FEAR OF JESUS: A DIAGNOSIS

José I. González Faus, sj.

ADVICE FOR NAVIGATORS .............................................................................................1. WHY JESUS IS SO SEDUCTIVE AND SO DAUNTING ..............................................

1.1. Two words: Abba-Kingdom ............................................................................1.2. Two protagonists: the sick and the excluded poor ....................................1.3. Two ways of acting: healings and meals ....................................................1.4. Two attitudes: demanding of the insider,

understanding of the outsider ..............................................................1.5. Two words with their meaning interchanged:

Samaritan and Pharisee ........................................................................1.6. Two reactions: following and opposing ......................................................1.7. Two possibilities: God is like that, or Jesus is a blasphemer .................Conclusion: revolution in our idea of God ........................................................

2. THE CALL TO AN UNUSUAL WAY OF LIFE ..............................................................The orthodox of Satan ...........................................................................................2.1. The true glory of God ....................................................................................2.2. The schema exodus-promised land .................................................................2.3. The schema exile-return ................................................................................2.4. The schema death-resurrection ....................................................................

3. FEAR OF JESUS: A DIAGNOSIS .................................................................................CONCLUSION: “FEAR NOT” ..........................................................................................NOTES ................................................................................................................................ 31

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iinTerneT: www.fespinal.com - Translated by Joseph owens - Cover illustration: rogerTorres - Printed on ecological paper and recycled cardboard - CriSTiAniSMe i JUSTÍCiAedition - r. de Llúria, 13 - 08010 Barcelona - tel: 93 317 23 38 - fax: 93 317 10 94 - info@fes-pinal.com - Printed by: edicions rondas, S.L. - iSSn: 0214-6509 - iSBn: 84-9730-240-0 -Legal deposit: B-8.898-2010. April 2010. The Lluís espinal Foundation would like to inform you that its information comes from our historical archive belongingto our records. These go under the name of BDGACiJ and are registered with the code 2061280639. in order toaccess them, rectify them, delete or challenge them, please contact us at the street roger de Llúria, 13, Barcelona.

José I. González Faus is... in charge of the theological department of Cristianisme i Justícia

...An authoritative preacher proclaiming the presence of thekingly rule of God, teaching and exemplifying a selfless love of

others, catching the human imagination through parables whichhaunt the mind with their insistent questioning of conventionalpriori ties, welcoming the outcasts of society into his company

without compromising his own integrity, extending healing andcompassion to those in need who cross his path. … A person who

displays anger at the stubbornness of heart of those who turnaway from the truth, someone who denounces hypocrisy and

warns of judgment to come upon the city of Jerusalem, a man ofhard sayings (‘Let the dead bury their own dead’, Matthew 8,22).… But what is unique about Jesus is not his life but his death. All

the other great religious founder-figures die in old age, surroundedby respectful disciples who will carry on the work and message of

the Master. Jesus, on the other hand, is executed in middle life,deserted by his disciples, an apparent total failure."

John PoLkinGhorne, Science and Theology, Minneapolis MnUSA, 1998, pp. 103-104.

Behold, he has been set as a sign of contradiction,… that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.

(Luke 2, 34-35).

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ADVICE FOR NAVIGATORS

Speaking of prayer, Teresa de Jesús speaks several times of thetemptation to «abandon Christ's humanity», with the idea that goingdirectly to God would be more perfect. Teresa responds with a splendidvindication of Jesus' humaneness: «it is through this door that we mustenter if we want the sovereign Majesty to show us great secrets». Thus,if someone believes that «separating oneself from what is corporal mustbe good», then let such a person know that «the most sacred humanityof Christ should not be included therein». She warns that that is like«having the soul walking on air, … which provides no support» and shepoints out the hidden danger of a lack of humility, arguing that «the don-keys pulling the waterwheel, … even with their eyes closed and notunderstanding what they're doing, will draw more water than the culti-vator with all his industry»1.

So then: if such can be the temptation ofone who believes in Jesus, no oneshould be surprised if we express oursuspicion that a great temptation ofpresent-day Catholicism might be verysimilar to the one denounced by Teresa.Today, though, it would not be so mucha matter of abandoning Jesus’ humanityto progress more perfectly toward God,but of abandoning it in order to hold onto divinity –which is no doubt moreimportant and decisive, but such divini -ty would be faceless. It would lack thehuman shape of Jesus of Nazareth; itwould be a divinity onto which we

could then project a human image,deduced from our rational ideas aboutthe divine.Shortly after arriving at the Christian

faith some sixty years ago, SimoneWeil, with her remarkable intuitiveability, perceived something of the samesort when she wrote: “Nowadays whothinks of Christ as someone who waslegally condemned as a criminal, excepthis enemies? The Church certainlydoes not think of Jesus Christ in thoseterms, and that leads to a falsification ofhis cross and of God’s revelation in thecross.” The divinity of Jesus thus ceases

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to be the scandal of a “criminal” Godand becomes instead a pedestal ontowhich the Church climbs in order not torepent for its historical sins. For that rea -son, concludes Simone, “What isadored (in Christ) is the historical great -ness of the Church.”2It is easy to understand the

psychological basis of this fear of Jesusif we remember that he was –as I titledan earlier booklet dedicated to him– aseductive, “captivating” figure, but thathe was also “subversive.”3 In Jesus wefind something of what Rudolph Ottowrote about “the Holy”: it is both“fearful and fascinating.” That is whythe evangelist Luke, with much insight,wrote that “he is called to be a sign ofcontradiction” (2,34). All this can, I believe, be shown

from historical research that adheres towhat we know most certainly aboutJesus. And that is the reason for thepresent booklet. We will not try to pre -sent a biography or a complete portraitof Jesus (a pretension recognized asimpossible nowadays), but just someminimal traces, based on historical re -

search, that are more than sufficient toprovide a sketch of the dialectic bet weenthe attractive and the daunting aspectsthat are an undeniable part of the fi -gure of Jesus, apart from the debatableor debated historicity of many concretewords and passages. We should notforget that this dialect coincides withan other irreducible duality of the Godwho reveals himself as Love, but at thesame time exceeds our grasp in everyway. As Jon Sobrino loves to repeat:“God, yes, is Father. But the Father isstill always … God!”.This bipolarity will in the end help

us to outline a more complete vision ofthe life of belief, which is summed upin the dialectic of death and Life, thatdynamic dialectic that proposes toarrive at Life through death (or in thewords of Juan de Yepes: “to havenothing in order to have All”). Fromthere we will move on to try to offer arapid diagnosis for today’s Church.These then are the three parts of the

present booklet: the two aspects ofJesus, the dialectic of death and Life,and a diagnosis.

1.1. Two words: Abba-KingdomThis first pairing is the best known ofall, two words that historical criticismassures us were not only spoken byJesus but were constant themes of hisdiscourse. They help us achieve atwofold correction in our religiousvision of God: before being Judge orPower or Distance, God is the source oflife, of trust, of human dignity, and ofliberty. That is what is suggested byJesus’ metaphorical allusion to thefatherhood of God, especially by usingan Aramaic word that was not at all thecustomary one for addressing him:Abba.

The fatherhood of God has been atopic much discussed recently in fe -minist theology, which seeks to avoidhaving it understood in terms of amasculine God and thus used to justifythe patriarchal theology that we havehad to endure for centuries. However,once we overcome that obstacle andunderstand that God is not father ormother in the usual sense of masculineor feminine, there is still somethingmore important to be learned. God’s“parenthood”4 means the same as whatthe New Tes tament says in one of itsfinal writings: God is Love. Love ispractically the opposite of power, and

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1. WHY JESUS IS SO SEDUCTIVE AND SO DAUNTING

in the life and history of Jesus we find a number of pairings (of atti -tudes, words, provoked reactions, etc.) that historical research todayconsiders scientifically verifiable, apart from the concrete historicity ofthe passages that contain them. i will reduce the pairings to seven,without pretending to exhaust them.

