The Faith of Jesus

Chapter 2

The Call

The movement from a merely "conventional" into a truly personal faith, although it often begins in late adolescence or early adulthood, often takes many years. Since we have next to no information about the hidden years of Jesus' life in Nazareth, it is impossible to say, despite our speculations in the last chapter, just when this transition in the faith of Jesus took place. No doubt Luke's story of "The Finding in the Temple" might be seen as pointing towards the beginning of such a change, but when this transition was complete, is anybody's guess.

Ideally, the emergence of a fully "Individuative- reflective" faith, as Fowler has termed it -- but which I shall persist in calling simply a "personal faith"-- takes place in early adulthood. Pierre Babin saw little possibility of it taking place, in any permanently committed sense, until the final stage of adolescence. But from the life stories of so many persons, even of great saints like Augustine, as well as from an accumulation of modern testimonies, we know that often such an intensely personal commitment to God comes to many only later in life, sometimes not even until the end of life. So, beginning with adulthood, and unlike the predictability of the earlier stages during childhood and adolescence, Fowler's "stages of faith-development" are simply a "schema" nothing more. Frequently real life makes a shambles of neat categories. Yet such systemization does give us hints of where to look for the signs of growth.

Generally speaking, the transition to a truly personal faith often involves a preliminary negative phase, one that includes a certain amount of testing, questioning, or outright doubt. In addition, the more positive aspect characterized by a more positive, decisive choice comes to the fore only with a sense of personal mission or "vocation". Rarely does one come into a personal faith in the abstract. Faith, to the extent that it involves a basic commitment, requires that this commitment take a concrete shape in the living of one's life. Whatever we might surmise about the personal faith of Jesus of Nazareth, we really cannot begin to see the shape of its reality until a certain sense of personal mission manifests itself.

2.1 The Baptism in the Jordan

Elijah, who, according to the Bible (2 Kings, 2:11), had ascended to heaven in a whirlwind, had returned in the person of John the Baptist: or so it seemed in the view of many who witnessed the whirlwind of activity along the Jordan where the strange figure of John, clothed in a leather loincloth and a camel's hair cloak, was calling people to conversion and proclaiming the immanent arrival of the Kingdom of God.

Although both the gospels of Matthew and Luke contain "infancy accounts", strictly speaking, the historical content of all four of the gospels -- as well as the criteria set for that witnessing function essential to apostleship as stipulated in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:22) -- begins here. As we have already seen, the person chosen to bear apostolic testimony must have been a witness of the words and deeds of Jesus "from the time when John was baptizing until the day he was taken up from us." Paul was to see himself as an exception, "as one born out of due time", as he was to say. Mark's gospel, which in the opinion of almost all scholars today is the earliest of the synoptic gospels, begins abruptly at this point. There is no attempt to trace Jesus' earthly beginnings. The Jesus who presents himself to history is a grown man who suddenly appears along the banks of the Jordan.

So too the Gospel of John, whose famous prologue is primarily a theological meditation. The actual narrative or story-line, beginning with verse 19 of Chapter 1, flows directly from the testimony of John the Baptist in verse 15. The events that took place at that time stand almost alone -- along with the story of Jesus' passion and death, as well as the different accounts attesting to his resurrection -- as being singled out for mention in all four of the gospels. So clearly we have here an event of the greatest importance for our understanding of Jesus.

Despite the importance of this first public appearance of Jesus, there is a curious discrepancy regarding the memory of Jesus' own baptism itself. John alone among the evangelists doesn't recount the actual event but, also alone among them, indicates that Jesus and his own disciples performed the baptismal rite on others (see John 3:22) mimicking John the Baptist and his disciples -- among whom had once been this "beloved disciple" himself. The situation here is not unlike that regarding the last supper narratives and the Eucharist. John alone, again, does not recount the action or the words of institution over the bread and wine. Instead, there is the long discourse on Jesus' body and blood as our "food and drink" in chapter six, but with a concluding emphasis on not the flesh but the spirit giving eternal life. In much the same way, the theologies of rebirth and illumination replace the account of baptism as such in the Johannine gospel.

