Jesus (14 page)

When Jesus tells his listeners, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” is he referring to something that the
tektōn
would have made—a plow?
⁵³
Are these echoes of his work in this familiar line of Scripture?

Finally, in each of the Synoptic Gospels, during his last days in Jerusalem, Jesus refers to those who would reject him by saying, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?”
⁵⁴
It is a powerful image, but there are multiple images of rejection in the Old Testament upon which Jesus could have drawn. Why did he choose this one? Perhaps its relation to the art of building held special appeal to the
tektōn
.

In the messy and beautiful physical realities of the human person, in the craziness and sublimity of family life, and in the toil and satisfaction of the working life, Jesus knew the world.

Soon the world would know him.

N
OW FOR SOME SPECULATION
—
ON
Jesus's consciousness, or, we might say, self-consciousness. Here we are entering into more of an imaginative exercise, because while we can study the archaeology of first-century Galilee, we cannot gain access to the mind of Jesus, other than through what is revealed to us through the Gospels. Still, it's worth thinking about as we seek to understand him. So let's look at how the Gospels portray the knowledge of Jesus.

First, did Jesus learn? This question is fraught with theological difficulties. The main dilemma is: Since he is divine, doesn't he know all things? Some passages in the Gospels show Jesus having a knowledge surpassing human understanding. When he is faced with a dead girl, he proclaims, “The girl is not dead but sleeping.” And in the Gospel of John he says, “The Father and I are one,” which clearly implies divine knowledge. However, Luke notes that as a young man Jesus “increased in wisdom,” which just as clearly implies a growth in human understanding and knowledge. The Greek word is
proekopten:
Jesus “progressed” in wisdom.
⁵⁵
Why would he have to progress in wisdom if he knew everything?

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus indicates at least one thing that he doesn't know: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” The passage seems to imply limited knowledge on the part of Jesus.
⁵⁶

Any answers to “What did Jesus know?” depend on whether we focus on his divinity or his humanity: God's knowledge is limitless, and human knowledge is limited. But since we're looking at Jesus's ordinary life in Nazareth at this point, let's consider his human consciousness. As a youth, Jesus was probably curious. What child isn't bursting with questions about everything? We can imagine him asking questions of Mary and Joseph: “What's that?” As an adolescent, he would have sought answers to larger questions: “Why do people die?” As an adult he would have been interested in the lives of those around him: “Why must we give so much to Herod?” His teachers in Nazareth would have instructed him in his Jewish faith, including how to read Hebrew. And Joseph would have trained him in the art of being a
tektōn.

But not everything about Jesus's learning is wholly speculative. At least one passage in the Gospels shows Jesus as open to learning. After the Syrophoenician woman asks to have her daughter healed, he says, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” But when she responds, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs,” Jesus seems to change his mind. “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
⁵⁷
He seems to learn something from the woman. Perhaps he is moved by the love she evinces for her daughter—so great is it that she risks another harsh comment. So it seems that even after beginning his public ministry Jesus is open to learning from others.

Jesus also may have “progressed,” to use Luke's word, in understanding his vocation. Once again, we face a dilemma. Did the Son of God always fully comprehend his unique purpose? Did he understand it from the day of his birth, or at least from the time he gained self-awareness?

One possible approach, based on several passages in the New Testament, is that Jesus may have grown in his understanding of his mission, step by step, until finally grasping it completely. After all, his first miracle, the Wedding Feast at Cana, seems a reluctant one. When the wine runs out, his mother encourages him to come to the aid of the hosts. But he says to her, rather sharply, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”
⁵⁸

In response, his mother calmly says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Mary seems to grasp his call before he does, perhaps because she's had more time to meditate on it. I've often wondered how much Mary and Jesus discussed his future and shared their thoughts about his unique vocation. In his book
To Know Christ Jesus
, F. J. Sheed wonders why we so often think of them as “tight-lipped and inarticulate, each pretending not to know that the other knew.”
⁵⁹
Perhaps this was the moment when Mary invited him to embrace the path that God had set out for him.
⁶⁰

After his mother's encouragement, Jesus grasps what is required of him. More confident now, he tells the steward to fill the earthen jars with water. But it is not water that comes out; it is wine: his first miracle.

Later, Jesus is bursting with confidence in his vocation. “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean,” says a leper. “I do choose!” says Jesus. “Be made clean!”
⁶¹

Near the end of his earthly life, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus must confront for the final time what God intends. “If it is possible,” he prays, “let this cup pass from me.”
⁶²
But through intense prayer, he realizes that his impending suffering is what God the Father is asking of him. Here, it seems to me, he fully understands his vocation. To me, several Gospel passages seem to show a growth in his understanding of his identity, which reaches its ultimate point in his surrender to God on the cross, and ultimately is brought to fulfillment in the Resurrection.

As Elizabeth Johnson writes, perhaps even Jesus himself was surprised on Easter Sunday, when “his ultimate identity burst upon him with all clarity.”
⁶³

P
ERHAPS IT STILL MAY
be hard to see Jesus's life as like your own. Likewise, the culture of first-century Nazareth may seem almost incomprehensible. In his book
Jesus of Nazareth
, the Scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink reminds us how strange Jesus would appear to us today:

Nonetheless, because of what we know of the human person and what we can know about the Hidden Life, we can begin to identify intersections with our own lives.

