This is a series of lectures about Jesus as a person of history, as a figure of history, and this is lecture number seven. We talk about Jesus as social prophet. So we talked about a couple of lenses through which to understand Jesus as a person of history.
We talked about Jesus as shaman and about Jesus as a sage or a wisdom teacher. Now in this third, the third lens through which we're going to understand Jesus is Jesus as a social prophet. You know, I think that the idea of seeing Jesus as a healer and a a mystic, or as a shaman is the word that I've used for that, and Jesus as a teacher.
These are both really helpful ways of understanding who Jesus was and how he carried out his life and ministry. But they don't explain, really, the most the clearest and most well-established datum that we have about Jesus, and that's that he was crucified by the Roman Empire. Crucifixion is a penalty reserved for crimes against the state, a penalty reserved for sedition and insurrection, for rebels.
And it was a brutal punishment. It was. It was a signal to anyone else who thought of fomenting rebellion that this is exactly what will happen to you. It was meant to be gruesome and torturous.
And you just don't see a whole lot of teachers being put to death in this way. You don't see a whole lot of healers or mystics, you know, harmless religious people, you might think, being tortured by an empire. So what is it that got Jesus killed?
In the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which of course are our earliest gospels, The story of Jesus takes place within about a year, and in that time, Jesus, if you exclude the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, just Jesus'public ministry, takes place over the course of about a year, or at least less than two years, only one Passover cycle. And during that time, Jesus travels to Jerusalem only once. In John's Gospel, which is a later gospel, the ministry of Jesus takes place over the course of three or four years. And Jesus is back and forth from Jerusalem all the time.
Now, it's quite a long trip. It's about a 200-minute trip. mile trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and so you can imagine making this trip on foot, it would be a little hard to imagine the sequence of events in the Gospel of John.
But in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus goes to Jerusalem once, and it's for Passover, and he travels at the beginning of the week of preparation for Passover on a Sunday, and he's dead by the end of the week. Why is that? What is that about?
I want to suggest that it's because of Jesus'role as a prophet that he ends up ultimately getting himself killed. Now, we need to understand Jesus within the tradition of the Hebrew prophets and That's going to take a little bit of a recontextualization because the Hebrew prophets function differently from the way that we tend to think of prophets in our own world. When we think of prophets, we think of someone like, I don't know, Nostradamus or something. We think of fortune tellers, of people who tell the future, right?
But the Hebrew prophets on whose ministry Jesus modeled his own were not fortune tellers. They didn't tell the future. They, I want to suggest, spoke in a different grammar from fortune tellers.
So a fortune teller Speaks in the future tense. She tells you what will happen, right? You will fall in love.
You will have a child. You will die next week, right? The fortune teller tells you what will happen The Hebrew prophets, by contrast, use the subjunctive mood.
They use if-then clauses, right? If this happens, then this will result. If you do... this, then this will happen. And so the Hebrew prophets were largely concerned with two things.
They had two primary concerns. And the first of those is proper worship of the God of Israel. The Hebrew prophets were really the first kind of radical monotheists in history. For much of the Hebrew Bible, that society is not really...
We like to... We think of Judaism as a monotheistic religion, and certainly modern Judaism is, as well as Islam and in... in a more contextualized way, Christianity. But ancient Judaism, biblical Judaism, was not really monotheistic.
There were in fact several gods and goddesses. They worshiped only one god. But there were many, many gods and goddesses that were quite real, that the people thought it was quite real.
And so the Hebrew prophets were the first to really insist, the prophets, to really insist on the... The worship and perhaps even the reality of only one God. There's one true God. And that one true God, the God of Israel, should be worshipped in a particular kind of way and worshipped exclusively. among the gods.
The other sort of horn of the prophetic critique was about the just distribution of resources within a society. And so they were concerned mostly with the most vulnerable members of society. They often talk about the tetrad of the oppressed.
Widows, orphans, immigrants, who is often translated the stranger, but it means immigrants and the poor. These are people in ancient society without any social safety net. it. Widows, because in much of the ancient world, women didn't work outside the home and didn't have ways of providing for themselves financially.
And so if a husband died and there was not a family to join, widows were left very vulnerable. And the same with orphans being separated from sort of the patriarchal family. Immigrants because they were moving to a new place without a social safety net that they had access to. And the poor who just don't have the resources to... to take care of themselves in many ways.