for that reason defining God (the“omnipotent one,” as we like to say) asparent means that God has no otherpower than that of love.There is good news in this, but a

good news that is frightening. It isfrightening especially for those personswho hold power. Given our diversityand our social nature, power is anindispensable necessity, which can bejustified only by the greater good ofsociety. In no way, however, is it arevelation of God. Nevertheless, theconstant temptation of those who havethe difficult task of wielding power is tojustify themselves, not in terms of thetheir subjects’ well-being (which theyseldom achieve), but in terms of theirpretending to be “a little like God,”whom they like to define as Power.Unfortunately, there is no need toexplain that in the history of the Church(and of all societies) authority hasconstantly yielded to this temptation: ithas seized onto the definition of God asPower “as its prize” (Philippians 2,6)and has obscured the revelation of Godthrough Jesus. For that reason Jesusfrightens them. But that is not the only thing: the

parenthood of God, in the sense weunderstand it, cannot be separated –andJesus never separated it– from theessence of his proclamation, what Jesuscalled the “reign of God” (the reign ofLove). This reign is precisely whatgives a social, communitarian, univer -sal, and “earthly”5 dimension to thedivine childhood of every human being.That’s the reason why Matthew adds theterm “our” to the invocation of God as“Father”: we cannot be children of God

without being brothers and sisters ofeverybody. In order to be truly “childrenof the Father” we must love everybody,even our enemies (personal ones, butalso and especially “tribal” enemies,because the Father makes the rain falland the sun shine on both the good andthe bad, the just and the unjust (Matthew5,45). Any religious devotion that heedsonly the first part of the pairing andneglects the second is not truly Chris -tian, as much it may claim Christ is God:it is not possible to make an in divi -dualistic claim to God’s parent hood. This teaching runs through all the

gospels: there is no “first command -ment” (to love God) without the second(to love others). The second command -ment thus acquires dimensions that arenot just ethical, but also theological.Historical Christianity, however, hasfound it more convenient to reduce thissecond commandment to the level ofethical deductions; worse, it has madethe accusation of “ethical reductionism”and neglect of the religious againstanyone attempting to restore the theo -logical dimension of love of neighbor.6There has been a tendency to forget thatanecdote about the apostle John that isrecorded ancient tradition: when he wasasked to speak of Jesus and hisexperience of him, he always just keptrepeating: “Love one another”; whenhis listeners complained that he wasforever saying the same thing over andover, he responded: “But it’s all rightthere.” The parenthood of God thus be -

comes magnificent news, but it alsodemands a great deal of us. We needonly take a look around us to become

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aware of how anti-fraternal our world is,despite all the appeals to love andsolidarity that we make in our eloquentspeeches. And if we go on to say thatsuch fraternity was for Jesus somethingtruly possible (for “the Kingdom isclose at hand”), then we feel obligatedto admit that in our world the parental“name” of God is not at all glorified (or“hallowed”) when our worship of himis carried out without regard to fra -ternity. That’s why Jesus is so daunting and

frightening, and perhaps more so forthose who say they believe in God…

It might be good to add that only in thecontext of the Kingdom that strugglesto come close to us can we understandwell how the Church can be called thepeople of God, the title reclaimed byVatican II. The people of God shouldbe understood in close relation withthe Kingdom of God. Such a peoplecomes into being because the delay inthe definitive coming of the Kingdom(expected after the Resurrection ofJesus) requires the presence in historyof a community that knows how todetect the pulse of that Kingdom in theworld and that lives to promote thecause of the Kingdom. For the Pro -mise has still not been definitivelyfulfilled (both Jew and Christian canagree in that regard), but it has beenuniversalized.

1.2. Two protagonists: the sickand the excluded poorThe gospels are full of sick people,many of whom were social outcasts,precisely because of their sickness: the

blind, the lame, the deaf, the paralyzed,the lepers –all sicknesses quite typicalof the time and the social setting. Thegospels are also full of a series of figuresof despised people: prostitutes, taxcollectors, women, poor people … andan endless parade of people that wewould today tend to call “nobodies”(nepios was the usual Greek term).7These two groups, the sick and thedespised, are both quite prominent inthe gospels, even though Jesus also haddealings and personal friendships withpeople who belonged to the so-called“polite society.”Regardless of the historical accuracy

of each concrete scene, this portrayal ofthe key figures in the gospels stands upperfectly to historical criticism. Further -more, it is undeniable that Jesus, accord -ing to Jewish religious rules, often madehimself “impure” by dealing with thosepeople. He let himself be touched bythem, he decided to go into the house ofa pagan… And that impurity didn’tseem to affect him too much. Jesus’ radical partiality toward those

excluded from proper society is anotherundeniable trait of his that both attractsus and frightens us. It suffices to cite justone example, perhaps the most signifi -cant one that proceeds from the lips ofJesus himself: the beatitudes. Histo rianstell us that the beatitudes of Luke havea stronger historical ring than those ofMatthew. When Jesus says “blessed,”he does not mean that those named areprosperous or that they are happyaccording to more material measures ofwell-being. Jesus is only too aware thatthe poor, the hungry, the persecuted, andthe afflicted are not happy in that sense,

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but for Jesus the essence of happiness isbeing in God’s good favor. Thebeatitudes of Luke mean simply this:Blessed are the poor because God istheirs. That’s why they are followed bythose four frightful censures: Woe toyou who are rich, etc. The reason forsuch harsh words is that for Jesus “it isimpossible to serve God and privatewealth” –mammon is the Aramaic wordJesus uses. What is extremely interest -ing is to study the thousands of shields,suits of armor, and other defenses thatwe Christians have donned in the courseof history to protect ourselves fromJesus in this regard.To return, then, to our main point:

God is not only a maternal (or paternal)figure, but is also “asymmetric love.”8According to one of the finest prayersof our Catholic liturgy, his love ismanifest for all, but most intensely forthe poor and the oppressed. This is notso easy to accept for those of us whotend to think we are his privileged ones.

1.3. Two ways of acting: healingsand mealsIt is possible to debate the historicalcharacter of almost every narrative ofJesus’ miracles, but even the mostexact ing Bible scholars consider it cer -tain that Jesus performed frequenthealings, prescinding from the questionof how much of a “supernatural”dimension was involved in those acts.9We might think it strange that the

heal ings of Jesus provoked fear orcaused conflict among people, thoughwe need to take into account thecomplete context: aside from the fact

that Jesus did not charge for thehealings, as did other healers of thetime, many of his cures “directlyviolated Jewish norms … of segre ga -tion.” Furthermore, he cured on theSabbath, thus defying the ancient lawprohibiting labor on the day of “God’srest,” and he allowed the sick person totake center stage instead of the miracle-worker. In this way “he declaredpardoned the sins that could havecaused the sickness that he himselfcured (cf. Mark 2,1-2).” Without need,and as if devaluing the healings, theevangelists repeat that Jesus “curedpersons who were at the outer limits ofthe norms of Jewish piety due to theiroccupations, their race, their place ofresidence, or their ritual circums -tances;”10 such persons include the sonof the centurion, the daughter of theCanaanite woman, the demoniac of Ge -rasa, the hemorrhaging woman, etc. Historical criticism seems to con -

firm that the most primitive gospelstories of healing do not present “a proofto validate their author,” but ratherdemonstrate “an acceptance that makesa teaching visible” (the acceptance ofGod). The later stories gradually moveaway from this latter conception towardthe former, but of course the twoconceptions are not contradictory, andin the long run the latter may becomemore worthy of belief than the former.Apart from the question of its his -toricity, it seems certain that the phraseat the end of the story of the Gerasenedemoniac, “They began to ask him toleave their territory” (Mark 5,17), has asymbolic meaning, implying a discreteexpulsion of Jesus. This adverse reac -

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tion would be even more significant ifthe possessed man symbolized theRomans, as is suggested by the replythat his demon’s name was “legion.”Liberation at such a price might havebeen attractive, but it also caused fear.In marked contrast with the practice

of the quasi-public banquets of theJewish society of his time, the meals ofJesus were shared with people “of illrepute.” When Jesus was dubbed “aglutton and a drunkard,” it was notbecause of his eating or drinking, butbe cause he ate and drank with “publi -cans and sinners.”11 The fury that thisgenerated was precisely what gave riseto the so-called “parables of mercy” (cf.Luke 15,1). And on top of everything,Jesus made his healings a “sign that theKingdom of God has come upon you”(Matthew 12,28), and he spoke of thatKingdom as a banquet at which manyof those now excluded would find aplace (Matthew 22,1 ff.)

1.4. Two attitudes: demanding ofthe insider, understanding of theoutsiderHistorical criticism has debatedextensively about the Judaism of Jesus.The so-called “third quest” for thehistorical Jesus has rightly insisted onthe profoundly Jewish character of theNazarene, refuting some of the claimsof earlier “quests” that stressed muchmore the distance between Jesus andJudaism.12Possibly the key for harmonizing

these two postures will be found in thedual attitude of this section’s title: Jesuswas profoundly Jewish, and he still is

the greatest marvel and principal wealthof Judaism. But at the same time heturned out to be extremely confronta -tional, at least for the Judaism of histime. And the reason was that for himbeing Jewish was not a condition thatbestowed privileges, but one that madegreat demands. Let us take a quick lookat some examples of conflict that appearto be unquestionable by reason of theirconstant appearance, apart from whatmight be thought of each concretescene: As I have commented already,Jesus required much faith of those whoheard him, and he criticized, often quiteharshly, the lack of faith (oligopistis inGreek) of his own disciples, especiallythose closest to him. Indeed, there areonly two passages in the gospels whereJesus expresses amazement at some -one’s faith, and in both instances thepersons praised are non-Jewish (theRoman centurion and the Canaanitewoman).And as if that weren’t enough, we

find relatively frequent in the gospelsthe statement that many will come fromthe east and the west, and they will sitat the table with Abraham, Isaac andJacob, while the children of theKingdom will be thrown into the outerdarkness. How could such teaching beanything but controversial? But at thesame time, by adopting such an attitudeJesus was doing no more than applyingto those outside Israel the same normthat he applied among his own people,such as when he said that “the tax-collectors and prostitutes will go beforeyou into the kingdom of heaven.” Ifthere were two groups of people trulydespised in Palestine, it was those two

