N.T. Wright Project

A long passage toward the end of Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God is helping re-hatch and expand my Christology. Moreover, it’s put me in touch with the humanity of Jesus in a profound way. A broad statement, but nonetheless true, is that most Christians today have no problem thinking of Jesus as the lofty and divine second person of the Trinity, yet find themselves uneasy if forced to grapple with his raw humanity.

Perhaps it’s because the church has developed an allergic reaction to anything that smells like Arius (or his contemporary sibling, the Jesus Seminar). Whatever the case, most Christians don’t take seriously the fact that Jesus would have caught common colds, made mistakes in carpentry, and struggled as he got older with what he perceived to be his vocation – unless of course you think baby Jesus knew he was the divine Son of God while still in the crib.

This passage deals specifically with Jesus’ self-understanding, which Wright prefers to speak of in terms of his growing sense of vocation. I was quite moved when I first read it, and I continue to be stirred by the images it conjures up (at least in my mind) of Christ wrestling with his identity before entering Jerusalem and the Temple, and then again in the garden of Gethsemane before his arrest.

“Speaking of Jesus’ ‘vocation’ brings us to quite a different place from some tradition statements of gospel christology. ‘Awareness of vocation’ is by no means the same thing as Jesus having the sort of ‘supernatural’ awareness of himself, of Israel’s god, and of the relation between the two of them…Jesus did not, in other words, ‘know that he was God’ in the same way that one knows one is male or female, hungry or thirsty, or that one ate an orange an hour ago. His ‘knowledge’ was of a more risky, but perhaps more significant, sort: like knowing one is loved. One cannot ‘prove’ it except by living by it. Jesus’ prophetic vocation thus included within it the vocation to enact, symbolically, the return of YHWH to Zion. His messianic vocation included within it the vocation to attempt certain tasks which, according to scripture, YHWH had reserved for himself. He would take upon himself the role of messianic shepherd, knowing that YHWH had claimed this role as his own. He would perform the saving task which YHWH had said he alone could achieve. He would do what no messenger, no angel, but only the ‘arm of YHWH’, the presence of Israel’s god, could accomplish. As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be. He was Israel’s Messiah; but there would, in the end, be ‘no king but God’.

I suggest, in short, that the return of YHWH to Zion, and the Temple-theology which it brings into focus, are the deepest keys and clues to gospel christology…Focus…on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, symbolizing the Temple’s destruction and celebrating the final exodus. I propose, as a matter of history, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of a vocation: a vocation, given him by the one he knew as ‘father’, to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God had promised to accomplish all by himself. He would be the pillar of cloud and fire for the people of the new exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the covenant God.” (652-653)

What Wright is proposing here is a view of Jesus’ humanity that is raw and real. And if true, it means it was always a gamble for him to go to the cross. Considering the Temple incident and what he said during his last meal, it’s clear that Jesus knew he would be killed if he made the journey to Jerusalem. The real test, then, would be on the other side of death.

Jesus understood the Old Testament texts that spoke of a coming Messiah who would suffer on behalf of Israel but whom God would vindicate in the end. He must have come to strongly believe that he was this Messiah (Wright makes a strong case for this), but this doesn’t negate the fact that he was still having his doubts. I can’t help but believe there were times when Jesus really struggled with this, times when he wondered whether he was crazy – in fact, the gospels tell us his own family at times believed he was crazy. Self understanding eventually came through a combination of his unique relationship with the Father, his reading of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah or “Son of Man” who would bring about the promised reign of God (Daniel 7, Zechariah 9-14, Isaiah 40-55, etc.), and over time sensing deep within himself that he could be the long-awaiting one.

The only way for him to find out if he was truly the Messiah would be to embody the full vocation of the prophesied Messiah – and that would mean suffering and dying for Israel and the world. That was the great gamble. If he was the Messiah as he believed, then he would be vindicated; God would resurrect him. And if he wasn’t…well, there would be no vindication. It would mean that he was mistaken in who he believed himself to be. This is why what one believes (or doesn’t believe) about the resurrection of Jesus makes all the difference in the world; Messianism hinges on whether the tomb was empty.

Understanding just what was at stake in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem makes his humanity more real, more vulnerable, and as Wright says, more significant.