What we see here, according to scholars such as Meier who devotes three whole chapters to the subject of John the Baptizer and his relationship to Jesus and his ministry, is a manifestation of a later rivalry between the disciples of John and those of Jesus, a rivalry that the followers of Jesus, despite the historical record, wished to avoid -- especially by playing down the implication that Jesus in any way needed to be baptized. There are hints of this attitude in Matthew's gospel as well. Although all four gospels claim that Jesus indeed is the one whom John predicted as "the one yet to come ... whose sandals I am not worthy to untie" and who will "baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire", it is only Matthew's gospel that attempts to meet the problem head-on by having the Baptist protest to Jesus before he baptizes him: "It is I who need baptism from you...", with Jesus replying; "Leave it like this for the time being; it is fitting that we should, in this way, do all that righteousness demands" (Matthew. 3:14-15).

Like the Johannine silence regarding Jesus himself undergoing baptism, this Matthean explanation was already struggling with the conflict between the followers of the Baptist and those of Jesus. While there can be no doubt that this same struggle is reflected in Mark and Luke, there is no hedging or apology for Jesus having undergone John's penitential rite. He submits to it like any of the rest of John's disciples or followers.

In doing this, Jesus sets himself apart from the crowd of the curious, both the mere sightseers as well as the suspicious, some of whom have been sent as spies from the political-religious establishment in Jerusalem. We must not overlook, at this point, the extremely precarious political implications of the Baptist's message. The Jewish nation was a captive people and what little political authority was still held by Jews under the Roman occupation was mostly, with the exception of the brief reign (AD 40-44) of Herod Agrippa, under the canon of "religious affairs". Any religious reform, such as the Baptist preached, threatened this remaining political influence and seemed perilously close to the open revolt advocated by the "Zealots". That these political overtones were to contribute greatly, and in fact were probably the real reason for the death of John the Baptizer (according to Meier, who finds the account given by the Jewish historian Josephus as more reliable than that reported in the Gospels) could not have been less than a warning to Jesus himself.

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt, from the evidence given by the synoptic gospels and the Acts of the Apostles (see especially the kerygmatic addresses of Peter and Paul in Acts 10:37ff. and 13:24ff.), that the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan was seen by the evangelists as the occasion when the mission of Jesus began, for it was then that according to all four Gospels, that:

" the heavens opened up and the Spirit, as a dove, descended ... and from the heavens a voice said "You are my Son,the Beloved: my favor rests on you".

Although the above quotation has been taken from Mark 1:10-11, with slight variations in the wording of this account in the parallel synoptic passages (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 3:22) as well as in John 1:33b-34, the sense in all the accounts is the same: Jesus is revealed to be God's "beloved Son".

Two questions should immediately come to mind. What is to be made of this revelation? And to whom is it made?

Commentators have long noted that the phrase "the beloved, in whom I am well pleased", evokes the passage in Isaiah 42:1, the first of the four so-called "Suffering Servant" songs (see Isaiah 42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-11; 52:13-53:12). The connection here to Isaiah also is subtly underlined when it is realized that in the Aramaic dialect that John the Baptist undoubtedly used, the word talya that meant "lamb", also meant "servant" (see footnote "c" to Isaiah 53:7 in the New Jerusalem Bible) -- hence the "Lamb of God" allusion in the Gospel of John as well (see John 1:29).

Add to this that although the Greek texts of the synoptic gospels use the more explicit word 'uios for "son", it is more than merely a coincidence that the word pais, which the ancient Greek Septuagint version uses to serve as a translation of the Hebrew ebed or "servant" in its version of Isaiah, also can mean "son" in Greek. This same understanding of the Greek word pais is also found in one of the earliest Christian catechetical books, the Didache or "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" where Jesus is described as God's "pais". If nothing can be proved directly by this close association of the two meanings for pais in Greek, we can see from this, along with the supposed Aramaic connection between "lamb" and "servant", that early Christianity had early on made a direct connection between these famous Isaian passages and Christianity's own claim that Jesus is indeed the "Son of God". The importance of these connections will become more evident in time, but for now let it stand to underline the mysterious prophetic content of the baptismal accounts.