And so the prophets were very concerned about the treatment of these most vulnerable members of society. And for the Hebrew prophets, these two concerns, the right worship of the God of Israel and the proper treatment of the most vulnerable were not separate. They were two sides of the same coin. What it means to properly worship the God of Israel, is to treat the most vulnerable in society with compassion, and it is to set up societal institutions that make it possible for the most vulnerable people to self-actualize their own care.
And so... So this is what the prophets were constantly talking about. And they often look at things where worship is happening, worship of God is happening, but the most vulnerable members of society are continuing to be oppressed.
And they say, God wants nothing to do with this worship. This isn't true worship because true worship results in the just treatment of the vulnerable. The prophets were also, if you read anything in the prophets, their writings are much like poetry. And you can think of prophets as sort of performers, poetic performers, singers and street performers, slam poetry performers. And I think that's what I'm trying to do.
And they were not just spoken word, but also theatrical. Many of the prophets used props in their speeches. We have Jeremiah going to a potter's house and smashing a pot in front of the whole crowd as he talks. We have prophets walking around naked for years to give their speeches.
We have a prophet who lays on his... side for three years, lays on one side of his body and sits in the corner and talks. We have prophets.
cooking food over excrement. I mean, just crazy, like, these theatrical performances that go along with the points that they're making about the worship of God and about the just treatment of the most vulnerable members of society. And so I want to suggest that Jesus ...follows in the footsteps of these prophets, and it is, like many of them, like many of the prophets, it's the thing that gets them killed.
So, if we look at Mark chapter 11, there are two stories that I want to look at today that... give you a sense of this, Jesus'identity as prophet. And they happen both when he's coming into Jerusalem for the Passover, in the final week of his life. So, the first story is about Jesus'triumphal entry into Jerusalem, is what it's called often in our Bibles.
When they are approaching Jerusalem at Bethpage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples. And as they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, What are you doing untying that colt? And they told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it.
And many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest! Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple.
So this is the story that the Christians celebrate every year on what we call Palm Sunday. Because as Jesus enters into Jerusalem, he's riding on a colt and people are throwing palm branches in front of him and waving palm branches. They're saying, Hosanna, that means save us now.
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. We'll talk about that in a moment. Why do they say that?
So, Passover is a celebration of a story that I've already alluded to earlier, which is the story of the Exodus, of the rescue of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. And so... You know the story, as the people are enslaved in Egypt, Moses goes to rescue them from slavery and they, of course, make all the preparations.
They have this bread without leaven, without yeast, and their loins are girded, their robes are tied up in their belts so they can be ready to run. And they take off running through the Red Sea. God parts the Red Sea and they walk across on dry land.
And Pharaoh's armies are drowned in the sea and they're rescued from slavery. And the Passover is an annual celebration of this. Rescue from slavery. And so you can imagine, here we are, many, many years later, and this is now a people being occupied by a foreign government.
In their own land, yes. not technically slaves, but in some ways in this tributary, commercial agrarian domination system, are in, for all intents and purposes, slaves, wage slaves to this foreign, oppressive foreign regime. and they get together to celebrate the liberation of slaves in their own history.
I mean, you can imagine that this makes the Roman government quite nervous. If there is ever a time to launch a revolt against this oppressive foreign regime, this occupying regime, the time to do it is Passover. This is the, it's the celebration of a revolt against a previous slaveholder. And so, every year, just the week before Passover, the week of preparation for the Passover, Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, marches in from his palace in Macarius on the sea into Jerusalem, the temple. He marches on a war horse.
horse with huge armies in tow behind him. It's an ostentatious display of military power, right? And it's a very clear signal to all the people who have gathered in Jerusalem that week to celebrate Passover, to celebrate this recognition, this remembrance of the manumission of slaves.
You're not going to try anything this week. We have the power to wipe you off the map. I don't want anybody even thinking about doing anything.
So he marches in with trumpets and war horses. On the other side of Jerusalem, Jesus hosts his own, we call it the triumphal march, but you could almost think of it as an anti-triumphal march. As Pilate is marching in on his war horse, Jesus is riding in on a donkey, on a farm animal, right?
Maybe recalling that prophetic line about beating our swords into plowshares, our instruments of war into farming tools. And Jesus rides on a farm animal. While Pilate marches in with a well-maintained and well-oiled army, Jesus is there with just this sort of flamboyant crew of outcasts and sinners, fishermen.
And he's riding in on a donkey. And what are they saying? They're saying, save us, son of David. Son of David. Why David?
It's not just because he's in Jesus's lineage, according to the Gospels. David is the great king of Israel, the great native ruler, right? The one whose kingdom should be reestablished if the Romans are ever ousted.
