern democracies. Jesus isn't going around trying to drum up support like today's politicians. He is much more like a rebel leader within a modern tyranny, setting up an alternative government, establishing his rule, making things happen in a new way. He chooses twelve of his closest followers and seems to set them apart as special associates. For anyone with eyes to see, this says clearly that he is reconstituting God's people, Israel, around himself. Israel hadn't had twelve tribes since the eighth century BC...but the prophets had spoken of the day when all the tribes would be gathered again. Jesus' choice of the twelve seems to indicate, symbolically, that this is how he wanted his work to be seen. This is a campaign. It's a rebel movement, a risky movement, a would-be royal movement under the nose of the present would-be 'king of the Jews,' Herod Antipas." 

Chapter 8 explores the stories that Jesus was telling and what they were about and how they helped the campaign move forward. Grace and peace to you!

Simply Jesus - Chapter 7a "The Campaign Starts Here"

In chapter seven, Wright continues dealing with Jesus' proclamation that God's kingdom was arriving in Him, and people need to turn back and believe the good news (Mark 1:15).

In that day and in that society this proclamation that God himself was becoming king would have been offensive to two groups at least: one was Herod Antipas who was located in the north where Jesus started His campaign; the other group was the chief priests located in the south. Both of these groups were appointed and kept in place by Rome. They were Rome's power brokers who were charged with collecting taxes for Rome and keeping the people under control. If either Herod or the high priest (head of the chief priests) caught word of someone walking around announcing that God was becoming king, they knew it would spell big trouble.

Just like one of Caesar's heralds would do when a new emperor was taking over, Jesus was going around proclaiming that God was now becoming king. He wasn't making this announcement in a vacuum. He was making it while someone else was in charge so was virtually saying, "The campaign is starting here." 

What did this mean? The complete fulfillment of what He was saying was not yet, but meanwhile He was demonstrating, up close and personal, what it looks like for God to be in charge - His healings and celebrations were part of what it meant. Healing and celebration were directly connected with the Exodus theme of justice and peace. "...he was concerned not just with outward structures, but with realities that would involve the entire person, the entire community. No point putting the world right if the people are still broken." 

And parties! The parties were celebrations over the fact that God was finally taking charge! And Jesus seemed to always party with the wrong people! This was because they were the ones who saw the error of their ways while the religious people thought they were just fine. These celebrations with Jesus at the center of them in the streets or in Matthew's house or Zacchaeus's house or in a tavern or with Mary Magdalene and her friends were all ways of showing that the campaign was under way.

Forgiveness

One other important element in Jesus' ministry was forgiveness; "forgiveness transforms like nothing else." And when Jesus forgave the man lying on the stretcher in Mark 2:1-2, it was like "walking into town and declaring that we have a new emperor." Forgiveness was what you got in the Temple under the authority of the chief priests! ...but something new is going on; and when Jesus went on to heal the man, "the crowd in the house, which wouldn't part to let the sick man in, now parts, like the Red Sea, to let the healed man out."

"Forgiveness and healing! The two go closely together, personally and socially." The significance of forgiveness can be better understood by looking further into Israel's history at her exile; they were taken captive by Babylon because of their sin and idolatry. "In a culture where honor and shame were everything, the exile brought deep, deadly shame upon Israel. And, in the eyes of the watching world, on Israel's God. But if that is so, then forgiveness must mean that exile is now over (Isaiah 40:1-2)...Just as physical healing is the up-close-and-personal version of what it looks like when God takes charge, to fix and mend the whole world, so individual forgiveness is the up-close-and-personal version of what it looks like when God does what he promised and restores his exiled people."

I'll finish covering this chapter in a day or so...

Discipling or Proselytizing...?

I'm quoting Roland Allen from his outstanding book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, in the chapter about how we western believers have a "fear for the doctrine"; in other words, worry about people not getting the "doctrine" correctly motivates too much of what we do, and Jesus ends up being relegated to a secondary place. He is the First Cause and we tend to stress the secondary causes:

"Fear for the doctrine...leads us to put the doctrine in the wrong place...We speak as if the Gospel and the doctrine, preaching Christ and preaching Christianity, were identical terms.

"There is a difference between the revelation of a Person and the teaching of a system of doctrine and practice.

"...our doctrine so dominates our mind that we can scarcely believe that men can love Christ and be saved by Him unless they know and use our doctrinal expressions. Because we find this difficult we inevitably tend to give the teaching of our doctrine the first place in our work...But the Person is greater and far excels it.

"When we fall into this error, we inevitably tend to make the acceptance of the shadow, the doctrine, the system, the aim and object of our work. In doing that we are doing something of which Christ spoke in very severe terms. To make converts to a doctrine is to make proselytes."