But beside the question of the meaning of these words, the other question still remains as to whom are they pictured as first having been revealed? Obviously, taken as a "second level" (that of early Christian kerygma) the idea is to reveal this fact to the reader of these accounts. But as far as to whom the revelation is supposed to have been made at the time it occurred, the testimony is mixed. According to Matthew and Mark, it is apparently only Jesus himself who saw or heard anything. Luke,on the other hand, does not specify who the hearer or hearers might be, while John's gospel departs from the others not only in totally ignoring the fact of Jesus having been baptized, but even more in singling out the Baptist as later testifying that he himself was granted the vision of "the Spirit coming down from heaven upon him and resting upon him". (See John 1:32. Here the phrase "like a dove" seems to have been borrowed from the synoptic accounts and is missing in some early manuscripts of John.)

Nevertheless, it would seem that in Matthew and Mark in particular, the emphasis remains on the experience that Jesus himself had. No doubt it is Luke's account, which fails to specify the recipient of the words and vision, that has inspired later efforts to reinterpret this whole event as a Trinitarian theophany where the Father (the voice from heaven) reveals the Son (Jesus) through the visible sign of the Spirit (the Dove) -- this for the edification of all who were standing around.

As to be expected, with his crusade against any "psychologizing" type of "lives of Jesus", Meier denies (II, p. 107) that this theophany "mirrors" any inner experience that Jesus may have had but simply reflects the desire of the early Church to define, from the outset of the gospels, the real identity of Jesus and to set him apart from any counter-claims from followers of John. Yet even Meier has to admit that this whole episode may very well signifies a "turning-point" in the relationship of Jesus to John, one at which he began to realize that he had a distinct mission that set him apart from his mentor.

So it would appear that in a manner somewhat similar to early "adoptionist" christology, as well as many modern commentators, we might see in this event -- that is, his baptism, as apart from any visionary experiences -- a clear sign that it was only at this point that Jesus became aware of his mission and his special relationship to God. Leaving aside the question of what his "sonship" means, this certainly seems to be an interpretation that is much more in line with an understanding of a Jesus who is fully human. Even in the Johannine version, this approach is not precluded; it is only, at the most, downplayed.

Nevertheless, I feel that this also may be an oversimplification of the matter. Such an interpretation almost entirely overlooks what immediately follows in the synoptic gospels. Instead of the force of this event launching Jesus immediately into missionary activity, as we might expect, according to the synoptic gospels something quite the contrary took place. We are told that "immediately, the Spirit drove him into the desert" (Mark 1:12), to which Matthew (4:1) adds "to be tempted by the devil."

2.2 The Temptations in the Desert

If no event depicted by the gospels seems as clearly "historical", taken at face value, as his baptism, its aftermath, presented by the synoptic gospels, presents the most puzzling of all the other major episodes recorded of him. And again, the Johannine gospel chooses to remain silent about the whole thing. Even the relative sparsity of biblical commentary on this subject (Meier devotes only two pages to the matter -- half of page 103 in the second volume of his immense work with a page and a half footnote on pages 271-2) seems to reduplicate in a new way the serious uneasiness in traditional thought over how to incorporate this aspect of the gospel into the body of Christian "orthodoxy".

The reason for this modern reticence is, of course, the patently dramatic and visionary nature of the accounts. Even if they "happened", who else would have been there to witness them? Like the theophany reported in conjunction with his baptism, who can say in terms of historical argument, that anything else happened at all? Yet even Meier has to admit that the "criterion of multiple attestation" -- with the exception of John's non-synoptic gospel -- argues strongly that Jesus did retreat to the desert for a period of time immediately following his baptism and that there he underwent some kind of "inner spiritual struggle in preparation for his public ministry" (Meier II, p. 272.), which admission, for the purposes of this book, is more than sufficient.