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(and our modern society still preservesremnants of that judgment). What ismore, Jesus speaks in general terms,without making an exception in anyparticular case. We should not besurprised, then, when his hearerssometimes react by asking: Then what’sthe use of being good?We find another example in the

synagogue scene which Luke 4 presentsas the inaugural event of Jesus’ publiclife. It is not difficult to imagine theexpectation that the scene presupposes:somebody from this tiny, unknownvillage has suddenly won fame, andnow he returns home, where everybodyexpects to see firsthand the marvels theyhave heard told of him. Jesus takes theroll of Isaiah, he applies to himself theanointing by the Spirit of which theprophet speaks, and he goes on todeclare solemnly that he has not cometo inflate the egos of anybody, but tocure the sick, free the oppressed, andgive good news to the poor. The peopleare at first disappointed, but stillexpectant. Then Jesus drives the nail indeeper: all this will be done, not byproclaiming a “day of vengeance,” butby declaring a true “year of grace.” Thisis another provocation, and now thepeople begin to shout their discontent.13Jesus does not let up, but goes on to

comment on how, according the Jewishtradition itself, when there were manywidows and lepers in Israel, the healingword of God was not sent to any ofthem, but to people from outside. Thepeople’s decision to stone him is onlytoo understandable.14Nevertheless, Jesus was profoundly

Jewish. In the words of his that the

gospels transmit to us, it is not difficultto find allusions (some explicit, butmany more implicit) to sentiments andviewpoints found in the First Testament,especially to the psalms and theprophets. The passage about the Canaanite

woman, already mentioned, alsosuggests clearly Jesus’ Jewish roots: thestrange statements Jesus makes seemvery likely to have been historical: “Iwas sent only to the lost sheep of thehouse of Israel” (Matthew 15,24) and “itis not right to take the children’s breadand throw it to the dogs.” A church thatwas preaching precisely to the paganswould not have presumed to put suchscandalous words on Jesus’ lips,because they contradict what the churchitself was doing. What is surprising,however, is that Jesus has learned fromthat same Judaism how it is faith thatgives life to the just person and howGod is a Father for all human beings.For that reason he acknowledges thatthe woman is right and allows himselfto be corrected by her. Furthermore, only a profoundly

Jewish man would cry over Jerusalem,as we are told Jesus cried. Again, whatis surprising is that his tears are shed notbecause the empires have conquered thepeople of God, as was the case so oftenin the First Testament. Rather, Jesusweeps because of the infidelities of thatsame people who killed the prophetsand stoned those were sent by God.Only the lips of someone profoundlyJewish could have uttered the doubleinvocation of the prophet Hosea thatMatthew attributes to Jesus: “Go andlearn what it means when it says ‘I

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desire mercy and not sacrifice.’”15 Onlyof a profoundly Jewish man could it bewritten today that he “undeniablyreacted to the Temple and the priestlyhierarchy with a combined feeling ofpain and protest.”16The plain fact is that that contro -

versial side of Jesus arose out ofsomething that was profoundly andunmistakably Jewish: the idea of “beingchosen by God,” which, understoodbiblically, is never a question of thechosen one’s being privileged or havinga “manifest destiny”, but is rather a callfor the chosen one to be generous inserving all the world.17 This goesbeyond all the debate about theJewishness of Jesus and his conflictwith the Israel of his day: the questionis really about a religious and humanattitude that upsets all our initialposturings: it is about rejoicing in thewelfare of others and not closing oureyes to what needs correcting inourselves, as opposed to that self-satisfaction and disdain for others whichafflicts all of us suffer from the verystart. Again: Jesus was humanly veryattractive, but also very daunting, andalmost irritating –and especially irritat -ing for the ecclesiastical institutions.That’s why Jesus seduces and at thesame time frightens us.

1.5. Two words with theirmeanings interchanged: Samaritanand PhariseeThis helps us to understand an un ex -pected effect that Jesus has had on his -tory and, more concretely, on humanlanguage. In the Judaism of his time the

two words with the most positive(Pharisee) and the most negative(Samaritan) connotations have acquireda different meaning for us as a result ofJesus. The term “Pharisee” has becomeone of the worst epithets that can beused in the religious world, whereas theterm “Samaritan” has become a title ofpraise throughout the human realm.The semantic inversion of the word

“Samaritan” seems to derive from theparable of Jesus (Luke 10), whoseauthenticity is hardly to be doubted.There has even been talk these days ofa “Samaritan church,” in reference notto the rupture between Israel andChristianity, but to a Church that wouldgive true embodiment to the figurerepresented in Jesus’ parable. At thattime, though, the “Samaritans” wereheretics that symbolized everything thatthe Jewish people and their religionfound most outrageous. That is why Isaid that if Jesus were to continue tellingthat parable over a long period of time,he would keep changing the prota go -nists: in childhood years, when Francowas in power, the characters might havebeen a bishop, a priest, and a “protes -tant.” Thirty years later he might havespoken of a priest, a theologian, and a“communist.” And nowadays it wouldbe no surprise if he were to come upwith some parable about “the goodMuslim.”The matter of the Pharisees is a little

more complicated. Historical criticismnowadays suspects that often in thegospels, when the Pharisees appear inconfrontation with Jesus, the evange -lists are using that term as a synonymfor Jewish. The reason is that, after the

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destruction of Jerusalem, the Phariseeswere the strongest surviving groupamong the Jews. In reality, though, thetrue enemies of Jesus were not so muchthe Pharisees as the Sadducees.18The Pharisees were one of the most

highly esteemed and respected groupsin Israel in Jesus’ time. This may havebeen the reason for their decline, fornobody can long remain “in highregard” without ending up “takingthemselves too seriously” and puttingmore stock in the esteem than in thebehavior that produced it. In fact, inmany passages of the gospel theharshest criticism includes the word“hypocrites,” which appears only on thelips of Jesus and seems to haveoriginated from him. The word “hypo -crite” in Greek comes from the world ofthe theater and designates the personwho “takes on a role.”19 The life and themission of such actors consists inportraying externally the character thatthey embody, apart from what they maybe interiorly. Many of the accusationsplaced on Jesus’ lips (cleaning only theoutside of the cup, being like whitenedsepulchers, etc.) are in that same vein.The word “Pharisee” thus came torepresent everything that could be saidagainst a decrepit religiosity.20For that reason, the criticism of the

Pharisees is not simply a discrediting ofa single faction of that time, but is ageneral critique of human religiositybecause of the enormous danger thatalways hangs over it: making God andthe Absolute a private possession inorder to absolutize oneself whiledespising others. For that reason Luketakes care to note that Jesus told the

parable of the Pharisee and the publicanagainst those “who trusted in them -selves that they were righteous and des -pised others” (Luke 18,9).

1.6. Two reactions: following andopposingTo all the aforementioned pairings thereseem to have been only two reactions.And something of the same sort, thoughwith more complexity, seems to be whathas happened historically. Jesus generated a movement of

followers who ended up giving theirlives for him as they implanted in theworld a revolution that at first hardlyseemed destined to succeed, given thelow social and educational level of thosefirst disciples. But Jesus also arousedgreat hostility, which expanded rapidly,until it did away with him in the mosthumiliating and violent way possible.We will address briefly each of thesereactions.

a) It seems historically undeniablethat the second reaction was led by thereligious powers of his time (the highpriests and the Sanhedrin), along withthe uppermost social class. They did nothesitate to seek out the assistance of thepolitical power of the Roman empire. Italso seems historically certain that thefirst people whom Jesus called weremostly humble folk: fishermen wholived from what they caught in theirboats, perhaps some Essene, perhaps apublican, perhaps a Zealot or someoneclose to the movement, …plus a numberof women, some from the same lowerclasses and others of higher status

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(although the “social indignity” of beingwomen balanced out any such pro ve -nance).This matter does not need greater

analysis. I have mentioned it simplybecause at a later time the best theology(no longer Jesuology) has made it anestablished principle that the indispen -sable element for knowing Jesus isfollowing him. And history seems toinsist that one condition of followinghim is becoming poor: apart from theirconcrete historicity, there is somesignificance in the accumulation ofphrases such as these: “Sell what youhave, give it to the poor, and then come,follow me.” “The birds of the air havetheir nests, and the foxes have theirdens, but the son of man has nowhere tolay his head.” These sayings and otherlike them depict precisely the meaningof following Jesus.

b) With regards to the conflicts,however historically comprehensiblethey may be, if we place Jesus firmlywithin his time and refrain from tryingto get close to him by removing himfrom his historical setting, then we finda very instructive detail that helps usunderstand the theme of this booklet:Jesus frightens people, no matter howcharming he may be. He frightens therich (Mark 10), he frightens many“decent folk,” and he especiallyfrightens the religious authorities, notbecause they are Jewish, but becausethey are religious.We can therefore understand that a

large part of the anti-Semitism in theChurch’s history has actually been aclever device for shifting onto a certainpeople, who lived only in small, dis -

persed groups and without establishedpower, the demand that Jesus made ofhis own followers and of every type ofreligious power.21 Such a maneuver wasfacilitated by the evangelists’ desire toobscure the guilt of the Roman empire,since the budding Christianity wasbeing preached within its borders.Historical criticism considers this thesisto be almost certain, and it can be easilyverified by simply comparing Mat -thew’s passion (written for the Jewishcommunity) with that of the Greekwriter Luke.

