Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

It was not only in Nazareth that the “today” of the Gospel was not accepted. Later also, in the course of the church’s history, it has again and again been denied or rendered toothless. The reason was the same as in Nazareth: apparently it goes against the human grain for God to become concrete in our lives. Then people’s desires and favorite notions are in danger, and so are their ideas about time. It can’t be today, because that would mean that our lives have to change today already. Therefore God’s salvation is better delayed into the future. There it can lie, hygienically and snugly packed, at rest, inconsequential.

This process of suppression often intensifies the hope for another world. But it can also turn against the concrete church. There is a particular form of contempt for the church that arises directly out of the delay of Jesus’ “today.” I refer not to skepticism or the hatred of outsiders, but to a contempt for the church that comes from the inmost circles in the church itself and is so destructive because baptized people who were, in fact, called to be witnesses to the presence of God no longer believe that God wants to give his salvation in the here and now of the concrete, offensive church.

What went on in the synagogue at Nazareth continues in the church. Therefore it is necessary to engage constantly with Jesus’ “today,” not only because otherwise what is new about Jesus and the New Testament remains unclear, but also for the sake of the renewal of the church. It cannot be renewed if it does not finally accept the “today” that has come to it. For the New Testament people of God everything depends on whether it can believe again that the promises are meant to be fulfilled already, now, and that God is acting today.

For Jesus, God’s “today” was the center of his existence. There had been imminent expectations in Israel long before Jesus, but the “today” in Jesus’ preaching explodes every kind of such expectation. Jesus knows with the utmost certainty that the promised, longed-for, prayed-for future is here, that the reign of God is breaking forth. That is the only way to understand Jesus’ unbending assurance of fulfillment. That is the only way to comprehend his beatitude addressed to his disciples: “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).

It was not only in Nazareth that people took offense at this “today” in Jesus’ preaching. Many other people shook their heads at what they heard, and said, “the world goes on just as ever; nothing has changed, so the reign of God can’t have come!” Jesus answered them: oh yes, something has changed: “if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the [reign] of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20).

Demons come in many forms. Maybe we can translate this saying of Jesus as: if people who cannot escape their state of possession, their obsessions, the destructive compulsions that have built up in them and around them because of the evils in society and the history of disaster within which they stand, even in the midst of the people of God—if such people are able to breathe again through the power of Jesus, become free and able to trust, then the reign of evil is already broken, and the reign of God is already palpably present.

For the reign of God does not come as lightning throughout the world, not as a universal spectacle from heaven; it comes into the world like a grain of wheat that grows. In Jesus’ deeds of healing the “today” of the reign of God is already visible and tangible.

The Ultimate Ground for the “Now Already”

Ultimately Jesus’ present eschatology is about who God is. Jesus lives to God in a revolutionary new relationship. For him God is so powerful in his goodness and so present in his power that from God’s point of view there is nothing left to happen. Because Jesus lives in full union with the will of his heavenly Father he knows that when God comes he does not come halfway but entirely. And God does not come at just any time, even in the immediate future; God comes today.

We simply do not do justice to Jesus’ message if we talk as if God gives his basileia, but not entirely at the moment; as if he caused it to dawn, but only bit by bit; as if he revealed it, but only in anticipation. We cannot say all that, any more than we could say that God revealed himself in Jesus, but only in preliminary fashion, only in pieces, and absolutely not wholly and with finality.