Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§19.3 Jesus Remembered
pute that the movement which became known as Christianity has been the most
direct and lasting effect of his work. The above study, however, makes it clearer
that there was a very substantive continuity between Jesus' mission and what followed.
Jesus' mission did not end in failure. What followed was not merely an attempt
to counter disappointment, to eliminate cognitive dissonance. These assertions,
of course, need to be further explored and properly tested in vol. 2. But
already we begin to see the future in the way the story of Jesus ends — in the resurrection
of Jesus.
Here again, whatever we may make of the facts (interpreted data), it is almost
impossible reasonably to doubt that the sequel to Jesus' mission began with
different members of his disciple group(s) seeing Jesus alive, seeing him as
'risen from the dead'. Not least, these experiences and the conviction which they
embodied from their first articulation of them ('resurrection') must have signified
God's confirmation of Jesus. Which is to say, the hope that Jesus was remembered
as indicating in regard to his own future had been vindicated, as he
himself had been vindicated; the son of man had indeed come on the clouds to
the Ancient of Days and received his kingdom. Which is also to say that to that
extent at least Jesus' hope and intention in regard to the kingdom of God had
been realised. So too, we could go on to argue, the transmutation of the disciple
band into 'the church of God' which soon attracted the ire of Saul the Pharisee
(Gal. 1.13) was a recognizable realisation of Jesus' hope for a renewed Temple
(supported on the 'pillar' apostles — Gal. 2.9), just as the Lord's Supper probably
functioned more or less from the first as the continuation of Jesus' practice of
table-fellowship and symbol of the new covenant inaugurated in his death. So
too, it could be pointed out, the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, only
forty years later, proved as accurate a fulfilment of Jesus' other forebodings as
one could ask for. So there was the continuity of fulfilment between Jesus' aims
and hopes and what in the event transpired.
Over all, of course, it was hardly a complete realisation of all that Jesus
was remembered as forecasting and looking for: his resurrection was not the beginning
of the harvest of resurrection of the dead; the mission soon to be undertaken
to the Gentiles did not match very closely any expectation Jesus may have
entertained regarding the eschatological pilgrimage to Zion of Gentile proselytes;
the final judgment did not follow; the eschatological reversal which took
place fell far short of the sort of hopes which Jesus' words must have engendered.
But it was ever so with prophecy expressed in the images of human experience.
And the measure of fulfilment and the continuity which that expressed
were all that the first Christians needed to sustain their claim that God had vindicated
Jesus' mission and was continuing that same mission in a new and different
form through them.
The point is made all the stronger by the further indication of the lasting
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