1.7. Two possibilities: God is likethat, or Jesus is a blasphemerAll the pairings we have seen so far leadus to believe that, in the wake of Jesus’passage through our history, there aretwo postures that can be taken towardhim in the sphere of believers. Apartfrom belief, people might conclude,along with Herod and Pilate, that Jesuswas simply crazy or politicallydangerous, or perhaps just one of themany well-intentioned failures of hu -man history. But in the sphere of be -lievers, the question or dilemma posedby Jesus is different: was he an unpar -donable blasphemer or was he the veryrevelation of God? And if he was thelatter, then it was because he wasrevealing God, and he was revealingthat God is a God of the poor, a God whodefies every attempt at religiouscodification.The fact is that all revelation of God

is a kind of wrestling with human beingsso that they accept God’s revelation atthe very place where God wants to

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reveal himself: in what is last and whatis hidden, from out of what is leastesteemed, and among the least and thelast. A precious phrase from the Ignatiantradition explains what is proper toGod: “God cannot be contained in whatis greatest, but he fits in what issmallest.”22 This phrase translatesprecisely and accurately what is mostdisturbing about God’s revelation inJesus. A thousand details of the gospelnarratives, from the manger to the cross,point us in this direction, as we will seein the following pages.Despite that disturbing revelation,

however, human beings continue toseek God in whatever seems to be thegreatest, the foremost, the most spec -tacular and overwhelming. God revealshimself in love, but people are deter -mined to seek him in power. Renewingour faith must begin by accepting thisvery difficult task, which is “folly forsome and a scandal for others” (cf. 1 Cor1,18-25). If we confess Jesus as thegreatest revelation (“the Word”) of God,what do the gospels tell us about theWord of God made flesh? We need onlytrace a few rapid sketches.

– He had no “immaculate” lineage(in his genealogy, as related byMatthew, there are two prostitutes andone case of adultery). He was born insuspicious circumstances: “of unknownfather,” we would say today. This wouldlater, out of faith in Jesus, be understoodas the “virginal birth.” For those withoutfaith, however, it would be understooddifferently: his adversaries once castaspersions on him, saying, “We are notbastard children” (John 8,41). AndMark comments candidly in his sixth

chapter about how Jesus was called “theson of Mary,” even though among theJews a man was designated by hismother’s name only when his father wasnot known. But let us continue withJesus.

– He came to the world in a stablebecause there was no other place forhim. He was welcomed by the peoplewith the most despised lines of work: theshepherds were not those sugary littlefigurines of our manger scenes, but hadthe most humiliating of jobs in thosedays. And the “magi,” besides beingforeigners and pagans, had a professionthat the law of Israel punished, even bydeath. We call them “kings” in order todissemble that reality, but the gospelsays otherwise. By evading the reality,we are unintentionally saying that wewill receive God if he comes to us as anArab sheik or as Colonel Gaddafi withhis retinue, but not if he comes as arefugee in a boat…

– He lived most of his life in a bleak,unknown village, out of which,according to the people who lived in theenvirons, nothing good could come(John 1,46). He began his active lifestanding in a line with sinners, one morein a crowd waiting to be baptized byJohn. Early on in his gospel Mark tellsus that people reacted to Jesus in threeways: the humble folk followed him andflocked to his house; “his relatives”came to take him home because theythought he was crazy; and the wise andthe learned declared that the success hewas beginning to have was due to hisbeing possessed by a demon (Mark 3,21-22). Later on even many poor folk

14

would stop following him becauseactually they were not looking for him,but for immediate benefits they couldget from him (John 6,26). Also, hewould be discredited as “the friend ofsinners and prostitutes” (cf. Matthew11,9).

– In the end, the very “represen ta -tives of God,” those seated on the chairof Moses, declared him a blasphemer,and the representatives of Romancivilization and pacification declaredhim a terrorist. The official representa -tive of the law of God called Jesus “thatimpostor” before the tribunal of politi -cal power (Matthew 27,63). And for thatreason he died violently at the hands ofthe religious and political authorities,suffering the most humiliating of deathsknown at that time, “outside the city.”23

There are too many details, but theyall trace an unmistakable profile. That iswhy it is so strange that just a shortwhile after that disgraceful executionpeople were believing in him as therevelation of God! And not only that,but they were following him in suchradical fashion that they were able tostand up against the hostility of the threegreat powers of that epoch: the politicalpower of the Roman empire, the re li -gious power of the Jewish San hedrin,and the cultural power of Greekwisdom. It is indeed strange that peoplebelieved in those days, and it is strangerstill that many continue to believe, eventoday. The only thing that is “com -prehensible,” in any case, is the scan -dalous way we try to adulterate Jesus bydressing him up as a king and projectingonto him our false ideas of God, instead

of letting that God whom we were notat all expecting be revealed in him.Because otherwise, where might such arevelation of God take us?

Conclusion: the revolution in ouridea of GodIndeed, where does it take us? Well, ittakes us to the definite conclusion thatGod “is not one of our own.” Recallwhat was said in section 3 about thebeatitudes of Luke. Matthew, at thebeginning of the sermon on the mount,tells us that those of us who are notoutcasts in society have only one way ofdrawing close to God: by mercy, ahunger for justice, and a radical optionfor the poor, all of which can also bringpersecution upon us. This is the mean -ing of Matthew’s beatitudes, as I haveexplained elsewhere. But we prefer torefute Jesus with the rational argumentthat “God belongs to everybody.” Thisis a conclusion of abstract reason thatJesus himself would not deny, but it failsto recognize the truth of our concretesituation.We think that the problem of the

denial of God is just a matter ofcommunists, atheists, and the like. Wedon’t realize that perhaps those of uswho presume to “let him preach in ourhouses and sit at our tables” (Luke13,26) are actually rejecting him asmuch as those who don’t believe in him.Saint John could hardly say it moreclearly: it was not only the world thatdid not know him, but even “his own”did not receive him (1,10-11).Indeed, God is not one of our own,

for a reason expressed quite graphically15

by the first believers as they beheldJesus: he did not use his divinity as aprop for his dignity, as a basis for hispower, or as a resource for his ownbenefit. To the contrary, he renouncedthat divinity, preferring to assume theform of a slave and be just another man(Philippians 2,7 ff.). For that reason,even though he was the Son, he learnedfrom the starkness of peasant life whatwas most difficult in the humancondition (Hebrews 5,8). But it wasprecisely there, in the way theCommunication of God became humanfragility (“flesh” in the Semitic terms ofthe epoch) –it was precisely there that“we have seen the Glory” of God (John1,14.) There indeed is the glory of God:not in our incense, our silks, ourpontifical ermine capes, or our musicalworks (as beautiful as they may be), andeven less in the fancy wardrobes of theso-called “princes of the Church.”Rather it is in God’s incredible solida -rity with what is least appreciated andmost despised in the human condition. From all this the first witnesses of

the faith drew two conclusions that wealso manage to forget so often.

a)The first was that “no one has everseen God.” Neither seen nor known. Theonly way to approach God is by “beingtold” (John 1,18), and by attempting tohave our lives reflect what we are told.And what we are told about is the life ofJesus, the same trajectory of anonymity,obscurity, and derision which we evokedas we began writing these pages. WeChristians have forgotten that frequentlya good story makes us think a lot morethan does a splendidly conceived pieceof architec ture.

b) The second conclusion was that,because no one has ever seen God, allwho pretend to love and know him, allwho speak of him apart from that story,are lying. And that the only thing we cando to understand him a little better anddraw a little closer to him is to give foodto the hungry and drink to the thirsty, toclothe the naked, to visit and comfortthe sick and the imprisoned, to welcomethe foreigner … (Matthew 25,31 ff.). Ofcourse, we do all these things, not to feelsomehow better than or superior toothers. Rather we do them so that, as wedraw close to those poor of the earth, asmile might form on their lips and a waymight found to have the fullness of theirbeauty burst forth. We do them for thatreason, but also because that is the onlyway we can savor a bit what the firstwitnesses say has been revealed to us:“the tenderness of God and his love ofhuman beings” (Titus 3.4).“You are a God of the poor,” goes

the refrain in the Nicaraguan mass, andthe Sanctus of the Salvadoran massproclaims: “Lord of all history, whoaccompanies our people and joins in ourstruggle.” But still we manage to ignoreall that and practice another kind ofworship: we offer him incense and goldand embroidered robes and gloriouscathedrals … and all the things that willbe useful only if they help us understandthe former, but which turn out to beridiculous if we try to use them to winover God. Because then God will repeatto us what he has not tired of repeatingthroughout the whole of biblical re -velation: “I do not need those offeringsyou bring, and I laugh at them. The onlything I ask of you is a heart that is poor