So it's a party about revolution, but it's in this... satirical parody way. Jesus is doing street theater. He's parroting the Roman march in this kind of fun and hilarious sort of way, saying that they come with all this power and we come I don't know, like a mustard seed that grows through a garden?
Like yeast that's going through bread? This sort of annoying and subversive protest that's meant to get under the skin of the occupation. You can't imagine it being very big.
If it had happened, if it had been too many people, Jesus would have been arrested immediately. I mean, the Romans would have seen the symbolism of it immediately and he would have been immediately taken away. But he throws this, has this parade, this protest march through the streets of Jerusalem. And right after that he enters into the temple.
And what does he do in the temple? Well, um... He overturns the... Oh, I'll just read it to you. Then they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple, and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple.
He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?
But you have made it a den of robbers. So Jesus goes and starts a riot in the temple. I mean, he causes, it's got property destruction, they're overturning tables, and they're not letting people walk through the hallways.
It's a huge ruckus, right, that Jesus is causing. Often, because it happens to be the money changers that Jesus disturbs, people think that Jesus'problem here had to do with buying and selling in the temple, as though he had a problem with the exchange of money in the temple. I don't think that's what's going on.
I remember when I was a kid, I grew up in church, and my youth group... was trying to raise money for, I don't know, a mission trip or something we wanted to do. And we had a bake sale.
We wanted to have a bake sale in the lobby of the church. So our moms all made brownies and cupcakes and stuff, and we wrapped them up, and we were going to sell them for, you know, 50 cents a piece or whatever it was. And some people got upset about this because they thought, well, Jesus didn't want people buying and selling in the temple, and we shouldn't be buying and selling in church.
So we had to have our bake sale outside in the parking lot. But then... But this is not really what Jesus was concerned about. So first of all, you gotta think about why are people buying and selling in the temple? For a few reasons.
One is that, Passover is a pilgrimage festival. It's one of a couple of pilgrimage festivals, meaning that people are encouraged in Jesus' day, people were encouraged, if they could, to make it to the temple for this celebration. And you would come to the temple, you would first have to spend the first week of preparation doing some ritual cleansing.
And then you would do that in order to be allowed into the temple. And then once you go into the temple, you offer a sacrifice. sacrifice in the temple, and then the meat from that sacrifice is given back to you, and you have a meal, a Passover meal with your family.
And that's the celebration, and people come from all over the Mediterranean, Jews who are spread about all over the Mediterranean come for this festival, and they have to bring their sacrifices to the temple. So imagine, I mean, this is, there are no trucks and things that you can sort of drive. an animal from your farm to Jerusalem, people are going on foot or maybe by donkey if they're lucky. And imagine trying to take with you a sheep or a ram for a sacrifice all hundreds of miles traveling to Jerusalem.
It would be almost impossible to try to travel with an animal for sacrifice. And even if you could travel with an animal, one of the stipulations to sacrifice an animal is that it has to be without blemish. So on your way, hundreds of miles traveling with this ram or sheep, it can't be injured in any way. can't get too dirty.
It's just impossible. And so as a service to people coming to the temple to celebrate Passover, the temple would sell animals that you could travel alone and then buy the animal when you get there to sacrifice. And because Because in the Torah there's a law against making images of any god or anything to be worshipped.
And because in most of the world, in most of the Roman Empire, the coins that you would need to use, the money that you would need to use to sort of get through normal life, had an image of Caesar on it. And Caesar was a god, right? And so...
You would have to have Roman money to sort of get around in the world, but you can't use Roman money in the temple because it has images of an idol, of God, of a god. And so if you're going to buy an animal in the temple, you have to have your money exchanged into a temple shekel, a special temple coin that's only used in the temple. And so there's a money exchange table, and there's a...
place to buy animals for sacrifices and these are just standard services that the temple has to provide in order for its normal functioning to happen. So I don't think that Jesus is critiquing the normal functioning of the temple. At least in that sense. I don't think he's critiquing the buying and selling of what's happening in the temple.
I think there's a couple of clues to what Jesus is doing in the story. And the first one is, look at the words that he says. Is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?
But you have made it a den of robbers. A den of robbers. Now, think about this.
It's not that the people selling the animals or exchanging the money are doing the robbing, because he says this is a den of robbers. Now, what is a robber doing in his den? A robber doesn't go to his den to do the robbing.
robbing. He doesn't rob his own den. No, a robber goes and robs a bank, and then he goes back to his den as a place of safety, right?