Nevertheless, reflecting the silence of the Gospel of John, the concept of Jesus being "tempted" in the first place seems shocking to many Christian minds. Witness the outrage over Scorcese's film of the Kazantzakis novel, The Last Temptation of Christ (even Kazsantzakis seems to have had problems in trying to portray these particular temptations if not the others he dreamed up). On the other hand, the most ancient commentaries play up the theme of Jesus having gone into the desert to show his future adversary who is in charge -- not unlike St. Anthony of Egypt and the other ancient Christian "desert fathers" who went into solitude to defeat Satan in one-to-one combat. Of course, in such a scenario, there is no question who is going to win!

But instead of a picture of Jesus rushing into the desert to do battle with the adversary, the synoptic gospels approach the story with a quite different note. According to Mark, who gives the shortest, and presumably earliest account, Jesus was even "driven" into the desert by "the spirit" while Matthew and Luke soften the expression to his being "led" into the desert. Only Luke assures us that this was the "Holy Spirit" -- although we can presume from Mark's and Matthew's way of phrasing things that it is not the devil's impulse that took him there. There, Matthew tells us, Jesus "fasted for forty days and forty nights" and that "afterwards" (Luke is not so specific as to the time) he was "tempted."

Although Mark does not tell us what these temptations were, Matthew and Luke are explicit and picture to us three separate temptations, differing only in the order of the last two. For reasons that I will explain shortly, and contrary to Meier's reasoning on this matter -- his based, it would seem, more on a hierarchy of sin -- I will use the order of Luke's account here (see Luke 4:1-13).

The first temptation, certainly the logical one after a forty-day fast, is to "command that this stone become a loaf of bread." Note that in Luke 4:3 there is only one stone and although perhaps we shouldn't attach any particular significance to this, it could possibly point to a more individualistic self-serving temptation, which is to say, to satisfy Jesus' own hunger. In contrast, the Matthean version, with its plurality of stones/loaves, seems to underscore the populist appeal of any messianic miracle-working, not so much to quell Jesus' own hunger, but to present himself as a new Moses, providing an imagined future audience with a new manna in the desert. But in either case Jesus quotes scripture (Deuteronomy 8:3) to dispel this temptation, with Matthew adding a final emphasis on the "word" of God.

The second temptation, according to Luke's presentation, is that Jesus gain dominion over all the world, by one act alone -- simply by worshiping the Tempter. Jesus' response is curt. It is another quote from Deuteronomy (6:13): "You shall worship the Lord your God and him alone shall you serve." But this time it is Luke who stresses the messianic dimensions of the temptation. Where Matthew's account holds out simply the promise of "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" (Matthew. 4:8) in Luke this is elaborated into "all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time" and not only that, but "all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me" -- suggesting an allusion to the authority of imperial Rome. So this is may not be so much a simple appeal to worship Satan, but an appeal to worship the ungodly power of evil embodied in the state. Here the overtones closely parallel the picture of "idolatry" presented in the book of Revelations.

Lastly, the third temptation -- in the Lukan order we are following -- pictures Jesus as then being transported to the Temple "pinnacle" in Jerusalem where he is tempted to test God directly, this time by putting his fate directly in God's hands, with the tempter quoting from Psalm 91. Thus Jesus is bidden to "throw himself down" to be rescued by God's angels. But Jesus again answers from Deuteronomy (6:16): "You must not put the Lord your God to the test."

My reason for following the order given by Luke is not to ease the problem of credibility involved by transporting Jesus to Jerusalem and back. Even traditional Christians have taken these temptations to be patently symbolic or visionary -- how else do you see all the world's kingdoms in a moment? -- and for the purposes of throwing himself down any nearby cliff (of which there are many in the Judean desert) would have sufficed. But if we follow the order given by Luke, the idea that this temptation was really encountered in a visit to Jerusalem, where the corner of the temple balustrade presents a precipitous drop to the Kedron valley below, presents much less of a problem, particularly if a visit to Jerusalem, as depicted by John shortly after the meeting with John the Baptist, did take place. But at this point the question of the physical circumstances is not that important. What is important is the actual meaning.