16

enough to shudder before my Word andto try to put it into practice in the modeststories of your lives.”And all that can be proclaimed in a

couple of pages. But it can be reallylearned only through long and patientaccompaniment of those whom theearliest tradition called “Vicars ofChrist” –long before the title was givento popes. The process of accom pa -niment is an obscure and tiresome one,like the night of the mystics, but likethose nights, it is “more lovely than thedawn” of our cultic splendors. At theend of the process one finally begins tounderstand that business of “the poorevangelizing us.” It is not because theyare holier or better, but because they arethe only ones who have the right to befoul-smelling and ill-mannered. Butthey evangelize us because almost theonly thing that can change our heart ofstone into a heart of flesh is our servingthem, and evange li zation in large partconsists the announce ment that such achange is possible.Many are those who believe that

they are with God precisely becausethey are not with the last and the least,but whether they like it or not, these lastand least are the greatest theologicalresource they have. And if the Churchof God needs something urgently thesedays, it is not doctors of canon law (whoare not much needed) nor doctors oftheology (as needed as these may be),but those whom we might call “doctorsin pauperology.” This is a doctorate thatis not awarded by universities, Romanor otherwise. However, in my modestopinion, we have been gifted by God inthe course of the 20th century with a

veritable legion of doctors who earnedtheir diplomas in the school of thevictims and the last in line. Most of themwere Catholics, but many were fromoutside the Church as well (MariaSkobstov in the Orthodox Church, orthe Jewish women Etty Hillesum andSimone Weil). Several of them weremartyrs besides: perhaps not “cano ni -cal” martyrs, but without a doubt“christological” mar tyrs –and, likeJesus, little acknowledged up till thistime. But all of them, like Jesus, arereflected in these words of another saint,Vincent de Paul, already accepted andcanonized by the Church, but only aftera life of continual conflict with her:

Soon you will realize how hard it is tobe charitable. It’s much more thancarrying a pot of soup or a filled basket… But you will keep your smile andyour sweet manner. It’s not all a matterof giving out soup and bread. That’ssomething the rich can also do. Youare the insignificant servant of thepoor, the “daughter” of charity who isalways smiling and cheerful. They areyour masters. And they are terriblysusceptible and demanding, as youwill see. But the more repugnant andfilthy they are, the more unjust andvulgar they are, all the more shouldyou give them your love. Onlybecause of your love, your love alone,will the poor forgive you the bread yougive them.

These are not naïve words. And weshould add, once they are accepted, thatin the house of the Father that is thehouse of the poor “there are manydwellings” and many charisms. What isdecisive is not that everybody actually

17

be there and work there, but thateverybody always work out of there.Then will those words of Vincent dePaul be supplemented by these othersfrom one of the last century’s greattheologians: “If I fail in justice and inlove, I unfailingly separate myself fromyou, my God, and my worship is mereidolatry. To believe in you, I mustbelieve in justice and love. It is athousand times better to believe in themthan to pronounce your name with mylips. Without them it is impossible to

find you, and those who practice themwalk on the path that leads to you” (H.de Lubac). This is true because a worldwithout justice and love, whateverdazzling achievements it may boast of,always ends up being a world filled withpoor and excluded victims, those whosustain the greatness of all the rest.

How easy it is, then, in the light ofwhat has been said, simply to praysincerely that refrain: “Lord, havemercy on us, because we have sinnedagainst you”!

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The orthodoxy of SatanHowever, Matthew the evangelist wantsto give his readers a very importantlesson about the orthodoxy of belief,namely, that it is possible to use veryorthodox formulations to falsify Godbecause “you think as men think, not asGod thinks” (Matthew 16,23). What isreally at stake in the divinity of JesusChrist (and in the identity of God sorevealed) is a conception of the Divinityeither as triumph or as donation. Peter,with irreproachable verbal orthodoxy,continues to be imprisoned within thoseexceedingly human interests. And thatis the very same thing that can happen

today with a way of speaking of Christthat avoids express reference to Jesus ofNazareth. For that reason, as I havedone on other occasions, I would like toinsist on understanding orthodoxy in itsmost inclusive sense, which does notrefer only to a correct opinion aboutGod, but to the true glory of God.24

2.1. The true glory of God

Fine then: if that man Jesus was reallythe presence and the revelation of God,as the Church confesses, if in him Godwanted to sum up (“recapitulate,” inbiblical language) the whole of the

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2. THE CALL TO AN UNUSUAL WAY OF LIFE

Chapter 16 of Matthew's gospel presents us with a surprising scenethat makes visible what we have just stated. Jesus congratulates Peterfor having been inspired by the heavenly Father in his profession offaith, and five minutes (or five verses) later he literally censures Peteras Satan. nowadays it is considered quite likely (contrary to what wastaught in the old Catholic apologetic) that Matthew's redaction isseconda ry with respect to Mark's, which makes no mention either ofPeter's express profession of Jesus' divine sonship or of Jesus' subse-quent reproach of Peter.

reality he had created, then therefollows from that a vision of our realitywhich I have already developed in detailelsewhere and will only sketch out here.It is a vision of reality which in turncontinues and brings to its culminationa schema that we already found as a wayof preparation in the whole of the FirstTestament.I will point out only a few of the

moments of that preparation.

2.2. The schema exodus–promised landThe first experiences that gave rise tofaith in the biblical God were not extra-historical experiences of that numinousaura that surrounds Nature (which issometimes fascinating and other timesfrightening). Rather, they were histori -cal experiences of “leaving,” settingforth, and patiently searching for anobscure goal. The first two patriarchs ofthe Christian faith are Abraham andMoses.Abraham thought he heard a voice

that said simply, “Go forth”: dare toleave your native place (“your countryand your kindred”) in search of some -thing greater that takes the form of pro -mise. Centuries later, in the impres sivesetting of Sinai, Moses was startled tohear a voice, which did not call him toadmire the greatness and splendor ofthose immense masses of pink granite,but rather summoned him to hear “thecry of an oppressed people,” whose tearswere reaching up to God himself. Asundeniably magnificent as were thelandscapes of Sinai, no voices of ex -ploited slaves were to be heard there,

only the voice of God’s concern forthem. Moses felt overwhelmed andimpotent before that crazy promise ofGod: “I am going to free my people.”But the fact is that a few decades later(without going now into the historicaldetails of the events) the people ofMoses found themselves settled in a newland, called to establish in it a society ofequality and justice, where all “shouldopen wide their hand to the needy andthe poor” (Deuteronomy 15,11) andwhere conflicts would be resolved bycharismatic judges rather than by theestablished totalitarian powers.On the basis of that fulfilled

promise, the people would latercompose the narratives and the myths orlegends in the first chapters of the Bible.This they did in fidelity to the chrono -logy of our history, but the logical orderof reading was far from the chronolo gi -cal order of composition. The road to that point was not an

easy one: the passage from the exodusto the promised land was marked by theharsh sojourn in the desert, where thepeople were constantly tempted bydespair and disloyalty and perverselylonged for the lost comforts of slavery.And as unruly as they were during thejourney, even more rebellious were theyagainst God’s project once they weresettled in the promised land. Besides therampant internal corruption, the Is -raelites envied the greatness of otherpeoples, they looked for God in theirmilitary victories, and they distorted fortheir own benefit the meaning of being“God’s chosen people,” which wasreally a call to be “light for the nations,”and not a position of privilege.

20

All this history would take too longto tell, and we do not have enough spaceto do so here. But in the end the peoplewere brought to ruin. And the people ofGod themselves did not recognize theirsin until after they had becomehopelessly enveloped in the calamitiesbrought on by their envy of empires andtheir ambition for superiority. At thismoment there appears in the FirstTestament the matter of distinguishingthe true and the false prophets: the falseprophets flatter and oblige theestablished religious powers, while thetrue prophets criticize their infidelitiesin the name of the Lord and are con -sequently punished for doing so. With that, we proceed to the second

mo ment of preparation.

2.3. The schema exile–return The exile was for Israel a devastatingdrama and a temptation that nearly leftthe people feeling abandoned by Godand viewing their faith as a failure.Nevertheless, seen in hindsight, theexile was a great fountain of experienceof God: the prophets who before hadpreached against depending on foreignpowers and had urged the people to befaithful to God’s project for Israel, nowtaught the people to accept theirbanishment, opposing those “prophetsof Babylon” (Jeremiah 29,15) who wereannouncing an immediate, triumphalreturn to Judah.Accepting their exiled helped the

people learn from their long trajectoryof infidelity. But they also learned thatGod is a God of all peoples and that hiscreation is good, even though infected

with evil (that’s why the first chapter ofGenesis was composed, as well as theten that followed it). The Jewish peoplelearned that among non-believers theremight be many “whose head is notbaptized, but whose heart is.”

25Like -

wise, they learned that God is a God ofhistory and that those who appeared tobe great enemies of God (such as Nebu -chadnezzar

26or Cyrus) might be seen as

servants of God sent by him, and notsimply as enemies to be elimi nated.

