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!