Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Is not the phrase “modesty of needs” an all-too-transparent attempt to accommodate the Gospel to today’s ideas? The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have a surfeit of civilization and a longing for a “simple life.” It is clear that the deficient equipment of the missionary disciples is meant to be a sign. But was it really just about trumping even the Gentile itinerant philosophers in their poverty? Jesus’ message and practice point in a completely different direction.

The light equipment of Jesus’ disciples is intended to point to the new thing that is happening in Israel. Everywhere in the cities and villages the disciples, when they go there to preach the reign of God, find Jesus’ adherents and sympathizers, “people of peace” (Luke 10:6), who receive them into their houses and provide everything for them.

So the disciples are not alone. Around them the true eschatological Israel is beginning to gather. They are indeed without means, but they have everything. They are indeed poor, and yet they are rich. A group of people throughout the land, all of them seized by the reign of God, trusting one another without reservation, sharing with one another, caring for one another: that is an inexhaustible reserve.

So in the disciples’ equipment rule the point is not primarily poverty or lack of demands. The deficient equipment of the disciples is, instead, an indicative sign pointing to the eschatological-solidary mutuality within the people of God that makes Jesus’ disciples free and available.

This freedom, and the associated trust in help from others, has another side, of course: Jesus’ mission discourse (Matt 10:5-15 // Mark 6:7-11 // Luke 9:2-5 // Luke 10:3-12) takes into account that it could happen that in the evening Jesus’ disciples might not find a house that would receive them, no “people of peace,” but only rejection, hatred, and hostility: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” (Matt 10:14-15). So it is bitterly necessary to pray in the morning for the next day’s bread. Jesus and his disciples do not know whether a meal will be set before them in the evening. Many texts in the gospels can only be understood against the background of the eschatological—constantly endangered and yet incomprehensibly blessed—existence of the disciples.

But back to our starting point! We were speaking of the orderly educational institutions of the rabbis, their stabilitas loci, their secure basis. It is probably clear by now that in this respect also we cannot derive discipleship of Jesus from the rabbinic relation between teacher and student. Being a disciple means sharing the fate of Jesus, who had no place to lay his head. It means uncertainty, danger, opposition. It means surrender to the new demands, every day, of the coming of the reign of God. But it also means a new community in Jesus’ “new family.” So Jesus’ call to discipleship cannot be derived from the rabbinic relationship between teacher and student.

Discipleship among the Zealots

But where, then, did Jesus get his call to discipleship if not from the rabbis? We come much closer to the heart of the matter when we look at the charismatic-prophetic freedom fighters in the Judaism of the time. They had something like “discipleship,” and they even used the term.

The revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucids began when Mattathias, a Jewish priest, called for battle against the Hellenistic destroyers of the Jewish tradition. He assembled fighters with the cry, “Let everyone who is zealous for the law and supports the covenant come out with me!” (1 Macc 2:27). The account in 1 Maccabees continues: “Then he and his sons fled to the hills and left all that they had in the town. At that time many who were seeking righteousness and justice went down to the wilderness to live there, they, their sons, their wives, and their livestock, because troubles pressed heavily upon them” (1 Macc 2:28-30).

What follows is a typical freedom struggle against the Syrian occupation force, conducted mainly with guerilla tactics from the mountains and wadis of the Judean wilderness. And from that point on, charismatic leadership figures steadily appeared in Israel and set off popular movements. One of them was Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37), the founder of the Zealot movement.⁶ Another was called Theudas (Acts 5:36), and still another Luke simply calls “the Egyptian” (Acts 21:38). What did these guerillas or the pseudo-prophets who called the people into the wilderness have to do with Jesus?