27As

a result of the exile, the Je wish peoplelearned a lot about other peo ples andtheir religions. And finally, during the exile Israel

learned about its historic mission, asspelled out in the “Servant of Yahweh”poems of Isaiah: Israel was called towork for the establishment of justice inall nations, without violence, withoutbreaking a bruised reed, and withoutgetting discouraged, despite all thedifficulties. In the end, the Servant wasto assume the form of that figure whotook on himself all the sins of the world,to the point of losing his life because ofthem, but who thus became the salva -tion of all.

28

Israel’s faith was purified andenormously enriched during the exile,something that the new people of Godtoday should not forget when theysometimes feel themselves on the vergeof a new exile, at least in our westernsocieties. The Church of Jesus has com -mitted a historical sin similar to the sinof Israel with its monarchy: it is theChurch’s alliance (and then identifi -cation) with the powers of this world,first in a gentler way with Constantineand then more radically with Charle -

21

magne and the temporal power of thepopes. The consequences of that sinhave also resembled those of the monar -chy in Israel: a moment of splendor(world and Church practically coin -cided) and then a series of disasters:corruption, division among churchessimilar to Israel’s division into the twokingdoms, and then only timid reformsthat tried to change persons but leftstructures unaltered. For that reason thelessons of Israel’s exile can be veryinstructive for the exile that possiblyconfronts the Church today, at least inthe west, as a result of its own sins andits deafness to the voices of manyprophets. But let us continue with theFirst Covenant.With their faith purified, the people

were prepared for the return to theirhomeland, which took place in the midstof great joy and a renewed desire to befaithful to God. All this is reflected inthe “maneuver” of Ezra and Nehemiah,who staged a rediscovery of the Lawand had people make a new pledge offidelity to it. Of course, we know thateven after the return the people did notremain faithful to God; once againJeremiah’s prophecy rings true: “Thehuman heart is deceitful above allthings, and desperately corrupt; whocan understand it?” (17,9). Once againthe promise is renewed, and theIsraelites turn again to the Only Onewho can save such a stubborn peopleand change their hearts: “I will givethem a heart so that they know me,” andso that finally “God will be our justice”(Jeremiah 23,6). That new fidelity sets the scene in

Israel as we approach the time of the

appearance of Jesus, whom the NewTestament will confess to be the “justiceof God,” in continuity with thatprophecy of Jeremiah. And with that,we proceed to the third biblical schema.

2.4. The schema death–resurrection Indeed, it is within this tremendoushistorical context that Jesus finallyappeared. And in him will be repeatedthe same dialectical schema that wehave been examining, and on a largescale. Historical studies have shown ushow necessary this whole (historical,but also theological) framework is forunderstanding the Nazarene, and theyhave pointed out that the major failingof all the early research on the life ofJesus (despite its many contributions)was its prescinding from that contextand looking at the gospels as if they hadbeen written in some 19th century Ger -many university, and not in the Palestineof the first century.Jesus (the “justice of God,” as we

just cited) is actually presented by themost Jewish of all the gospels as a newMoses, an authentic Prophet, and thetrue Servant of Yahweh.

a) As the new Moses, Jesus re in -carnates the schema of the Exodus: thecommandment to go forth across thedesert toward the promised land is nowreplaced by the commandment tofollow Jesus –with all the difficultiesthat such following implies– and tobecome “fishers of men”. Thisexpression seems to be meant not somuch in a quantitative as in a qualitative

22

sense: what God hopes to do, as I havesaid in other places, is to draw as muchhumanity as possible out of theturbulent sea of inhumanity in which wehuman beings are drowning. Jesusreveals that God want to make a true“poem of God” (Ephesians 2,9) out ofeach human being and that he calls allof us to collaborate in this task of divinecreation.

b) Besides that, however, the mostJewish of the evangelists situates Jesusin the line of the true prophets, thoseopposed to the “false prophecy” of thepriests and the Sadducees (or in anothersense, that of the Zealots or Essenians).Jesus prophesied fearlessly, thus align -ing himself with Hosea, Jeremiah,Second-Isaiah, Jonah, and the otherprophets of the exile.

29And he ended up

denouncing the Vatican officials of histime as being the ones responsible for“murdering the prophets” and otherssent by God; he accused the religiousleaders of staining their history with theblood of the prophets and thenhypocritically rendering them homageand adorning their tombs (Matthew 23,29-32.37).

c) Finally, Jesus incarnates that OldTestament figure of the Servant ofYahweh (who from that point on ceasesto represent Israel and becomes aprefiguring of Jesus): he comes to serveand not to be served. And he serves bycarrying on his shoulders all themiseries and pains of a sufferinghumanity, to the point of giving his life,if necessary, for the liberation of hispeople. All the evangelists, but above allMatthew, have taken note of theresemblances between the Suffering

Servant and Jesus. But it is only throughthat serving, which serves with thegreatest of loves, that God makes Jesusinto the fount of new life for all: asMatthew says (8,17) with clear refe -rence to Isaiah 53, he took upon himselfour suffering and our anguish. And thatwill allow the evangelist to put on Jesus’lips that well-known invitation: “Cometo me, all who labor and are heavyladen, and I will give you rest” (11,28)–an undeniably troublesome invitationfor those who want to call themselvesfollowers and imitators of Jesus.

The double schema of exo -dus–promised land and exile–return isnow transfigured into the supremelyChristian pairing of death and resurrec -tion. And it is important to point out thatthat is what the NT texts are referring towhen they say that the death andresurrection took place “according to thescriptures,” that is, according to thebiblical schemas that we have justpresented, or according to the OldTestament theology of history. Taken outof this context, the expression “ac -cording to the scriptures” turns into anabsurd search for concrete pro phecieswhich at times seizes upon a similarityof words to find an announce ment ofJesus’ death; such an under stand ing goesway beyond the symbolic meaning ofmany passages in the First Testamentand turns them into official an -nouncements. Removed from such a context,

references to the First Testamentdegenerate into an impoverished under -standing of words like redemp tion,expiation, or propitiation, which come

23

to be interpreted according to the penalmentality of the west. As a result, it isnot God himself who carries out theexpiation, but it is a man who buys itfrom God with his suffering. This realdeformation of the God of Jesus bringswith it another deformation, that of themeaning of suffering: God is no longerthe one who gives all he is out of love,but is the cruel justice that is satisfiedonly with infinite blood; and Jesus is nolonger the expression of the extremes towhich love will go in a loveless world,but gives rise to a truly masochistic viewof suffering, as if suffering in itself werepleasing to God. As I have writtenelsewhere, the hard law of our sinfulhis tory, namely, that “everything worth -while costs something,” becomes disfi -gured into the theological absurdity of“everything that costs something isworthwhile” (here we are always tal -king of suffering that is not sought forits own sake). The life pattern of “self-donation –

death– resurrection” is in some sensethe legacy of the real Jesus and thegateway to his revelation of God. Perhaps we can now understand

what we were saying at the beginning ofthis booklet: the ecclesiastical institu -tion appears to be quite ready to respondto the question about who Jesus is withwords like “God of God, Light of Light,… consubstantial with the Father.”These words figure in the Christiancreed, even though they really expressjust the negative limits of our faith,devised some 17 centuries ago to res -pond to the Arians. They hardly giveposi tive expression to our faith today.But the church institution is always dis -

trubed when someone tries to respondto the other question: what was thatJesus like, the one whom the Churchconfesses to be God of God and Lightof Light? It prefers to “imagine him”according to its own idea of God, ratherthan seek help from historical studiesand the other sciences in order to getcloser, in whatever small measure ispossible, to the real Jesus. It thus fallsback on a procedure that I decried 30years ago. It refuses to argue thus:“Jesus was like this –this is how Jesuswas consubstantial with the Father– andso God is like this!” Rather, it prefers toargue the opposite way: “God is like this–this is how Jesus was God– and soJesus must have been like this.” As aresult, the God revealed in Jesusbecomes easily digestible for us, andDietrich Bonhoeffer’s statement nolonger rings true: God turns upsidedown everything that religious people(and religious institutions!) expect ofGod. Paradoxically, the great synthesisbetween faith and reason that wasachieved in the Middle Ages breaksdown, and theology becomes the“handmaid of philosophy.”

30

So we see that the triple biblicalschema mentioned already provides us akey for understanding those curiousgames that theologians play. All thepairings we analyzed have as well ahistorical basis,which is what gives riseto them. The exodus–land pairingemerges from the harsh reality of abrutally oppressed people. The exile–re -turn pairing arises from the historicalexperience of a sinful people. And incomplete accord with those, thedeath–resurrection pairing is born out of

24

the bosom of a concrete history that wasthe particular life of that particular Man.The death of Jesus was a consequence ofhis life: it was not the result of acircumstantial misunder stand ing (R.Bultmann), nor was it demanded by theincomprehensible justice of a sadisticdivinity. Never theless, the liturgy speakstoo often speak exclusively of thedeath–re surrection and never of the lifethat was completely committed topeople until the horrible end –that iswhat God raised up. In the death–re -surrection pairing, “death” ends upbeing reduced to a generic term ap -plicable to any human being; it loses itsspecific coloring as that concrete deathwhich is precisely the one that revealsthe God of Jesus.As completely precarious and pro -

visional as the findings of criticalresearch often are, one of its greatcontributions is precisely that state -ment: the death of Jesus is a conse -quence of his life. And if that life andthat way of being human truly revealGod, then the death of Jesus also revealsthe temptation of all religious persons(and especially religious institutions): toeliminate that God.

