1. Invitation: the call to repent and believe. The call to repentance is not a matter of an ‘ahistorical or individualist piety’ (249) but is to be understood in relation to the underlying narrative: it is ‘what Israel must do if her exile is to come to an end’ (248); it is the turning or returning to YHWH that precedes restoration. Repentance, however, may also be understood as a call ‘to abandon revolutionary zeal’. This is supported with reference to an appeal that Josephus made to a brigand chief: ‘I would… condone his actions if he would show repentance and prove his loyalty to me.’ Wright suggests that this is functionally equivalent to Jesus’ ‘repent and believe in me’ (250-251). The call to repentance, therefore, was both eschatological and political. The point is illustrated from a number of gospel texts (252-258).
1. Invitation: the call to repent and believe. The call to repentance is not a matter of an ‘ahistorical or individualist piety’ (249) but is to be understood in relation to the underlying narrative: it is ‘what Israel must do if her exile is to come to an end’ (248); it is the turning or returning to YHWH that precedes restoration. Repentance, however, may also be understood as a call ‘to abandon revolutionary zeal’. This is supported with reference to an appeal that Josephus made to a brigand chief: ‘I would… condone his actions if he would show repentance and prove his loyalty to me.’ Wright suggests that this is functionally equivalent to Jesus’ ‘repent and believe in me’ (250-251). The call to repentance, therefore, was both eschatological and political. The point is illustrated from a number of gospel texts (252-258).
Belief and faith are likewise not abstract religious virtues but must also be set within the general eschatological framework: they constitute ‘the distinguishing mark of the true people of YHWH at the time of crisis’ (260). The faith to which Jesus called people carried two particular overtones: i) “Israel’s god was to be seen as the ‘father’ of his people” in anticipation of a coming deliverance; and ii) Jesus called people to trust him in much the same way that Josephus urged the brigand chief to trust and follow him.
2. Welcome: sinners and forgiveness. Forgiveness of sins, Wright maintains, is “another way of saying ‘return from exile’ ”. The exilic prophets regarded the exile as punishment for Israel’s sins. ‘It should be clear from this that if the astonishing, unbelievable thing were to happen, and Israel were to be brought back from exile, this would mean that her sins were being punished no more; in other words, were forgiven’ (268). The point is illustrated from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah 40-55, Daniel and Ezra.
From the point of view of a first-century Jew, ‘forgiveness of sins’ could never simply be a private blessing, though to be sure it was that as well, as Qumran amply testifies. Overarching the situation of the individual was the state of the nation as a whole; and, as long as Israel remained under the rule of the pagans, as long as Torah was not observed perfectly, as long as the Temple was not properly restored, so Israel longed for ‘forgiveness of sins’ as the great, unrepeatable, eschatological and national blessing promised by her god. In the light of this, the meaning which Mark and Luke both give to John’s baptism ought to be clear. It was ‘for the forgiveness of sins’, in other words, to bring about the redemption for which Israel was longing.
3. Challenge: the call to live as the new covenant people. The question of whether Jesus intended to form a ‘church’ has been hotly debated. Wright takes the view of Gerhard Lohfink that ‘Jesus did not intend to found a church because there already was one, namely the people of Israel itself’ (275). Jesus’ intention was to reform Israel, not create a completely new community, but he aimed to do so by establishing ‘what we might call cells of followers, mostly continuing to live in their towns and villages, who by their adoption of his praxis, his way of being Israel, would be distinctive within their local communities’ (276). In many ways, his followers would have resembled other Jewish sects (John’s disciples, Pharisaical groups, the Essenes) active at the time.
The praxis that went with the kingdom-story, therefore, cannot be reduced to an individual ethic or piety: its primary purpose was to ‘demarcate Jesus’ people as a community’. Wright warns against trying to force Jesus’ ethical teaching into an abstract reformation dichotomy of faith and works. The Sermon on the Mount and related teaching cannot be understood apart from the announcement to Israel that the kingdom of God is at hand.
Renewal of the covenant and renewal of the heart go closely together. There is no division between works and faith, material and non-material, outward and inward: the crucial distinction is between a condition of evil, both inward and outward, and a condition of renewal, both inward and outward. With particular reference to Jesus’ teaching about divorce, Wright argues that the story to which Jesus was obedient was one in which ‘Israel was called by YHWH to restore humankind and the world to his original intention’ (285). ‘For that to happen, hardness of heart must be dealt with.’
The Sermon on the Mount should not be read as generalized ethical teaching but as an historically contextualized ‘challenge to Israel to be Israel’ (288). The beatitudes are an appeal to Jesus’ hearers to ‘discover their true vocation as the eschatological people of YHWH’. The antitheses of the law (‘you have heard that it was said… but I say to you’) emphasize ‘the way in which the renewal which Jesus sought to engender would produce a radically different way of being Israel in real-life Palestinian situations’ (290). Jesus’ followers are not to ‘make common cause with the resistance movement’: ‘do not resist evil’ (Matt.5:39). The house built on the rock ‘is a clear allusion to the Temple’. The Lord’s prayer ‘comes from within the very heart of Jewish longing for the kingdom’: the prayer for forgiveness presupposes the inauguration of the new covenant; deliverance from the time of trial and the evil one has in view the turmoil that was soon to come upon Israel. Wright envisages this teaching providing the basis for a way of life for the small communities of followers scattered through the villages of Palestine that was not only theologically but also socially and politically radical (296-297)
4. Summons: the call to be Jesus’ helpers and associates. Wright also stresses the political dimension to Jesus’ call to some of those who heard his message to leave their homes and livelihoods and literally follow him: “The announcement that YHWH was now ling, and the consequent summons to rally to the flag, had far more in common with the founding of a revolutionary party than with what we now think of as either ‘evangelism’ or ‘ethical teaching’ ” (301); ‘a summons to risk all in following Jesus places him and his followers firmly on the map of first-century socially and politically subversive movements’ (304).
Taking as his starting point the parable of the good Samaritan, Wright also considers Jesus’ views regarding the status of the Gentiles. In terms of Jewish expectation, the announcement that Israel’s God was about to become king inevitably had implications for the Gentiles, either for judgment or for blessing. ‘From Jesus’ point of view, the narrative of YHWH’s dealings with Israel was designed to contribute to the larger story, of the creator’s dealings with the cosmos’ (310).
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