It's the place where he can hide out from the authorities. He can count his money and be happy, be safe. He's going out somewhere else and doing the robbing and the exploitation, and this is his place of safety, his sanctuary.
And this is precisely, Jesus is actually quoting here, when he quotes that line about the den of robbers, he's quoting from a sermon of an earlier prophet, the prophet Jeremiah, who stood outside the gates of the temple of an earlier prophet. temple and said that, remember those two horns of the prophetic critique, the proper worship of Yahweh, or the proper worship of the God of Israel, and the just treatment of the most vulnerable in society? And what Jeremiah was saying outside the temple is, you have exploited and forgotten the most vulnerable members of society, and then you come in here to worship, into this temple to worship, and you think you're safe. You think you're okay. You think that God does not see your sin.
You think that God does not see the way you have exploited the poor and the vulnerable because you're in here singing your songs and doing your rituals and carrying on your ceremonies. And he says, no, God sees what you're doing, and God does not see what you're doing. can't stand the worship that's happening in this temple because it's a hideout.
It's a den of robbers. It's a hideout for your exploitation. And so God will destroy this temple.
That's what Jeremiah says. Well, I think that Jesus is saying the same thing about what we talked about several sessions ago about how the temple authorities were in collaboration with the church. with the Roman occupation, right? That Rome ruled not only through a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, but also through the collaboration of the temple authorities who were put in place by Rome. And I think just like Jeremiah predicted the destruction of the temple, I think Jesus is not trying to overturn the money changers because he doesn't like the buying and selling.
I think he's symbolically destroying the temple. And I'll tell you why I think that. There's a A literary device that the Gospel of Mark uses, and Mark really likes this literary device. He employs it several times throughout the Gospel.
It's called inclusio, or you can think of it as like sandwiching. So what he'll do is he'll start to tell a story, And then he'll stop in the middle and tell another story. And then when that story's over, he'll go back and finish the first story. So it's like one story is sandwiched in the middle of another story.
And Jesus does this with the incident in the temple. So on their way to the temple, Jesus sees a fig tree. And he goes...
looking for figs on the fig tree. But Mark tells us it's not the time of year for figs to grow on a fig tree. And so Jesus sees this fig tree doesn't have any fruit on it. And he says, you're cursed for not growing any fruit. May you never grow fruit again.
May you wither and die. It's like, well, that's weird. Why would Jesus do this?
And, you know, I think, first of all, the fact that Mark tells us that it's not the time for figs means we shouldn't read this too literally. This is, we should. You should read it in a symbolic register.
So he goes and does the thing in the temple. He overturns the tables and drives out the money changers and all that. Won't let people carry anything through the hallways.
When they're leaving the temple, they come back and Peter notices, oh look, there's that fig tree you cursed. It's withered and died. So he sandwiches that story in between. And what that means is we're supposed to understand the stories in light of each other. So what's happening in this fig tree story?
Jesus comes to a fig tree and it's not bearing any fruit. And so he curses it and destroys it. And then he walks into the temple and says, look, it's like you're not bearing any fruit.
You're not producing what you're supposed to produce. You're supposed to be a place of worship, a house of prayer for all nations, right? A place where the God of Israel is rightly worshipped. But because you are collaborating with this Roman occupation, because you're exploiting the peasants and the poor and the immigrants and the widows, and then you're coming into this temple and hiding out, thinking that your religious activity will make God not see what you're doing with the rest of your life.
You're hiding out in the temple. This temple is not producing the fruit that it's supposed to produce. No real worship is happening because you cannot worship the God of Israel while the most vulnerable members of society are being exploited. And so he symbolically destroys the temple.
He won't let anybody pass through the hall. with instruments they need to use to carry on sacrifices. He turns over the tables of animals where sacrifices, you know, animals for sacrifices could be bought. He shuts down the operations of the temple. Now again, you can't imagine this.
really being effective in a kind of large-scale way. First of all, the temple is just huge. There's just no way you could really make that big of a scene and it's massive. But it's a symbol. It's street theater, it's a political performance with religious significance.
Jesus is attacking both the Roman occupation of Israel and the religious collaboration with that occupation. The religious leaders who in the name of God are collaborating with the oppressive regime. And by the end of the week, he's dead.
And so that's, we've now taken a look at some lenses through which to understand Jesus. We've looked at Jesus as a shaman. Jesus as a sage or a wisdom teacher, and now Jesus as social prophet. And so now in the final two lectures, we're going to look at the death and resurrection of Jesus and how we understand those stories.