Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§19.2 Jesus Remembered
ing in God have a far more secure future. So too, a religious community overscrupulous
in defining what is acceptable and unacceptable to God is more than
likely by doing so to put itself, rather that those it condemns as sinners, beyond
the reach of God's grace. Such an emphasis is not to be merely politicized into a
vision for a reconstituted peasant or village society. It is rather a vision of society
under God, where God's sovereign rule is at work, where his will is done;
the political ramifications are inescapable but secondary. Nor can it be easily affirmed
that Jesus' vision answered neatly to later concerns (mission to the
Gentiles) or to modern concerns (liberation and feminist theology), though the
tradition carries clear indications that Jesus valued women disciples highly and
reacted sympathetically towards those Gentiles he encountered in the course of
his mission. What can be said is that Jesus was recalled as encouraging and enacting
a society which works to eliminate any unnecessary and hurtful boundaries
between its members.
When attention is turned more directly to the other emphasis in Jesus'
kingdom preaching, that God's (final) rule is already in evidence, the picture becomes
still clearer. For Jesus is remembered as frequently pronouncing the realisation
of many long-term prophetic hopes: the time fulfilled, the blessings of the
age to come already being experienced. The Baptist's onesided emphasis on imminent
and purgative judgment Jesus supplemented (not entirely replaced) with
the complementary emphasis, drawn largely from the same prophet (Isaiah), of
divine grace to the physically, socially, and religiously disabled. In the liberation
he saw his exorcistic ministry bringing to demoniacs and in the healing (and forgiveness)
he saw his ministry bringing (through the trust exercised) to those who
were ill, he saw clear signs that God was exercising his rule already in the here
and now. It was presumably such repeated experiences which confirmed for Jesus
that his hope for the fuller (final) coming of God's kingdom could not be long
delayed. God's royal rule had drawn near.
That Jesus' vision of the kingdom was not dependent on a specific time
scale is strongly suggested by the fact he himself seems to have lived out his mission
in the light of the coming kingdom and to have encouraged his disciples to
do so. Kingdom priorities were not merely for the future, when in the fulness of
God's purpose, no doubt, they would be fully realized. They were for the here
and now; they provided the parameters for daily living: life to be lived as subject
of a kingdom, loyalty to which superseded all other loyalties. Life lived as a child
dependent on the goodness of God as Father, as a learner of Jesus, modelling his
priorities, not least in service as the only true sign of success and of greatness.
Life lived in service of what is right, by the spirit of the lawgiver rather than by
the letter of the law, ever ready to read through the particular rule to discern the
will of God where that rule was in danger of being too simplistically applied.
Life lived out of love of God as the first priority, love of neighbour as second, and
887