Many of us protest that we are just too ordinary to be holy. Our lives feel far from the extraordinary life of Jesus of Nazareth. And so we sadly speak of our “just” lives. I'm just a student. I'm just a mom. I'm just a businessman. But for most of his life, Jesus was just a carpenter in a little nowhere town. Meier calls him “insufferably ordinary.” This is why his townspeople and family and friends were so shocked when he began his public ministry: “Is not this the carpenter?”

Jesus shows us the inestimable value of ordinary time. As the Jesuit theologian John Haughey comments, during Jesus's time in Nazareth God fashioned him into “the instrument God needed for the salvation of the world.”
⁶⁵
In Nazareth Jesus speaks to the meaning and worth of our ordinary lives.

Soon the
tektōn
who had been hidden in the small town would begin his public ministry, step onto the world stage, and decisively change human history.

But before that, he had one more place to visit.

T
HE
H
IDDEN
L
IFE

Luke 2:51–52

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

C
HAPTER
5

Jordan

“Do you come to me?”

A
LL FOUR
G
OSPELS
TELL
us that before Jesus launched his public career, he first went to visit his cousin John, who was baptizing on the Jordan River.

But where, exactly? The Jordan River runs from the northernmost part of current-day Israel southward through the Sea of Galilee and finally empties into the Dead Sea, a course of 156 miles. As with many sites in the Holy Land, there are multiple candidates for the location, each hotly vying for authenticity—and tourism.

The Gospels aren't much help on this particular question. Both Mark and Matthew say that John was baptizing “in the river Jordan” at a place accessible to people from Jerusalem and Judea. Luke says, even more vaguely, that John went into “all the region around the Jordan.” John's Gospel is more specific, locating the spot at “Bethany across the Jordan,” a site otherwise unmentioned in the rest of the New Testament.
¹
Recent excavations, however, on the eastern bank of the Jordan River have uncovered twenty churches, as well as caves and baptismal pools from the Roman and Byzantine periods, and this Jordanian site now claims to be “Bethany beyond the Jordan.”

Before traveling to the Holy Land, I hadn't a clue where John did his baptizing. Unlike my fascination with the Hidden Life, I'm not as curious about the precise details surrounding the Baptism of Jesus. At one point during our drive from Jerusalem to Galilee, I remarked to George, as I examined our map, “Oh, I see, in this area the Jordan River marks the boundary between Israel and . . .
Jordan
.”

“Please tell me you didn't just realize that,” said George. “You
do
know that the West Bank means the West Bank of the Jordan River, don't you?”

“Oh please,” I said, feigning intelligence. My knowledge was definitely of the human sort.

We visited the baptismal site on the way back from Galilee, en route to Jerusalem. On a blisteringly hot day, after another colossal breakfast at the Mount of Beatitudes hostel, we bade farewell to Sister Télesfora and made an early start. After four days in Galilee, we had seen almost all of what we wanted to see.

I
T WAS A SPUR-OF-THE-MOMENT
decision to visit the place (or at least one claimant to the place) where Jesus was baptized. Before George and I left Jerusalem, Father Doan told us that the Israeli government had recently “demilitarized” a plot of land across the river from the “Bethany beyond the Jordan” site, which had previously been opened only a few times a year. This area on the Israeli West Bank, called Qasr el-Yahud, had been captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. Until a few months before our visit, the site, located in the middle of a heavily mined area unfit for tourists, was essentially off-limits.

As George and I zipped down Route 90 toward Jerusalem, I kept my eyes peeled. Suddenly a sign materialized:
BAPTISMAL SITE
.

“Let's go!” I said.

“Do you really want to?” he asked. “The last time I was here, we visited the Jordan River and it was pretty gross.” He described seeing a small stream of a sickly hue trailing through the desert.

I persisted. “Wouldn't it be wonderful to renew our baptismal vows at the Jordan River?” George offered an unconvincing shrug without taking his eyes off the road. But ever the generous travel companion, as soon as we saw the turnoff for the site, he turned left.

It didn't look like the way to a holy site. A dusty path led downhill into a dry, yellow, lunar landscape devoid of greenery. We bumped over the heavily rutted road and pulled into the former military zone, now staffed by the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority. After we emerged from the car into the stunning heat, I spied a brand-new amphitheater, with long benches, located on the river bank. The lowermost bleachers of the amphitheater were underwater, to make baptisms easier.

On the opposite bank, in Jordan, stood a modest wooden pavilion; stairs led down to the water. There a baby was being baptized. The child cried the way so many about-to-be-baptized babies do, with an unmistakable combination of surprise and fury. Farther along the other bank were several lovely stone churches. The Jordanian side was far more developed than the Israeli side.

Then I saw the Jordan River. It was neon green, more like Mountain Dew than water.

“I told you it was gross,” said George. The river had reached perilously low levels thanks to irrigation projects upstream and was now reputed to be highly polluted.
²

Gingerly, I climbed down the steps a few inches from the water. “Come on,” I said. “It's the Jordan River! Let's renew our baptismal promises.” I playfully splashed him.

“Ugh!” he said.

I had accidentally splashed him when his mouth was open! He spat out the green water. I apologized, but felt terrible. George retreated to the car to rinse out his mouth with bottled water. After blessing myself with the Jordan water and saying a hasty prayer, I returned to the car.