It is noteworthy that the first and last temptation, in the order given by Luke, both begin with the phrase "If you are the Son of God..." In the case of the other (the second temptation in Luke) however, the implication is that he is really not divine, but that he can gain its equivalence by worshiping the proffered source of earthly power. The usual explanation given for all this is that while Jesus surely knew himself to be the Son of God, it was the devil who really wasn't so sure -- an interpretation that appears to contradict all the other statements in the gospels about the evil spirits proclaiming Jesus' identity, -- but of course, only after he had been tested in this way.

But, again, I read the whole episode quite differently. Instead, to revert to modern psychological jargon, I would suggest that what we have here are all the indications we need of a full-blown "identity crisis." However outrageous this suggestion may seem, I invite the reader to try to imagine the following scenario.

Jesus, responding to his best instincts and the prompting of the Spirit, after years of seclusion in Nazareth, went to the Jordan to be initiated into the revival movement of John, only to be given the revelation -- or should we say hit with the realization? -- that God had singled out himself, Jesus, and not John, with the special mission of not just announcing but actually inaugurating the kingdom. John, if we are to believe his own testimony as recorded by all four gospels, saw himself only as a herald, a"precursor","a voice crying in the wilderness." Instead of joining John as an ally, Jesus had suddenly experienced the overwhelming power of the conviction that he must go beyond John and begin the implementation or embodiment of that "kingdom" or reign of God in its actuality, not just in its promise.

What did or does this "kingdom" mean? That, first of all, as we can see from the later confusion of his disciples, was the obvious problem. Was it to be constituted by an open revolt against Rome as the Zealots would urge? Or was it to be a sudden "Day of Judgement" as John the Baptist's preaching seemed to foretell. Or could it be simply a reform of his people's religion as such, perhaps through a purging of the corruption surrounding the temple worship combined with a more spiritual reinterpretation of the Law as many of the Pharisees were urging. These were all possibilities to be considered and wrestled with.

But this was only the operative side of the question. The deeper, more essential, side was who he himself might be. To be designated God's "Servant-Son" could mean very different things in these different contexts. To be a "messiah" as the Zealots imagined him to be was one thing, while to be a "Teacher of Righteousness" to whom the Essenes, and we might suppose, the Pharisee's might have responded, would be quite another. And then, there was also the mysterious, enigmatic "Son of Man", the shadowy apocalyptic figure who appears in the prophecies of Daniel, the vision of whom may have inspired John the Baptist's warnings of a judgment to come. In other words, the message itself determined the mission and identity of its proclaimer. If, as Albert Schweitzer and his disciples said, "Jesus proclaimed the kingdom, and his followers proclaimed Jesus", this need not be taken as a unwarranted presumption. It is the ultimate guarantee of the authenticity of God's word. Or in this case especially, as a pundit of a later age would proclaim, "the medium is the message."

That may have very well been the problem that drove Jesus, under the impulse of the Spirit, into the desert. Like another Elijah, John the Baptist had emerged from the desert to proclaim God's word. Now. almost like a second reincarnation of Elijah, Jesus is driven back into the desert, and like the first Elijah as he moved toward Mt. Horeb in the footsteps of Moses to seek God's will, Jesus secludes himself in the desert to confront for the first time that disturbing question: "Who do men say that I am?"

Up to this point, despite what has been said about the process of "individuation" and the effect it may have had upon his self-consciousness, it may be safe to say that Jesus, as far as we can know from the gospels, apart from what may have only been idle speculation on our part, may have had little sense of himself as an individual in any way different from any pious Jew of his age. Even if we were to keep turning back to Luke's depiction of the incident known as "The Finding in the Temple" as indicative of a certain precocity, and we were to take that episode as somehow recalling the actual words of Jesus, the sheer ingenuousness of the answer of the boy to his parents seems to indicate that he really saw nothing extraordinary about his relationship to God. After all, why should his parents, of all people, pious Jews that they were, worry about him or see anything unusual about his eagerness to learn? Instead, it is the Evangelist who plays up a deeper meaning of the word "father" and his parent's bewildered surprise.

