Jesus of Nazareth Read online

  The act of descending into the waters of this Baptism implies a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness in order to make a new beginning. In a world marked by sin, then, this Yes to the entire will of God also expresses solidarity with men, who have incurred guilt but yearn for righteousness. The significance of this event could not fully emerge until it was seen in light of the Cross and Resurrection. Descending into the water, the candidates for Baptism confess their sin and seek to be rid of their burden of guilt. What did Jesus do in this same situation? Luke, who throughout his Gospel is keenly attentive to Jesus' prayer, and portrays him again and again at prayer--in conversation with the Father--tells us that Jesus was praying while he received Baptism (cf. Lk 3:21). Looking at the events in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, "Take me and throw me into the sea" (Jon 1:12). The whole significance of Jesus' Baptism, the fact that he bears "all righteousness," first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out "This is my beloved Son" over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to refer to his death (cf. Mk 10:38; Lk 12:50).

  Only from this starting point can we understand Christian Baptism. Jesus' Baptism anticipated his death on the Cross, and the heavenly voice proclaimed an anticipation of the Resurrection. These anticipations have now become reality. John's baptism with water has received its full meaning through the Baptism of Jesus' own life and death. To accept the invitation to be baptized now means to go to the place of Jesus' Baptism. It is to go where he identifies himself with us and to receive there our identification with him. The point where he anticipates death has now become the point where we anticipate rising again with him. Paul develops this inner connection in his theology of Baptism (cf. Rom 6), though without explicitly mentioning Jesus' Baptism in the Jordan.

  The Eastern Church has further developed and deepened this understanding of Jesus' Baptism in her liturgy and in her theology of icons. She sees a deep connection between the content of the feast of Epiphany (the heavenly voice proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God: for the East the Epiphany is the day of the Baptism) and Easter. She sees Jesus' remark to John that "it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Mt 3:15) as the anticipation of his prayer to the Father in Gethsemane: "My Father...not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Mt 26:39). The liturgical hymns for January 3 correspond to those for Wednesday in Holy Week; the hymns for January 4 to those for Holy Thursday; the hymns for January 5 to those for Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

  These correspondences are picked up by the iconographic tradition. The icon of Jesus' Baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell. Jesus' descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from every side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld: "When he went down into the waters, he bound the strong man" (cf. Lk 11:22), says Cyril of Jerusalem. John Chrysostom writes: "Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection." The troparia of the Byzantine Liturgy add yet another symbolic connection: "The Jordan was turned back by Elisha's coat, and the waters were divided leaving a dry path. This is a true image of Baptism by which we pass through life" (Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon, p. 296).

  Jesus' Baptism, then, is understood as a repetition of the whole of history, which both recapitulates the past and anticipates the future. His entering into the sin of others is a descent into the "inferno." But he does not descend merely in the role of a spectator, as in Dante's Inferno. Rather, he goes down in the role of one whose suffering-with-others is a transforming suffering that turns the underworld around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of the abyss. His Baptism is a descent into the house of the evil one, combat with the "strong man" (cf. Lk 11:22) who holds men captive (and the truth is that we are all very much captive to powers that anonymously manipulate us!). Throughout all its history, the world is powerless to defeat the "strong man"; he is overcome and bound by one yet stronger, who, because of his equality with God, can take upon himself all the sin of the world and then suffers it through to the end--omitting nothing on the downward path into identity with the fallen. This struggle is the "conversion" of being that brings it into a new condition, that prepares a new heaven and a new earth. Looked at from this angle, the sacrament of Baptism appears as the gift of participation in Jesus' world-transforming struggle in the conversion of life that took place in his descent and ascent.

  Has this ecclesiastical interpretation and rereading of the event of Jesus' Baptism taken us too far away from the Bible? It will be helpful to listen to the Fourth Gospel in this context. According to John, when the Baptist first sees Jesus, he says, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn 1:29). These words, which are spoken before the distribution of Communion in the Roman Liturgy, have been the occasion of much puzzlement. What does "Lamb of God" mean? Why is Jesus called the Lamb, and why does this Lamb take away the sins of the world, so thoroughly vanquishing them as to rob them of any substance or reality?

