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Jesus depicted God as judging reality from the perspective of the poor and marginalized and as standing in solidarity with them. Jesus’ death on the cross was the ultimate expression of this.

      Jesus Himself

Jesus proclaimed the coming reign of God, not himself. Yet his proclamation was deeply intertwined with his person in two ways. First, through symbolic actions like his table fellowship with sinners, his person became a medium for his message, a way of expressing and actualizing it.43 As this happened, his person became caught up in his message and became identified with it. Second, implicit in much of Jesus’ preaching and teaching, in his relationship to the Scriptures and the traditions of Second Temple Judaism,44 in his symbolic actions such as the gathering of twelve disciples, and in his healings and exorcisms was a claim about himself. The public and symbolic actions that Jesus deliberately undertook expressed a sense of what he was trying to do and of how he saw himself.45 They indicate that he “had a sense of eschatological authority. He saw the dawn of a new world in his actions.”46 Just as John’s preaching of the imminent judgment implicitly gave him a high status as the herald of this, so Jesus’ preaching and public activity signalled that in and through him God’s reign was breaking into the present. His public activity thus made a “monumental though implicit”47 claim that he was the “climatic and definitive fulfiller of the hopes of Israel,”48 the one through whom God’s reign was being ushered in. Thus implicit in his proclamation was a claim that his person was uniquely important in salvation history and that he had a key role to play in the coming of God’s promised redemption. In his entry into Jerusalem at Passover and in the “cleansing” of the temple he made this claim explicit in a dramatic fashion that led to his death.

      Jesus’ Death

That Jesus died on a Roman cross is generally accepted as one of the “few indisputable facts”49 that can be known about him. Crucifixion was “a tortuous death reserved” by the Romans “for provincial rebels as well as slaves.”50 That Jesus died in this way indicates that the Roman governor Pilate had him executed as a threat to Roman rule. This probably happened as a result of three actions on Jesus’ part.

The first was his going to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. The crowd of pilgrims flooding into Jerusalem and the temple at this time tended to create a tense atmosphere in which unrest fuelled by religious convictions could break out against the Roman occupation.51 The nature of the gospels as theological interpretations of Jesus’ history do not enable the construction of a detailed chronology of his activity between his baptism by John and his last days in Jerusalem.52 But it can be surmised that by the time Jesus arrived at Jerusalem for the Passover celebration at which he died, he had become a public figure whose message and presence in Jerusalem at this time would have concerned Pilate and probably the temple authorities as well.53

Upon arriving at Jerusalem Jesus is reported to have staged two symbolic actions: his entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the temple. Both are well attested enough in the New Testament traditions to be accepted as historical in some form. His entry portrayed him as the Son of David, a messianic characterization that had definite political overtones.54 The cleansing of the temple suggested that the reign of God he proclaimed would “spell an end to the present system of temple worship.”55 In these two symbolic actions the claim about himself that had been implicit in his proclamation was dramatically portrayed in a confrontational way, exacerbating tensions between himself and religious and political authorities in Jerusalem. These two actions can be seen as leading to Pilate’s acting against him and to the accusation that he had claimed to be the king of the Jews.

The conflict that came to a head here between Jesus, other Jewish religious leaders, and Pilate was over who spoke for God.56 It was Pilate who had Jesus crucified, but Jesus’ conflicts with other religious groups and authorities likely contributed to his death as well.

The death of Jesus is the consequence of tensions between a charismatic coming from the country and an urban elite, between a Jewish renewal movement and alien Roman rule, between someone who proclaimed cosmic change which was also to transform the temple and the representatives of the status quo. Religious and political grounds cannot be separated.57

      Jesus himself was to some extent responsible for his death, in that it seems to have been the confrontational nature of his final symbolic actions that provoked others to act against him. He must have known that he was risking death in acting as he did and that his lack of institutionalized power left him open to the violence of those who opposed his message. His last symbolic actions made a claim to truth that Pilate contested by putting him to death. The death of Jesus thus had an aspect of a trial about it, a testing of the truth of his claim versus others’ authority. In his symbolic actions Jesus claimed to be speaking for God and declaring that God was the ultimate power in creation. In crucifying him, others denied the first claim. Pilate may have been denying the second as well. The death of Jesus was intended to refute his claim about the coming of God’s reign and about his person. It seems to have initially shattered the movement that had formed around Jesus. But this movement was soon reconstituted around a new understanding of Jesus in light of his resurrection.

      Conclusion

      We will return in later chapters to what can be known historically about Jesus and his message and work. Here we have simply sketched his message, the claim about his person implicit in his preaching, and the relation of this to his death on the cross. Jesus, as a charismatic leader, had a vision of the coming reign of God that he pursued, though not a clearly defined timetable or detailed blueprint of how it would come or what it would look like. His healing miracles, exorcisms, symbolic actions, teaching and preaching—all combined to present an implicit claim about his person. He seems to have symbolically portrayed himself as the Son of David in his entry into Jerusalem, but even then he lacked some of the trappings expected of such a figure.

      The grand nature of Jesus’ claims about the coming of God’s reign, the significance of his ministry and himself, combined with his vulnerability to physical violence, made putting him to death a way to decisively refute him. Shortly after his death, some of his former followers came to believe that Jesus was risen from the dead and had appeared to them. They were soon joined by others, such as James and Paul, who had not been Jesus’ followers but who also had experiences in which he appeared to them as risen from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection was interpreted by those who believed in it as the final word in the trial about the truth of Jesus’ person and message. In raising Jesus from the dead God had vindicated Jesus and his claims about himself. Jesus was also seen to have been exalted by God to a uniquely divine status. These beliefs, coupled with the experience of the Holy Spirit by those who gathered to worship in Jesus’ name, triggered dramatic developments in the way Jesus was understood. The next chapter will trace some of these, examining how Jesus, who proclaimed the message of God’s coming reign, came to be at the center of a new and very different message: that he is the Christ.

1. For instance, the day on which he died; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:390.

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