No doubt, Jesus had listened carefully to the rabbis and other scholars and pious men who had come his way. To some extent, despite all the negative things said about them in the gospels, it might be said that Jesus loosely identified himself with the beginnings of that reform movement generally known as "phariseeism" although the great variety of opinions over biblical interpretation and the various approaches to piety current in the society of that time make it difficult to categorize Jesus as being an adherent of any one particular school or tradition. Prof. David Flusser, of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, considered to be the Jewish expert on the New Testament, believes that Jesus can be tentatively associated with one particular pharisaic group, which Flusser identifies as being "the Pharisees of Love".

But there can also be no question that Jesus definitely did not in any way identify with the would-be Jewish ruling elite in Jerusalem, know as the Sadducees, even though he retained a critical respect for the temple ceremonies which these establishment types still controlled and often demeaned in their concern to capitalize on the piety of the average Jew. But perhaps Jesus did think that there was something that he, even as one small, unimportant, relatively uneducated but well-meaning person from the provinces, might do? It may be that, to his mind, the Pharisees were too divided among themselves to effect any major reform.

No doubt, news of the strong stand being taken by John along the Jordan must have filtered its way up to Nazareth. Jesus went down to witness what was taking place and in turn, offered his own life completely to the service of God -- indeed, this was the whole point of John's baptism in its demand for "conversion". What is different about Jesus, as compared to the rest of John's followers, is that Jesus is not only taken at his word, but that he is also declared to be God's "Servant-Son." What this declaration might mean, and the mission this implied, is the question, but not the final answer, which the temptations in the desert underline.

Before this, it must have been different. Certainly Jesus knew himself to be a "child" a "servant" of God, even a "son of God" in the sense that he knew that Jews, as members of a chosen people, were called to be special in God's eyes. Even more, his extraordinary devotion to God as Abba or "Father" speaks eloquently of his sense of closeness to God, a closeness that cannot but reflect favorably on his home and childhood. But now, perhaps for the first time, in all its stark reality, Jesus knew that he is truly different. It could be that he felt something like the volunteer who, thinking he might help in some way in a mission, suddenly finds himself designated as "Chief" or commander of the whole operation. Who knows? But whatever his feelings, it is obvious that he fled to the desert to find the answer to what he was really being called to be.

The choices were limited. He could attempt the route of the Zealots -- to foment a popular revolution, to turn "stone(s)" to "bread", as we are told he turned a few loaves into a camp meal on more than one occasion and was almost drafted into leadership. Not only stones to bread, the stony resignation of his people under centuries of repression he knew could also be transformed into a mob of impassioned liberators who could throw out not only the Roman oppressors, but their rich and powerful allies among the Jews as well. To be "the Son of God" -- would this not be to become the Liberator, the Messiah of Israel?

Or, on the other hand, if he were not the "Son of God" -- even in the sense of God's chosen agent -- yet still desired to further the reform and freedom of Israel, would it not be a wiser move to somehow ally oneself with the forces of oppression to reform them from within -- or as another age would say: "if you can't beat them, join them"? Maybe, in this way, some providential opportunity would present itself that could be used to turn the situation around entirely. Yet, would not such a course of action be an idolatry of power, a going over to Satan in the self-deluding hope that he could turn Satan's power against evil? A temptation worth pondering, no doubt, but in the end deceptive. At best it would be an immoral course, no matter, how noble the intentions. Worldly power, in the end, can not serve God's real purposes, and those who think it can have already prostrated themselves before a false god.

