But Jesus’ work in Israel has another side: it has led to divisions. Jesus has come up against bitter opposition, and that opposition has cut across the land and even across families. His own family attempted to bring him back home by force and put him under house arrest. His relatives said, “He has gone out of his mind” (Mark 3:20-21). But unfortunately it is not only that his appearance has led to separation and division. The metaphor of the sword that Jesus flings into society18 contains still more. Jesus has not only factually evoked division; he has desired it. Consider: “I have come to.…”
So Jesus intended the division; he desired the cleaving sword blade in the sense that he wanted decision, unambiguity, clarity before God. For him the reign of God is not some vague mist; it has clear contours. “No one can serve two masters,” Jesus says (Matt 6:24). He demanded that his hearers make a clear decision for the reign of God, and that necessarily led to divisions, indeed, to such as reach deep into the milieu of the closest social relationships, the home, the community of the extended family. Behind the little composition in Matthew 10:34-36 is the experience that, in light of Jesus’ appearance and his call to discipleship, the most intimate human connections have been broken. Jesus himself had to undergo that experience and it continued after Easter; it has not ceased even today.
The proclamation of the reign of God thus not only introduced a final time of decision; to say that would not be enough. Matthew 10:34-36 says also that Jesus himself is the reason why the time is coming to its end. He himself is the cause of the crisis. He himself tears apart the closest social ties. He himself compels decision. “I have come to set… against.…” Jesus would have had the opportunity to speak of this final decision in various other ways. He could have said, “You have to decide for or against repentance. You have to choose to believe in the good news, or not. You must decide for the reign of God and thus for God, or against God.” And he did say all that. But Jesus dares to go beyond this and say: you have to choose for me—or against me. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matt 12:30 // Luke 11:23).
We have already had (in chap. 4) an overview of all that echoes in the concept of “gathering.” Every one of Jesus’ hearers who was even slightly familiar with Sacred Scripture necessarily associated this concept with the prophetic hopes for the “gathering of Israel,” something that had become a central concept for salvation from the time of the exile. Gathering Israel from its Diaspora then was often paralleled with “uniting,” “liberating,” “saving,” and “redeeming.” Thus it was clear that it is God’s own self who gathers Israel. That God is the one who gathers Israel even became a predicate, an attribute of God.
When Jesus now says that he is gathering Israel, he is claiming to do precisely what God himself will do at the end of time: gather, sanctify, and unite Israel. Then the word can only be interpreted to mean that Jesus speaks and acts as if he is standing in God’s stead. In any event the saying “whoever is not with me is against me” betrays a claim that had to cause irritation, the claim to unconditional and direct authority. No prophet could ever have spoken that way. A prophet would have to say:
Thus says the Lord GOD:
I will gather you from the peoples,
and assemble you out of the countries
where you have been scattered. (Ezek 11:17; cf. 28:25; 34:13)
Jesus’ Scandalous “I”
Jesus’ “I” of his own authority has replaced the “I” speech of God that runs throughout the books of the writing prophets of the Old Testament. We really have to read through the first three gospels and note this phenomenon. Only then will we experience the “aha!” of recognizing what is actually happening:
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17). “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times.… But I say to you…” (Matt 5:21-22). “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matt 7:24). “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and [so] follow me” (Mark 8:34). “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18). “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has [already] come to you” (Luke 11:20). “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” (Mark 9:25). “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you” (Luke 10:19). “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves” (Matt 10:16). “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). “You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I [hereby] confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom” (Luke 22:28-29). “Truly [or: Amen] I tell you…” (Matt 11:11, and frequently elsewhere). “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Luke 7:23). “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14). “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8).
To continue listing texts would be no problem. It is superfluous to ask whether each one of these sayings is authentic, because the relevant logia run throughout the gospels and belong to very different genres and situations. There are “I have come” sayings that are by no means retrospective summaries of the life of Jesus but have the sense of “it is my task to.…” There are the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, formulated with shocking authority,19 in which Jesus places himself in the stead of the one who formerly gave the Torah at Sinai. There are the discipleship sayings in which Jesus does not urge his disciples to study Torah or grow in the love of God but to abandon everything, even father and mother, spouse and children, to follow him.
There are the sayings in which he sends out his disciples, the words of command to the demons, the amen-sayings that replace the way the prophets introduced their message and themselves as messengers, and above all the sayings in which he inextricably links the decision of the final judgment to the decision about his own person—still more, in which he presents himself, though reticently and in code, as the end-time judge.
For Christians who hear the Gospel every Sunday this “I” of Jesus is a matter of course. But in reality it is anything but. Why? Because the center of Jesus’ message is not his own self. The heart, the center that dominates all of his preaching and his whole doing is the reign of God. And, as has already been made clear (chap. 11), the proclamation of the reign of God is nothing but the end-time realization of the primary commandment, namely, that Israel is to love its God as the only God, with its whole heart, soul, and strength. This one, this only God will now be master in Israel and, through Israel, in the whole world. So Jesus’ message is not at all his own person. His entire, his sole concern is God the Father, the One, the Only. He corrected someone who addressed him as “Good Teacher” by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). Thus God, the one, the absolute Lord, is the center of Jesus’ message, and for that very reason it is so appalling that Jesus unceasingly connects this One and his rule with his own person. This is the real stumbling block, then and now. It was because of that scandal that Jesus was brought to the cross. Many pious people, and especially the religious authorities in Israel, could not bear to hear that claim. Today also there are many who cannot stand to listen to this elementary link between God and a Jesus who spoke and acted as if he stood in God’s stead and as if God were coming to his people in Jesus himself.