Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§19.2 Jesus Remembered
ously made an enduring impression which still endures in the tradition. But in
themselves they would probably not have been sufficient to trigger off Herodian
or high priestly action against Jesus. Prophet was a category which Jesus seems
to have fitted well, and found congenial to characterize much of his mission. He
is clearly remembered as fully alive to the traditional fate of the prophet to be rejected,
and his enemies were no doubt equally aware of that tradition! He was a
famous exorcist and healer in his day, and many experienced miraculous happenings
in his company. But he evidently resisted any temptation to take on the role
of itinerant wonder-worker, and to call him 'magician' is as dismissive and
denigratory now as it was then. It is also doubtful whether an accusation of sorcery
played any part in the indictment eventually brought against him.
Of the more weighty terms used in relation to Jesus, it can hardly be
doubted that he was executed as a claimant to the throne of David ('king of the
Jews'). It is equally clear that the question whether he was the expected royal
Messiah had become a crucial issue some time before his execution, not least
among his disciples. Somewhat troublesomely for later Christian belief in Messiah/Christ
Jesus, however, Jesus seems to have found no role model in the prevalent
hope for a Davidic prince who would liberate the nation from Roman rule.
He is remembered as forbidding talk of his role in such terms and as being unwilling
to describe himself as such when the question was put to him formally at
the end. His sense of what he was about, his own aim, was evidently not well
served by the dominant imagery of the king of Israel, king of the Jews. If the title
'Messiah' subsequently proved indispensable in earliest Christian evaluation of
Jesus, it is because his mission drew in other parts of Jewish expectation and
gave the title new content, not because he fitted the hopes and expectations of the
time.
The theme of sonship takes us much closer to the heart of Jesus' mission,
though not, noticeably, in any conjunction, during his mission, with thought of
the royal Messiah as God's son. Jesus' emphasis on God as a caring Father in his
teaching is complemented by fairly clear indications of his own sense of intimate
sonship. As he encouraged his disciples to live in trustful obedience before God
as Father, so he encouraged them to echo his own habit of praying to God as
abba. This does not tell us so much about Jesus' aim, but it certainly suggests the
source of the inner strength by which he sustained that aim.
With one of his most characteristic and distinctive phrases, 'the son of
man', we also hear resonances of self-understanding and possible implications
for Jesus' understanding of what would be the outcome of his mission. For on the
one hand, the idiomatic phrase bespeaks one not wishing to draw particular attention
to himself ('someone', 'a man like me'), though conscious of his boundup-ness
with the frailty of the human condition. But on the other hand, if indeed
Jesus also drew upon the particular use of the phrase in the vision of Daniel 7,
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