Let us conclude with an observationthat helps us to see the importance of,and the differences in, these two waysof conceiving the matter. It has to dowith a topic that is very current thesedays in the dialogue among worldreligions. If that Christ whom we callGod has the face and the concretemanner of Jesus, then his divinitybecomes, as Saint Paul already stated,“folly for the wise and a stumblingblock” for the religious. Such a situationplaces Christianity rather in a positionof modesty and inferiority in itsapproach to the world’s religions, for itknows that it is announcing somethingscandalous. But if the Christ whom we call God

does not have a concrete face, then hisdivinity becomes for Christianity aninvincible weapon and a source ofpower that places it in a position ofsuperiority when approaching the othercosmovisions of the earth. This helps us understand the

temptation of some theologians to re -nounce that article of faith, for the sakeof being able to approach the world ofthe religions on a basis of equality.

25

If such is the case, it’s worth askingwhether this unconscious fear of thehuman figure of Jesus is what hascaused certain ecclesiastical voices(which we think are too ready to hurlchristological anathemas againsthistorical questions, without respectingthe autonomy of each field) to show afearful, unconscious preference for anindefensible biblical fundamentalism,rather than for a discomfiting Jesus. Wefind ourselves in a situation similar tothat of Saint Peter: just when we werehoping that our faith and our zeal wouldbe praised as coming “from the Father

who is in heaven, and not from flesh andblood,” Jesus turns unexpectedly on us,calling us nothing less than “Satan” andtelling us that our ideas about him comenot from the Father, but indeed fromflesh and blood (cf. Matthew 16,16 ff.). This would help to explain the fear

of critical research that has arisen againquite recently in ecclesiasticalauthorities, despite the magnificent,nuanced declarations made in its favorby the Pontifical Biblical Commission(and by Vatican II itself). We canlegitimately suspect that what they findfrightening in historical criticism is not

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3. FEAR OF JESUS: A DIAGNOSIS

«With the armor of the holy rule, the helmet of holy observance, and thesword of holy tradition, i have a very hard time defending myself … fromJesus!». This saying of a superior general of the Cistercians sums up per-fectly the conclusion of this essay. Perhaps the best brief diagnosis of thesin of present-day Catholicism is that it is unconsciously fearful of Jesus.At the same time, if there is something that present-day Catholicism needsterribly, it is a radical and confident turning toward Jesus.

so much the exaggerations or theabsurdities that come from a particularauthor (there will always be these);rather, it is the embarrassment caused bythe attractive figure of Jesus that hasemerged from such criticism. What hashappened with many historical pro -mises could also be happening here: thatfamous slogan with which historicalresearch was born (“freeing Jesus fromthe prison of dogma”) is finding itsfulfillment, though in a manner verydifferent from what the nascent researchexpected: Jesus is coming closer to us,with some of his features blurred, butwith certain traits that are unmistakable.And he approaches us freed, if not fromthe prison of dogma, then certainly fromthe prison of “dogmatism,” that per -version of all dogma that long held himsecurely incarcerated. He is liberated,for example, from what Rahner con -demned years ago as the most prevalentheresy in many Christian minds: a sortof crypto-Monophysitism, more or lesslatent.31To illustrate all this, I refer to

something I wrote not long ago: “Thecurrent problem of the ecclesiasticalinstitution may be due to its fear ofJesus. Unconsciously, it seeks to defenditself from him, and it doesn’t knowhow to do so. It therefore prefers tospeak of a “faceless Christ” and goes sofar as to prohibit the use of the word“Jesus” in some catechetical texts,claiming that such usage might lead toforgetting his divinity. As if theJohannine writings, which so oftenmention the name of Jesus, were for thatreason forgetful of his divinity, when thereal danger was an exclusive affir -

mation of the divinity! Nevertheless,Jesus reveal no more divinity than thatwhich is found in his human figure, andtherein lies the scandal of the Incar -nation: “no one comes to the Father ex -cept through me” was the answer hegave to the apostle Thomas whenThomas asked him to “show” them theFather. In Paul’s time, when the memory of

Jesus was still fresh, the apostle couldspeak of Christ as synonymous withJesus (when he was not using the termwith the meaning of “Messiah”).Nowadays the two words havedistanced themselves from one another:“Jesus” (without “Christ”) may refersimply to what we observe, leavingunexpressed any views of belief orunbelief regarding him. But the word“Christ” as a substitute for “Jesus”seems to appeal to a divinity with a facethat is different from or foreign to theface of the Nazarene. Paradoxically, werun here the risk of falling into the sameerrors that Catholics in years goneattributed to R. Bultmann: Christiansalvation is placed simply in the factthat Jesus existed, but not in the contentof that fact (in German, he was said tostress the Dass [the that] but not the Was[the what]) –what saves us is that Jesusexisted, and not which Jesus is the onewho existed. When I published my christology

text more than 30 years ago, I insistedas much as possible on a feature of faithin Jesus Christ that often remainsburied, even in the official orthodoxies:the divinity of Jesus is not somethingthat affects him exclusively (in such away that someone who “possessed more

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of him” would also possess more ofGod), but rather, as Vatican IIrediscovered through a quite classicaltext of the primitive church: “by theIncarnation God in some way unitedhimself with all human beings” (GS 22).With all: no doubt the officialorthodoxies would have preferred astatement saying that God had unitedhimself in some way with the pope orjust with the bishops, … but the faith ofthe Church says “with all humanbeings.” For that reason “Jesus has an‘affiliation’ that ‘affiliates’ and adivinity that divinizes.”32Starting from this given, which the

Pauline school formulated as the“recapitulation of all creation in Christ,”I concluded the christology text bystating that the Incarnation allows us tospeak of a christological structure of allreality. And this structure, unfolding outof the life of Jesus, allows us to speakof reality as absolute, of reality as curse,and of reality as promise (Incarnation,Cross, and Resurrection: the threecharacteristics that sum up christology).Now, on the basis of what has been

argued in this booklet, namely, thatChrist has no other face than that ofJesus of Nazareth, we should speak alsoof a “Jesuan” structure of reality. Thisexpression should not be understood asgiving us reason to consider Christianity

to be something superior, since by hisresurrection Jesus has ceased to be theexclusive patrimony of Christians. Ra -ther, it should be understood as a sum -mons to see reality as portrayed in termsof the kingdom (which “is at hand”), theanti-kingdom (which ap pears morepresent), and the eschato logical pro -mise. And consequently it should turnour religiosity toward the reality thatbears this triple existential sign. In this way we may possibly

understand why Jesus turns out to be atonce so seductive and so “threatening”:he opens up almost inaccessiblehorizons, which overwhelm our humansmallness. “Only God can be so hu -man,” wrote Leonardo Boff with greatinsight, summing up the experience ofmany who walked and talked withJesus. But such tremendous humanquality appears beyond our reach, andeven more so, the more and the betterwe know each other: Jesus, the realJesus, not the one replaced by a facelessChrist, makes absolutely imperative forus the ancient temptation of the serpent:“to be like God.” But the very idea ofGod has been turned around in thatpromise, because it now involves being“merciful as your heavenly Father ismerciful” (Luke 6,36). Again, it issomething seductive and terrifying forour human tininess.

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The impossible easeThe scholastics used to wonder “si licetmagna componere parvis” (whethergreat things can be made up of smallthings). Perhaps we could move one rung

further up the ladder of greatness andthink of Mozart: his music appears easy(prescinding perhaps from the Re -quiem). An aria from Don Juan leavesus with the sensation that that music hasalways been just that and nothing morethan that. It therefore springs forth andflows quite easily, without that feelingof painful childbirth that we sometimessense in the genius of Wagner.

Well, then, I have the sensation thatthe greatest impact that the humanity ofJesus leaves on us is something similar. When we draw close to him, being

human looks easy. It is only when wetry to mold our own humanity intoshape that we grasp how difficult thiswhole business of being human is.That’s why there’s so much truth in thatcelebrated saying of Boff, which sumsup the journey toward faith in thedivinity of Jesus: “Only God can be sohuman.” Here once again seduction andvertigo meet one another and kiss. Andprecisely here is where we are givenover to that adventure of radical,trusting commitment we call faith.

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CONCLUSION: «FEAR NOT»

Tennis fans have sometimes commented on roger Federer's game:when you watch him, tennis appears easy. in contrast, rafael nadal leaves us with a certain sensation that winning is the fruit of constant run-ning and tireless effort. But it's not that way with Federer: it's as if he justhappens «to be there».

