Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

These structural lines that run through the gospels are not accidental. They express something that is essential for the eschatological people of God, as Jesus sees it, and therefore an indispensable part of the church. In today’s church, because it is not a shapeless mass, we can find all these forms expressed. It is a complex pattern, as complex as the human body. The openness of the gospels, the openness of Jesus must warn us against regarding people as lacking in faith if they are unable to adopt a disciple’s way of life or if it is something completely alien to them. In any event, Jesus never did.

On the other hand, of course, no one may reject the specific call that comes to her or him. It is not only that in such a case one fails to enter into the broad space God wants to open for that person. Rejecting the call also closes the space to others and places obstacles in the way of possibilities of growth for the people of God.

Certainly it is also true that one may not usurp a calling. Not every disciple of Jesus could be one of the Twelve. They are in the first place a pure sign, created by Jesus, to make visible God’s will for an eschatological renewal of the people of the twelve tribes. At the same time, the Twelve are sent to Israel and therefore are clothed with an eschatological office that will continue in the church. That is why they are rightly called “apostles” (those who are sent) even in the gospels.¹¹

It is also true that not everyone can be a disciple, since discipleship also presupposes a special call from Jesus. It does not depend on the will of the individual. It can be that someone wants to follow Jesus but is not made his disciple. Thus, not belonging to the circle of disciples as such is by no means an indication of lack of faith or a sign that someone is marginal. Nowhere does Jesus describe those of his adherents he has not called to follow him as undecided or half-hearted.¹² Each person who accepts Jesus’ message about the reign of God has his or her own calling. Each can, in her own way and to his own capacity, contribute to the building up of the whole. No one is second class. The healed man of Gerasa is as important for Jesus’ cause as the disciples who travel with Jesus through the land.

The Question of the More Radical Way of Life

Is a disciple’s existence the more radical way of life? Here again we need to be careful.¹³

The ethos of discipleship is certainly a radical one. Is there anything harder and more ruthless than to be called by Jesus to discipleship, to answer him that first one must bury one’s father—perhaps recently dead, perhaps lying on his deathbed, perhaps old and ill—and be told, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60)? And yet the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount, which is not just for the disciples but for everyone in the eschatological people of God, is just as radical, because it demands that one abandon not only evil deeds but every hurtful word directed at a brother or sister in faith (Matt 5:22). It demands regarding someone else’s marriage (and of course one’s own) as so holy that one may not even look with desire at another’s spouse (Matt 5:27-28). It demands that married couples no longer divorce but remain faithful until death (Matt 5:31-32). It commands that there be no twisting and manipulation of language any more but only absolute clarity (Matt 5:37) and that one give to anyone who asks for anything (Matt 5:42).

For a man’s lustful glance at someone else’s wife to be equated with the act of adultery is just as drastic as the demand that disciples leave their families. Jesus demands of the one group an absolute and unbreakable fidelity to their spouses (Matt 5:31-32) and of the others absolute and unbreakable fidelity to their task of proclamation (Luke 9:62). This means that Jesus regards the concrete way of life, whether marriage or discipleship for preaching, as sacred. Both ways of life are only possible in their radical form in light of the brilliance and fascination that emanate from the reign of God. But above all, neither way of life exists in isolation and independent of the other. The disciples, as they travel, are sustained by the aid of the families that open their houses to them in the evening, and the families live from and within the new family that began in the circle of disciples.

Two-Level Ethos?