Jesus, Disciple of the Kingdom. Osvaldo D. Vena
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accompanied him throughout his life, since this passage refers to Jesus’ final moments in Gethsemane. It follows then, that during his public work, when he was clearly being regarded as a teacher, he was still learning. He was a disciple of John the Baptist, yes, but primarily of God, a disciple of the kingdom. Together with other disciples, Jesus learned what it meant to proclaim God’s coming rule, at a time when Rome was the unchecked world power. He was part of a movement of disciples who resisted Rome’s imperial rule, for they had their eyes fixed on another reality, the kingdom (basilea) of God.36
Of course, the main obstacle to seeing Jesus as disciple of the kingdom is the Gospels’ description of Jesus as teacher.37 If he is a teacher—in fact, “the teacher” according to John 13:13—then how can he be a disciple? But in antiquity, every teacher or philosopher traced his teaching to a source, to a teacher. So, every teacher was a former disciple or student of someone. My contention is that humanly speaking, Jesus’ teacher was John the Baptist, but that ultimately God was his Teacher. In that sense, disciples and prophets had their ultimate source of authority in the God of Israel who was regarded by all as a teacher (cf. John 6:45; Isa 54:13; Jer 32:33; Hos 11:13; Pss 71:17, 119:102, 143:8, 10).
To speak of Jesus as a disciple of the kingdom, then, implies that Jesus’ ministry needs to be seen as paradigmatic, instrumental, temporary, and not necessarily absolute and final, qualities of God’s reign to which Jesus seems to have always subordinated himself. The Gospel of John alludes to this when it says: “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). Luke also shares this opinion by writing an entire book, Acts, devoted to the work of the apostles and their followers, thus making it clear that Jesus’ earthly ministry was unfinished and was now being continued by the Spirit through the work of the community (cf. John 14:16, 26; 16:4–15; Acts 1:8).
In the Gospels, Jesus cannot be depicted as a disciple of the kingdom, because by the time they were written, the Christian church had already become uprooted from its Palestinian context.38 Jesus had become the message, not the messenger of the kingdom. Nonetheless, there is a residue of tradition that is still perceptible in the highly theologized and constructed narrative of the Gospels, which reflects a time when Jesus was regarded and, I would contend, regarded himself as a messenger of God’s kingdom alongside other figures such as John the Baptist. It is precisely this residue, this memory that we are interested in. Therefore, I explore the text of the Gospel of Mark looking for clues and vestiges hidden in the rhetorical tapestry of the text that may help us build the proposed model. Inter-textual connections with the Hebrew Scriptures are made, particularly when trying to imagine what would have been the possible traditions behind a certain model of discipleship.39
Historical and Sociological Approaches to Jesus
What was the historical Jesus, the real flesh-and-blood Jesus, like? This is what a historical approach to Jesus would try to find out, and many answers have been proposed, most of which have been treated ad nauseam by scholars from the nineteenth century to our own days and whose record appear, among a myriad of academic and popular works, in Craig S. Keener’s monumental volume entitled The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. In his book, Keener traces the history of Jesus scholarship in detail, providing an invaluable resource for those interested in this kind of endeavor. Since mine is less historical than rhetorical, as previously noted, I refer the reader to Keener’s book. Nevertheless, I would like to consider briefly some of these images, for they provide the background to my own investigation.
Jesus as a Wandering Charismatic
Nowadays, and thanks to the work of the Jesus Seminar and other historical and sociological reconstructions of Jesus’ life,40 we are familiar with the notion of a “Jesus’ movement,” which is seen as a precursor to what later became the early church as represented in the writings of the NT. This was, according to Gerd Theissen, a movement of wandering charismatics41 composed of traveling apostles, prophets, and disciples that relied on a group of sympathizers that took care of their everyday needs.42 During this time, it was the kingdom of God, rather than the death of Jesus, which held salvific value. The kingdom was seen as the message and Jesus as the messenger. To this time belongs some of the earliest stratum of the Q tradition. Even Paul testifies to this early stage (Paul’s authentic letters and Q’s earliest traditions come roughly from the same time period, 50–66 CE). We have Paul advising believers to have the “faith of Jesus” and telling them that God justifies the one who has this faith (Rom 3:26). Jesus also exhorts disciples to have faith in God, and he obviously sees himself as one who has such faith.43 All of this would agree with the idea that Jesus was the messenger of the kingdom, someone like John the Baptist, and not the message.
But while messenger is a more passive concept, disciple has a more active connotation.44 A disciple is someone who has been formed by a teacher who embodies a worldview, an ideology, and sees himself as a follower of that teacher or a subscriber of their ideology. But disciples are hardly ever solitary individuals. They belong to groups and/or movements that hope to make an impact in the society of their time. Jesus was part of such a movement. He was not just a heroic person who appeared out of the blue, and, yet, see the abrupt way in which Mark describes Jesus’ beginning of his ministry in 1:9! Rather Jesus is an individual deeply formed by the social group to which he belonged.45
Jesus as the Broker of God
The social-science model of patron, client, and broker also has been used to explain Jesus’ relation to God and the kingdom. From this perspective, Jesus can be seen as a broker of God, the heavenly Patron. In his work, Jesus made accessible to people the benevolence of God dispensed as grace, forgiveness, and mercy. This model allows us to see Jesus always in a relationship of dependence and subordination to God, even when as a teacher he was also a sort of patron to the disciples, who in turn acted as his brokers. Nevertheless, realizing how connected Jesus was with God, it is better to see both him and the disciples as brokers of the heavenly Patron, co-disciples in the service of the kingdom.46
Jesus as a Mystic
First-century Jewish mysticism adds another layer to this picture. According to this model, Jesus was taught by John to meditate on the vision of God depicted in the first chapter of Ezekiel, the Chariot, the moving throne of God. Bruce Chilton describes the Chariot as the “source of God’s energy and intelligence, the origin of his power to create and destroy. By meditating on the Chariot, John and his disciples aspired to become one with God’s Throne.”47 Jesus, as one of John’s disciples, learned the secrets of this meditation and in turn taught it to his disciples. This heavenly vision became the source of Jesus’ power and authority. Therefore, it is possible to affirm that Jesus remained a disciple of that vision, a servant, if you will, of a higher source of authority: God’s throne, God’s heavenly realm. His experience was similar to that of Isaiah, Ezekiel and, later, the Apostle Paul (cf. Isaiah 6; Ezekiel 1; 2 Cor 12:1–4).
Other Possible Models
Besides the models of itinerant charismatic, broker, and mystic, there are many other historical and/or sociological possibilities for a Jesus who, in the eyes of some early Christian communities, behaved as a disciple of the kingdom. Some would like to see him as a cynic or a sage—an idea advanced by the Jesus Seminar48—or