Simply Jesus - Chapter 6 "God's In Charge Now"

Chapter 6 begins the second section of the book, Simply Jesus. In the first part N.T.Wright deals with who Jesus was; the second part is about what Jesus did that caused people to believe He was God's Messiah as opposed to the many who came and went claiming to be the One.

In His short public career, everywhere Jesus went there was a crowd; He was known for being the cause of a party and celebration wherever He went, and the reason was that He was always healing people of all kinds of diseases (Matt. 4:23).

Referring back to chapter one and the perfect storm swirling around Jesus, Wright points out the three elements in play related to the miraculous in today's world: 1) the western wind of skepticism related to the miraculous; 2) the high pressure system of conservatism argues back that of course, you would expect miracles if there is a "supernatural" God and Jesus is His Son; and finally 3) the hurricane of the complexity of understanding the world in which Jesus lived asking "what do we actually know about these things within first-century history anyway?"

The author gives some short answers to these questions:

1. Jesus attracted large crowds, and this is clearly attributed to the healings that went on.
2. There are reports of opponents accusing Him of being in league with the devil; people don't usually accuse someone of being in league with the devil unless some remarkable things are happening.
3. The explanation Jesus gave for what was going on was that something new was happening - something powerful, different, dramatic. These explanations only make sense if what He's doing is dramatic enough to raise questions.
4. Maybe we should begin to be skeptical about skepticism itself; skepticism has thrived in the post-Enlightenment world which didn't want God nor anyone else to be king. And so skepticism itself, which parades as something "neutral" or "objective", is a way to not have to take God seriously.
5. "To the voices that trumpet their support for a 'supernatural' God doing 'miracles' through his divine 'Son', I would just say for the moment, 'Be careful with your worldview. You're in danger of reaffirming the very split-level cosmos that Jesus came to reunite.'"

Wright continues by dealing with the announcement Jesus was making about the kingdom of God having arrived. But many others had made similar claims in Israel's history only to fail. (And, just as we in our world we go through cycles with leaders and have fresh hope in a new leader only to discover he is like the one before him, so Israel went through this for centuries.)

"Why did people have any hope that Jesus would be any different?"

In order to understand what the Jews believed would happen when God became king, we must understand why they never gave up hope in spite of their long history of one leader after another rising and falling and proving not to be the Messiah they hoped for.

Wright gives a short summary of Israel's history under domination of empires (Babylon, Persia/Greece, Egypt, Syria, Rome) and then says, "...if, as the Jewish people believed, they were the key element to God's global rescue operation, it was doubly frustrating, doubly puzzling, and doubly challenging that the Jews' own national life had itself been in such a mess for so long...One pagan nation after another took charge, ruling the Middle East in its own way...How on earth do you sustain hope over more than half a millennium, while you're watching one regime after another come and go, some promising better things, but all letting you down in the end?..."

The answer to this is that you keep telling the story and singing the songs and celebrating God's victory even though it keeps not happening. And the greatest story of all of Israel's history is the Exodus story. Jesus himself chose this story to be the context for the climax of his short career.

There are seven outstanding features to this story which all first-century Jews would have known "in their bones." All of this is critical in order to understand what Jesus thought he was doing.

In brief, the seven key features are:
1) Wicked tyrant - Pharaoh, the most visible symbol of the problems the people faced.
2) Chosen leader - Moses was called to announce that God was coming to their rescue and then led the people out of slavery.
3) Victory of God - God's great victory over Pharaoh was what it means to say that Israel's God has taken charge; He is the king now!
4) Rescue by sacrifice - God achieved this rescue in such a way that it was clear that it was a special act of mercy and favor. It was during the preparations for this Passover when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.
5) New vocation and way of life - at Mt. Sinai the "marriage covenant" between Israel and God took place and God gave them his law indicating a way of life that would "show the world what its maker had had in mind."
6) Presence of God - God himself was with Israel in this journey and a tabernacle was erected where God would dwell among his people, and later a permanent version of the tabernacle (the Temple) was built.
7) Promised/inherited land - all of this happened to fulfill the ancient promises to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob that they would inherit the land of Palestine.

The hope of everyone who celebrated this event every year was that God one day would repeat what he had done before in the Exodus!

The chapter ends with this statement: "This was the story Jesus knew from boyhood...This was the story Jesus' hearers would have remembered when they heard him talking about God taking charge at last...He must have known what he was doing, what pictures he was awakening in people's minds. When he was talking about God taking charge, he was talking about a new Exodus."

Next time on to chapter 7, "The Campaign Starts Here."  Grace and peace to you!