Chapter 7:
Jesus and the Coming of the God’s Kingdom
Christianity is about something that happened. It happed to Jesus and through Jesus.
- Christianity is not about a new moral teaching.
- Christianity is not about Jesus offering a shining moral example.
- Christianity is not about Jesus offering or demonstrating a new way to heaven.
- Christianity is not about giving the world a fresh teaching about God himself.
What Can We Know About Jesus? Jesus is an iconic figure in Western culture. Histories, and fictions (The Da Vinci Code for example) are rampant. We know a lot about Jesus, more than most people in the ancient world. But, there are still tantalizing gaps. The task is to understand the world of Jesus so we can make sense of what he was trying to do.
Can We Trust the Gospels? The answer is a qualified yes. The gospels still have to be assessed historically and critically. But there is no reason to not trust them.
The Kingdom of God. Jesus’ message was that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He meant that as Isaiah had prophesied it and he believed those prophecies were being fulfilled by and through him. This was different than the standard expectation however. God would judge both Israel and the pagans. God was acting in a new way.
The message was delivered in both symbol and story. Healing was a powerful symbol of his message. And the stories were a powerful way of engaging people in the story. Inevitably, there was opposition, both from the religious right of the day and from the establishment.
Chapter 8: Jesus: Rescue and Renewal
The Jewish concept of the Messiah and Jesus’ concept of the Messiah were racially different. Jesus viewed himself as the “suffering servant” of Isaiah, a concept the Jews of the day just couldn’t grasp.
Temple, Supper, and Cross. All of Jesus’ actions during the last week of his life were full of symbolism to the Jews.
The First Easter. We are talking about resurrection, resuscitation. If it had been the latter, there would have been a long and arduous recuperation. And, it was not expected. A dead Messiah was a failed Messiah. There was and is no other example of the kind of body the gospels and Acts describes. It is unique
“The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunder-standing the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns. Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter.”
“Faith can’t be forced, but un-faith can be challenged.”
Jesus and Divinity. The early disciples begin to speak of Jesus as divine almost immediately. This was a huge paradigm shift and was provocative to the authorities, both religious and secular. Did Jesus know he was divine? Wright says not in the sense we know we are male or female, but more in the sense that we know our vocation—like I know I was born to be a scientist.