  Thanks to the work of Joachim Jeremias, we have the key to understand these words correctly and to regard them--even from the historical point of view--as genuine words of the Baptist himself. First of all, they contain two identifiable Old Testament allusions. The Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah compares the suffering servant of God with the lamb that is led to the slaughter: "Like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth" (Is 53:7). Even more importantly, Jesus was crucified on the feast of the Passover, and from that moment on could only appear as the true Passover lamb, in whom is fulfilled the significance of the Passover lamb at the time of the Exodus from Egypt: liberation from the dominion of death in Egypt and release for the Exodus, for the journey into the freedom of the promise. In light of Easter, this lamb symbolism takes on a fundamental importance for understanding Christ. We find it in Paul (cf. 1 Cor 5:7), in John (cf. Jn 19:36), in the First Letter of Peter (cf. 1 Pet 1:19), and in the Book of Revelation (for example, Rev 5:6).

  Jeremias makes the further observation that the Hebrew word talia means both "lamb" and "boy" or "servant" (TDNT, I, p. 339). In the first instance, then, the Baptist may have meant his words as a reference to the Servant of God who bears the sins of the world by his vicarious atonement. But this reference also identifies him as the true Passover lamb who expiates and wipes away the sin of the world: "The Savior, dying on the Cross, went to his vicarious death patiently like a sacrificial lamb. By the expiatory power of his innocent death he blotted out...the guilt of all mankind" (TDNT, I, p. 340). If at the extreme hour of Israel's oppression in Egypt, the blood of the Paschal lamb had been the key to its liberation, now the Son who became a servant--the shepherd who became a sheep--no longer stands just for Israel, but for the liberation of the world--for mankind as a whole.

  This brings us to the great theme of Jesus' universal mission. Israel does not exist for itself; its election is rather the path by which God intends to come to all men. This idea of universality will turn up again and again as the real core of Jesus' mission. By referring to the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, the Fourth Gospel places this idea right at the beginning of Jesus' journey.

  The reference to the Lamb of God interprets Jesus' Baptism, his descent into the abyss of death, as a theology of the Cross, if we may so express it. All four Gospels recount in their different ways that, as Jesus came up from the water, heaven was "torn open" (Mk 1:10) or "was opened" (Mt 3:16
; Lk 3:21); that the Spirit came down upon him "like a dove"; and that in the midst of all this a voice from heaven resounded. According to Mark and Luke, the voice addresses Jesus with the words "Thou art..."; according to Matthew, the voice speaks about him in the third person, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17). The image of the dove may be a reminiscence of what the creation account says about the Spirit brooding over the waters (Gen 1:2); the word like ("like a dove") suggests that it is "a simile for something that ultimately cannot be described" (Gnilka, Matthausevangelium, I, p. 78). The same heavenly voice sounds out again at the Transfiguration of Jesus, though with the addition of the imperative to "listen to him." When we come to the Transfiguration, we will have to consider the meaning of these words more closely.

  At this point I would merely like to underscore briefly three aspects of the scene. The first one is the image of heaven torn open: Heaven stands open above Jesus. His communion of will with the Father, his fulfillment of "all righteousness," opens heaven, which is essentially the place where God's will is perfectly fulfilled. The next aspect is the proclamation of Jesus' mission by God, by the Father. This proclamation interprets not what Jesus does, but who he is: He is the beloved Son on whom God's good pleasure rests. Finally, I would like to point out that in this scene, together with the Son, we encounter the Father and the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Trinitarian God is beginning to emerge, even though its depths can be fully revealed only when Jesus' journey is complete. For this very reason, though, there is an arc joining this beginning of Jesus' journey and the words with which he sends his disciples into the world after his Resurrection: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19). The Baptism that Jesus' disciples have been administering since he spoke those words is an entrance into the Master's own Baptism--into the reality that he anticipated by means of it. That is the way to become a Christian.

  A broad current of liberal scholarship has interpreted Jesus' Baptism as a vocational experience. After having led a perfectly normal life in the province of Galilee, at the moment of his Baptism he is said to have had an earth-shattering experience. It was then, we are told, that he became aware of his special relationship to God and his religious mission. This mission, moreover, supposedly originated from the expectation motif then dominant in Israel, creatively reshaped by John, and from the emotional upheaval that the event of his Baptism brought about in Jesus' life. But none of this can be found in the texts. However much scholarly erudition goes into the presentation of this reading, it has to be seen as more akin to a "Jesus novel" than as an actual interpretation of the texts. The texts give us no window into Jesus' inner life--Jesus stands above our psychologizing (Guardini, Das Wesen des Christentums). But they do enable us to ascertain how Jesus is connected with "Moses and the Prophets"; they do enable us to recognize the intrinsic unity of the trajectory stretching from the first moment of his life to the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus does not appear in the role of a human genius subject to emotional upheavals, who sometimes fails and sometimes succeeds. If that were the case, he would remain just an individual who lived long ago and so would ultimately be separated from us by an unbridgeable gulf. Instead, he stands before us as the "beloved Son." He is, on one hand, the Wholly Other, but by the same token he can also become a contemporary of us all, "more interior" to each one of us "than we are to ourselves" (Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, 6, 11).

