Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §13.4
Tiberias (including his home village, Nazareth, and his base, Capernaum) —
wealthy estate owners, resentment against absentee landlords, exploitative stewards
of estates, family feuds over inheritance, and so on. Likewise his teaching
on anxiety (Matt. 6.25-33/Luke 12.22-31) reflects the day-to-day worries of the
subsistence poor: 'what you will eat... what you will wear', where the next food
and drink will come from. 148 Nor should it be forgotten that the Lord's Prayer,
however much it transcends its originating context, is at heart a prayer of the
poor: 149 for God's kingdom to come, for God's justice to prevail, for the bread
needed now — today, 150 for debts to be cancelled, 151 for resoluteness in the face
of temptation to give up and abandon responsibilities, or for rescue from potential
prosecution in court (Matt. 6.9-13/Luke 11.2-4). 152 And behind the promise
to the meek ('anawim, praeis) that they will inherit the land (Matt. 5.5), lies the
ancient ideal that every member of Israel should continue to have a stake or part
in the land of promise/inheritance, including the poor. 153
Jesus' own attitude to the poor may well be best reflected in three episodes
recorded by Mark. Most striking of all is the episode where the rich (young)
man 154 is exhorted: 'Go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will
have treasure in heaven' (Mark 10.21). 155 The exhortation clearly reflects the wel-
148. See also Schottroff and Stegemann, Hope of the Poor 16-17, 39-40. F. G. Downing,
Christ and the Cynics (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1988), notes parallels in Cynic teaching
(19-20). See further below, chapter 14 n. 45.
149. Cf. particularly Oakman, 'The Lord's Prayer in Social Perspective' 155-82.
150. Becker suggests that the Lord's Prayer was 'a table prayer of Jesus' adherents' (Jesus
159, 161).
151. It has been long recognized that behind Matthew's opheilema ('debt') lies the Aramaic
hobha (Jeremias, Prayers 92; Black, Aramaic Approach 140; see also Casey, Aramaic
Sources 59-60). The point is not that Matthew has failed to appreciate a possible sense of hobha
to mean 'sin' (better reflected in Luke's hamartia) but that the underlying imagery is of financial
debt, 'money owed' (Jeremias 92). Cf. Horsley, Jesus 253-54; Chilton, Rabbi Jesus 79-80
('the burden of owing what could not be repaid became the principal metaphor of that alienation
from God from which one prayed for release').
152. Jeremias cites K. H. Rengstorf's description of Matt. 7.7/Luke 11.9 as 'beggars'
wisdom' {Proclamation 191).
153. Cf. again 4QpPs 37 (4Q171) 2.4-11. On the overlap between 'poor' and 'meek' see
again Bammel, TDNT 6.904 and above, chapter 12 n. 159.
154. Note the typical performance variations: only Matthew has him as a 'young man'
(neaniskos); only Luke calls him a 'ruler' (archön). On Matthew's modification of Mark's
opening see above (chapter 7 n. 20). Other variations do not affect the discussion here, and the
closeness of the Synoptic parallels makes it unnecessary to cite the whole passage.
155. Most accept that an episode from Jesus' life is here recalled (see, e.g., the brief survey
in Davies and Allison, Matthew 3.40; Lüdemann, Jesus 69-70). The Jesus Seminar regards
the final clause ('treasure in heaven') as 'almost certainly a later modification' (Funk, Five
Gospels 91); but as the only reference to 'treasure (thesauros)' in Mark, it is better seen either
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