Is there any other way out? Perhaps there is: and this is why I'm inclined to think that the order of the temptations as presented by Luke rings more true, at least psychologically speaking. One can put things entirely in God's hands. This, the final possibility or resolution, however, can also be the final temptation. Could it be that Jesus, driven to despair to find an answer, was tempted to find it, to force God's hand as it were, by throwing himself over a cliff? Or like the prophet Elijah before him, who in the desert prayed that God would take his life (I Kings 19:4) or the prophet Jeremiah who came to rue the day he'd been born (Jeremiah 20:14-18) that already the "burden" of the message and ministry that confronted Jesus was in danger of proving too much for him? Who is to say, if Jesus truly was a man, that such a temptation was impossible? Indeed, later in his ministry, when he spoke enigmatically of "going to" somewhere "where you can't follow", his listeners even wondered if he was intending to kill himself (see John 8:22). So at least the possibility of suicide was not beyond his hearers' imagination. The intensity of the prophetic ministry is not without its recognized dangers!

Be that as it may, the temptation, as presented in the gospels, is not that far-fetched. Even the topography suggests it. If this temptation did not actually take place at the temple, then the monastery of the Quadrantine (the "Forty Days") that is perched on a cliff face overlooking the site of ancient Jericho and the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea beyond, is a fitting enough place to recall it and those other solitaries who have gone mad in the desert.

But might not this final temptation have taken place at the temple in Jerusalem after all? A long day's hike (from the desert above Jericho), uphill all the way, but half-starved and feverish from the dryness and heat of the desert, could not have Jesus' quandary between the way of popular revolt and the way of political influence have possibly driven him to seek a solution, no longer in the wilderness, where he found no answer, but in the midst of the capitol and it's holiest place. The temple was, of all things, that which most of all symbolized the reformation that was needed, and also the place where the powers that be, no matter how subservient to the foreigners, still had the influence to bring about change, if they wanted it -- which they did not. What better place for a final contest, not with those powers so much, or even with the mob, but with himself, and with God? Jesus would wrest, if he could, an answer from God or else die in the attempt. What more decisive a resolution could there be? How could he not be tempted by it?

But the answer was not to be, at least not that day and not that way. Perhaps it was the sight of the temple itself in all its near-completed magnificence -- this was the third one on this spot and would be the grandest of them all. Or maybe it was the sight of all these people, especially all these little, sincere and devout people who streamed to the temple all day long to hand over their pathetic, over-priced offerings, or maybe it was even the sight of the foreign tourists and soldiers who for all their affected disdain were underneath impressed and even awed by the majesty of Israel's God. Or could there have been a premonition that the showdown would come another day in another way, close by these same city and temple walls and that the moment of truth must be according to the Father's own choosing?

If Jesus did cause a stir in the temple shortly after his baptism, as the second chapter of John's gospel indicates, it apparently didn't amount to much -- or else the authorities chose to ignore it. In any case, Jesus must have come away with the conviction that he must wait for God, not tempt him, and that the time would come soon enough when he would have to challenge the authorities at this august spot, not by a spectacular, or even suicidal, leap, but by some calculated action that God would reveal to him before long. So Jesus found his way back to his home province and to his home town. The meaning of his "Sonship", it was clear by now, was to be in the pattern of the Isaian "Servant of Jahweh" and the suffering that would entail.

2.3 Jesus and Personal Faith

What we have here, in these combined stories of the baptism and the temptations of Jesus is, I would submit, (despite my wondering, in the previous chapter, as to whether the faith of Jesus was ever "conventional" in the usual sense of that word) is a definitive movement from what generally corresponds to "conventional faith" to a more intensely "personal faith". By contemporary standards, and by much of what I have implied, we may have the impression that a conventional faith, because it is conventional and highly influenced by family, society, and culture in general, is an inferior type of faith. In some ways it is, especially if we look at it from the aspect of personal resolution or conviction on a purely intellectual level. But we must make no mistake about confusing that with lack of genuine commitment or holiness. If the faith of Jesus had been somewhat conventional in terms of what was then contemporary Judaism until around his thirtieth year, we must realize that for him or anyone like him in his society, although there was plenty of variety in the expression of Judaism, still, when reduced to its basics, there was no doctrinal alternative. What little popular paganism he was exposed to must have seemed ludicrous or bizarre. But there is no doubt that at the same time Jesus must have been resolved to find an even better way of being a Jew. In this context, that he sought out the Baptizer along the Jordan speaks for itself.