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Temptations of Jesus

  The descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus, which concludes the baptismal scene, is to be understood as a kind of formal investiture with the messianic office. The Fathers of the Church therefore rightly saw this event as analogous to the anointing by which kings and priests in Israel were installed in office. The words Messiah and Christ mean "the Anointed": In the Old Testament, anointing was regarded as the visible sign that the person anointed was being invested with the gifts of office, with the Spirit of God. Isaiah 11:1f. develops this theme into a hope for the true "Anointed One," whose "anointing" consists precisely in the fact that the Spirit of the Lord comes down to rest on him: "The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD" (Is 11:2). According to Saint Luke's account, Jesus presented himself and his mission in the synagogue at Nazareth citing a related passage from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me" (Lk 4:18; cf. Is 61:1). The conclusion of the baptismal scene tells us that Jesus has received this true "anointing," that he is the awaited Anointed One--that at that moment kingly and priestly dignity were formally bestowed on him for all time in the presence of Israel.

  From now on he is charged with this commission. The three Synoptic Gospels tell us, much to our surprise, that the Spirit's first command leads him into the desert "to be tempted by the devil" (Mt 4:1). The action is prefaced by interior recollection, and this recollection is also, inevitably, an inner struggle for fidelity to the task, a struggle against all the distortions of the task that claim to be its true fulfillment. It is a descent into the perils besetting mankind, for there is no other way to lift up fallen humanity. Jesus has to enter into the drama of human existence, for that belongs to the core of his mission; he has to penetrate it completely, down to its uttermost depths, in order to find the "lost sheep," to bear it on his shoulders, and to bring it home.

  The Apostles' Creed speaks of Jesus' descent "into hell." This descent not only took place in and after his death, but accompanies him along his entire journey. He must recapitulate the whole of history from its beginnings--from Adam on; he must go through, suffer through, the whole of it, in order to transform it. The Letter to the Hebrews is particularly eloquent in stressing that Jesus' mission, the solidarity with all of us that he manifested beforehand in his Baptism, includes exposure to the risks and perils of human existence: "Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted" (Heb 2:17-18). "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb 4:15). The story of the temptations is thus intimately connected with the story of the Baptism, for it is there that Jesus enters into solidarity with sinners. We will see Jesus wrestling once again with his mission during his agony on the Mount of Olives. But the "temptations" are with him every step of the way. In this sense, we can see the story of the temptations--just like the Baptism--as an anticipation that condenses into a single expression the struggle he endured at every step of his mission.

  In his short account of the temptations (Mk 1:13), Mark brings into relief the parallels between Adam and Jesus, stressing how Jesus "suffers through" the quintessential human drama. Jesus, we read, "was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him" (Mk 1:13). The desert--the opposite image of the garden--becomes the place of reconciliation and healing. Wild beasts are the most concrete threat that the rebellion of creation and the power of death posed to man. But here they become man's friends, as they once were in paradise. Peace is restored, the peace that Isaiah proclaims for the days of the Messiah: "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid" (Is 11:6). Once sin has been overcome and man's harmony with God restored, creation is reconciled, too. Creation, torn asunder by strife, once more becomes the dwelling place of peace, as Paul expresses it when he speaks of the groaning of creation, which "waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom 8:19).

  Are not the oases of creation that sprang up, say, around the Benedictine monasteries in the West foreshadowings of this reconciliation of creation brought about by the children of God--just as, conversely, something like Chernobyl is a shockin
g expression of creation's enslavement in the darkness of God's absence? Mark concludes his brief account of the temptations with a phrase that can be taken as an allusion to Psalm 91:11: "And the angels ministered to him." These words also occur at the close of Matthew's detailed narrative of the temptations, and it is only in that larger context that they can be fully understood.

  Matthew and Luke recount three temptations of Jesus that reflect the inner struggle over his own particular mission and, at the same time, address the question as to what truly matters in human life. At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building on our own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion--that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied forms.

  Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil--no, that would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to speak for true realism: What's real is what is right there in front of us--power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs.

  God is the issue: Is he real, reality itself, or isn't he? Is he good, or do we have to invent the good ourselves? The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must the Savior of the world do or not do? That is the question the temptations of Jesus are about. The three temptations are identical in Matthew and Luke, but the sequence is different. We will follow Matthew's sequence, because his arrangement reflects the logic that intensifies from temptation to temptation.