The same fear that Jesus Christ caninspire in us today he inspired in thosedays, not only in the Jewish religiousauthorities, but also in his own disciples.Among these latter, however, the at -traction of Jesus turned out to bestronger than the fear. Something of thatnature is what is asked of us today: thatsame confident following of Jesuswhich dares to hear the oft-repeatedwords, “Do not be afraid,” and which isfinally convinced that our faith is thevictory that overcomes this world. Thus,the true follower of Jesus will more thanonce end up weeping bitterly like Peter,but also singing like the prophetJeremiah, half grateful and half fearful:“You seduced me, and I allowed myselfto be seduced… Your word has beenstronger than I, there is in my heart aburning fire, etc.” (Jeremiah 20,8 ff.).Kierkegaard claimed that if Jesus

were to return today, we would kill himagain. And those who would kill him, asback then, would not be the officiallybad people (publicans, Samaritans,prostitutes,…), but the officially goodpeople, the guardians of religion, thehigh priests, and the Pharisees. Once,when I wrote something to that effect inLa Vanguardia, a most worthy cardinalof Holy Mother Church placed an angryphone call to my provincial, protestingmy statements and claiming that hecertainly wouldn’t kill Jesus –and I haveno doubt about that at all. I would onlypoint out that those who killed Jesus didnot want to kill anyone sent by Godeither: they did not condemn Jesus

because they were evil, but because thepositions they held left them blinded.Nor did they kill him because they wereJews: they killed him because they were“religious.” (All the anti-Semitism inthe church’s history rests on thisconfusion: the truest Jews were all thosewho followed Jesus, bemoaned hisdeath, and then gave their lives for him.We can therefore in no way speak of aGod-murdering people or attribute thedeath of Jesus to Judaism.)In a word, I have the impression that

something unique is occurring in ourdays: Jesus has returned in a mannerthat is not only metaphorical: he hasbeen brought close to us by historicalresearch. The reaction of many “highpriests” has been to try to eliminateJesus again, just as that great DanishChristian announced they would. Butthey run the danger of confirming theseprophetic words of J. Ratzinger, withwhich we conclude:

Today the Church has become formany people the main obstacle tofaith. They see in her only the strugglefor human power, the shameful theaterof people who by their observationsseek to absolutize official Christianityand paralyze the true spirit ofChristianity.33

So perhaps it is true that we need toreturn again and again to those wordsthat form part of Jesus’ farewelldiscourse in the fourth gospel: “Beconfident, for I have overcome theworld” (John 16,33).

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1. Libro de la vida c.22. See also chapter 7 of thesixth of the Mansions: “If they lose the guide,who is the good Jesus, they will not find theway.”

2. El conocimiento sobrenatural, Madrid, Trotta,p. 84.

3. Cf. Subversive Memory, Subjugating Memory,CiJ Booklet n. 102.

4. I use this word to include both father andmother. We should perhaps make clear that theword “parent” is not related to the masculineword “father” (pater in Latin, padre inSpanish), but comes from the Latin verbpario, which means “give birth”.

5. Matthew’s version of the “Our Father” uses theterm Kingdom “of Heaven,” which was simplya circumlocution customary among the Jews toavoid pronouncing the name of the “Un -namable One.” It in no way refers to “anotherworld.” For Jesus there is no “other world”, ifthere has not first been a “this world.”

6. This procedure is at the root, for example, of allthe condemnations of liberation theology.

7. For a longer analysis, I refer the reader to chap-ter 2.3 (Jesus and the outcasts) in the book LaHumanidad Nueva. Ensayo de cristología.

8. Cf. Jesús Martínez Gordo, Dios amor asimétri-co, Bilbao, Desclée de Brouwer, 1993.

9. Even in the Old Testament, the expressionsêmeia kai terata (Greek for “signs and won-ders”) does not necessarily refer to miraculousactions, but rather to liberations and cures in abroad sense. In the book, Clamor del Reino:Estudio sobre los milagros de Jesús, I mentio-ned the possibility, suggested by J. Jeremias,that many cures were what later would becalled “improvement therapies,” but this pointis not so important now.

10. H. C. Klee, Medicina, milagros y magia entiempos de Jesús, Córdoba, El Almendro,1992, p. 122-23.

11. See Matthew 11,19; Mark 2,16.12. The reason for this was perhaps that the earlier

searches sought to study the texts too abs-tractly or academically, removing them fromtheir social and historical context.

13. Luke’s comment that the people “wondered atthe words of grace that came from his mouth”seems to refer to the fact that Jesus, in citingIsaiah, omitted the expression, “I have cometo announce the day of Yahweh’s vengeance,”which was in the prophet’s text. For manyJews, the vengeance of Yahweh was alwaysagainst foreign oppressors.

14. It would also be worthwhile to comment onchapter 6 of Matthew, which explicitly refersto the Jewish religion, but ultimately goesbeyond the orbit of Judaism and constitutes acritique of all human religiosity. I leave outsuch a commentary for reasons of space andbecause I have written in that vein elsewhere.

15. Just as only someone profoundly Catholiccould have been so bothered by the ecclesias-tical institution as were Oscar Romero andPedro Arrupe. I cite this example to show thatthe question is not so much about the fact ofbelonging as about the quality of the belon-ging. Sometimes I wonder if the so-called“third quest of Jesus” has forgotten this.

16. J. Reed, Archaeology and the galilean Jesus.Harrisburg, Trinity Press International, 2002.

17. On the biblical notion of election, see myProyecto de hermano: Visión creyente delhombre, Santander, Sal Terrae, 1987, pp. 671-72. See also H. Wolff, Anthropologie des AltenTestaments, München, 1973, p. 209,

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NOTES

18. In fact, in the passion narratives, which areusually considered the oldest ones, the Pha -risees have very little protagonism as compa-red to the priests, the Sadducees, and otherSanhedrin members.

19. See J. Reed, op. cit, pp. 18 and 142.20. And, since I am a Jesuit, I should not forget that

the word “Jesuit” became a synonym of“hypocrite” in the dictionary, precisely becau-se of the surprising boldness and the accom-plishments of Ignatius’s first followers.

21. This poses a question we cannot avoid. If todaywe have the impression that the Vatican and theRoman Curia bear much more resemblance tothe Temple and the priestly hierarchy ofJerusalem than they do to the group of Jesus’followers, what is a Christian to do who con-fesses that God was infinitely more present inJesus than he was in the Temple or the priestlyhierarchy? The answer, for which there is notsufficient room here, does not mean simplybreaking with religion (Jesus didn’t break withthe Judaism of his time), but it does mean beingready to accept conflict and persecution, or asSaint Ignatius put it, “the shackles and chains ofthe Inquisition, for the love of Christ.”

22. In Latin: “Non coerceri maximo, contineritamen a minimo divinum est”.

23. This phrase, which appears in Hebrews 13,11-13, is not only a geographic indication, butcontains a slight irony of a social nature: hedied outside of our “civilization.”

24. In Greek the word doxa means both “opinion”and “glory.”

25. Jeremiah 9,24. Of course, the original does notspeak of baptism but of circumcision: thosecircum cised in the flesh, but uncircumcised inthe heart.

26. Jeremiah 25,9; 27,6.27. Might we not say the same today, now not of

Nebuchadnezzar, but of many who have beenconsidered enemies of Christianity, such asMarx or Freud or Nietzsche? Were they pos-sibly sent by God to a Church that was blindto the message of Jesus?

28. For more information on the figure of theServant, I refer the reader to my Booklet, The

Struggle for Justice in the Poems of Isaiah(no. 96 of CiJ).

29. Since there is no space here for more, we citejust one example: Jeremiah 22,13-16.

30. I give one quick but illuminating example ofthis: there are countless instances in liturgicalformulas of the expression “Almighty God”(in prayers, creeds, blessings, etc.), but veryrarely will you find the expression “All-mer-ciful God” (which is infinitely closer to thebiblical concepts of Hesed and Emeth). Ofcourse, we are not denying God’s omnipoten-ce, but this one-sided depiction of Godcovers up a great falsehood, for God has nomore power than that of Love and he has re -nounced all other forms of power in his rela-tionship with humankind. If you wish, he is aGod who is all-powerful in love. Similarly, itis difficult to find in our penitential liturgiesany expressions such as “fidelity” (or “infi-delity”) to Jesus and the gospel. There is ge -neric talk about faults and sins, but all suchlanguage suggests a sort of generic religiousmorality more than it relates to our followingof Jesus.

31. Monophysitism (from the Greek mono-physis,“one single nature”) was perhaps the hardestheresy for the Church to combat: because ofits particular ideas about God’s greatness, theheresy held that what was human in Jesus wasswallowed up by the divinity, just as a drop ofwine is lost in the sea. It most definitely com-municated the image of a God who needed tosuppress the human in order to affirm the divi-ne.

32. Cf. La Humanidad Nueva, Santander, SalTerrae, p. 303 –understanding “affiliate” in thesense of “making a son/daughter” of someone[from Latin filius/filia, son/daughter]. Therealso we read: “History, as recapitulated inJesus, finds itself made ‘Son,’ and the relationbetween the Son and the Father that constitu-tes the Spirit is transferred to the relation bet-ween history and the Father, in the form of theSpirit as the gift promised by Jesus” (p. 339).

33. Introducción al cristianismo, Salamanca,Sígueme, 1970, p. 301.

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