But what he found and he himself became was something very different from what he had left behind in Nazareth. That month and a half or so Jesus spent along the Jordan and in the near-by desert was to profoundly change him. Whatever it was that happened to him at the time of his baptism, it propelled him into a prolonged period of solitude to wrestle with its meaning. And the outcome of this test does not seem to have been completely resolved even then. Nor should this surprise us. The movement from conventional to a fully personal faith is generally not a smooth one, indeed, it is apt to be even more traumatic within closed and more or less homogeneous religious cultures -- although Jewish culture at that time was rapidly ceasing to be as rigid as we may imagine it to have been or even as it was to become in later times from place to place. The broad division between Sadducees and Pharisees and the many divisions within the latter, or of revolutionary resistance groups like the Zealots or esoteric conclaves like the Essenes, all point to an amazing pluralism even within the Judaism of that time.

However, to the north, in Galilee, away from Judaism's religious and cultural capitol in Jerusalem, or its most cosmopolitan intellectual center in Alexandria, Jesus' own impression of his faith was likely to be to some extent more traditional than that of many other Jews of his time. "Personalization" or "individuation" within this religious context was primarily a matter of finding ones own special vocation within the context of a faith long received. The type of synthesis that goes on within the earlier "conventional" stage is much less likely to have been in evidence in the Galilean Judaism of the first century of our era. If anything, instead of the broadening synthesis that often -- but not always -- takes place when faith becomes personalized in our own situation, the reflection and insight that Jesus gained during this brief but decisive period in his life could be seen primarily as counter-synthetic, breaking down whatever easy accommodations may have been made between religion and society and instead demanding a radical renewal of faith.

Or to look at it from another perspective, that given by Pierre Babin, we might say that Jesus underwent a religious "conversion" experience in the true biblical sense of the word, a metanoia (literally, a "change of mind") which is not so much that of "repentance" -- the usual translation given to John's message and baptism -- as it is an upheaval in one's whole way of thinking or attitude towards life. Such "conversions" do not necessarily involve a change in religion or religious affiliation, although they sometimes do that too. What they do necessarily involve, if they are genuine, is a new deepening of one's religious commitment, one that is often expressed in a sense of mission, call, or vocation, that demands a whole new manner of life. It would have been the kind of "turning-point" that even such a no-nonsense critic as Meier admits must of happened about this time. In Jesus' case, this sense of a "call" and it's demand for a life lived with a sense of a divinely given mission is clearly evident.

In terms of risk and the threat it poses to security, this period must have been singularly traumatic for Jesus. To leave home, as humble as it was, and to venture out to follow a charismatic prophet in the wilderness, could hardly have been approached in the spirit of mere diversion on the one hand, or simply as a religious pilgrimage on the other. To lay aside his familiar tools, the simple comforts of hearthside and his mother's cooking, or even the reassuring security of well-used scrolls in the local synagogue and to be prepared to take up a wanderer's life in the footsteps of a wild-looking man who reputedly lived on grasshoppers and by raiding wild bees' hives could not have sounded very attractive.

On the other hand, to throw all aside to follow this man and to have to risk disappointment or disillusionment and to find oneself with no alternative but to return home wiser but sadder to a small town, where everyone knew everyone else's business, would not be an attractive prospect either. That Jesus appeared to do just that after his sojourn along the Jordan did not go unnoticed. True, he was soon to reassert his new-found call as a travelling rabbi, with even a small coterie of followers. But even by this time there were people, particularly among his relatives, who thought him to be somewhat unhinged. To be different, or even to dare to be so, is to earn scorn from those who think they already know everything about you. Had they had any idea of what went on in his mind when he had been in the desert a short time back they would have been more suspicious yet. But either way, there was now no turning back.

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