Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration

by Pope Benedict XVI

Pierre Grelot has discovered an interpretation that accords with the text and goes even deeper. He draws attention to the fact that Jesus uses this parable, along with the two preceding ones, to justify his own goodness toward sinners; he uses the behavior of the father in the parable to justify the fact that he too welcomes sinners.

The older brother knows nothing of the inner transformations and wanderings experienced by the younger brother, of his journey into distant parts, of his fall and his new self-discovery. He sees only injustice. And this betrays the fact that he too had secretly dreamed of a freedom without limits, that his obedience has made him inwardly bitter, and that he has no awareness of the grace of being at home, of the true freedom that he enjoys as a son.

He, the true Lazarus, has risen from the dead—and he has come to tell us so. If we see in the story of Lazarus Jesus’ answer to his generation’s demand for a sign, we find ourselves in harmony with the principal answer that Jesus gave to that demand. In Matthew, it reads thus: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the Prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:39f.).

In his inaugural lecture as professor at Tübingen, published in expanded form as The Son of God in 1975 (English translation 1976), Martin Hengel characterized “the hypothetical Gnostic myth of the sending of the Son of God into the world” as a “pseudo-scientific development of a myth.” He then went on to remark: “In reality there is no Gnostic redeemer myth in the sources which can be demonstrated chronologically to be pre-Christian” (p. 33). “Gnosticism itself is first visible as a spiritual movement at the end of the first century A.D. at the earliest, and only develops fully in the second century” (p. 34).

This brings, us, however, to two decisive questions that are ultimately at stake in the “Johannine” question: Who is the author of this Gospel? How reliable is it historically?

“Scriptura sola is impossible without the ‘living voice’ of the Gospel and that is impossible without the personal witness of a Christian in the function and authority of the ‘beloved disciple,’ in whom office and spirit unite and support each other” (Theologie, I, 4, p. 158).

He is responding to a form of Christianity that, so to speak, wants only the word, but not flesh and blood. Jesus’ body and his death ultimately play no role. So all that is left of Christianity is mere “water”—without Jesus’ bodiliness the word loses its power. Christianity becomes mere doctrine, mere moralism, an intellectual affair, but it lacks any flesh and blood. The redemptive character of Jesus’ blood is no longer accepted. It disturbs the intellectual harmony.

Ritual purification in the end is just ritual, a gesture of hope. It remains “water,” just as everything man does on his own remains “water” before God. Ritual purification is in the end never sufficient to make man capable of God, to make him really “pure” for God. Water becomes wine. Man’s own efforts now encounter the gift of God, who gives himself and thereby creates the feast of joy that can only be instituted by the presence of God and his gift.

The mystery of the Incarnation, which John spoke of in the prologue to his Gospel, is taken up again here in a surprising new way. The vine is no longer merely a creature that God looks upon with love, but that he can still uproot and reject. In the Son, he himself has become the vine; he has forever identified himself, his very being, with the vine.

Lewis, having read a twelve-volume work about these myths, came to the conclusion that this Jesus who took bread in his hands and said, “This is my body,” was just “another corn divinity, a corn king who lays down his life for the life of the world.” One day, however, he overheard a firm atheist remarking to a colleague that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was actually surprisingly good. The atheist then paused thoughtfully and said: “About the dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it really happened once” (Schönborn, Weihnacht, pp. 23f.).

Jesus the Shepherd is sent not only to gather the scattered sheep of the house of Israel, but to gather together all “the children of God who are scattered abroad” (Jn 11:52). In this sense, Jesus’ promise that there will be one Shepherd and one flock is equivalent to the risen Lord’s missionary command in Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make all nations my disciples” (Mt 28:19); the same idea appears again in the Acts of the Apostles, where the risen Lord says: “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Is he “Son” in a derivative sense, referring to some special closeness to God, or does the term “Son” imply that within God himself there is Father and Son, that the Son is truly “equal to God,” true God from true God? The First Council of Nicea (325) summed up the result of this fierce debate over Jesus’ Sonship in the word homooúsios, “of the same substance”—the only philosophical term that was incorporated into the Creed. This philosophical term serves, however, to safeguard the reliability of the biblical term. It tells us that when Jesus’ witnesses call him “the Son,” this statement is not meant in a mythological or political sense—those being the two most obvious interpretations given the context of the time. Rather, it is meant to be understood quite literally: Yes, in God himself there is an eternal dialogue between Father and Son, who are both truly one and the same God in the Holy Spirit.

The title “Son of Man” continued to be applied exclusively to Jesus, but the new vision of the oneness of God and man that it expresses is found throughout the entire New Testament and shapes it. The new humanity that comes from God is what being a a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about.

Moses received from God himself the commission to say to Pharaoh: “Thus says YHWH, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me’” (Ex 4:22f.). The nations are God’s great family, but Israel is the “firstborn son,” and as such, belongs to God in a special way, with all that firstborn status means in the ancient Middle East.

“I am”—once again, the simple “I am” stands before us in all its mystery, though now defined in contrast to Abraham’s “coming into existence.” Jesus’ “I am” stands in contrast to the world of birth and death, the world of coming into being and passing away. Schnackenburg correctly points out that what is involved here is not just a temporal category, but “a fundamental distinction of nature.” We have here a clear statement of “Jesus’ claim to a totally unique mode of being which transcends human categories” (Barrett, Gospel, II, pp. 80f.).

After their initial fright at seeing a ghost, the disciples’ fear does not leave them, but reaches its greatest intensity at the moment when Jesus gets into the boat and the wind suddenly subsides.

In the end, man needs just one thing, in which everything else is included; but he must first delve beyond his superficial wishes and longings in order to learn to recognize what it is that he truly needs and truly wants. He needs God. And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift—he is “life.”