The third slave is afraid to run such risks. He dares nothing, not even depositing the money given to him in a “private bank.” After all, even a bank could go bankrupt. He hides his master’s money in the storehouse most commonly used in antiquity: he buries it. In this way he loses nothing, but he makes not a cent of profit.
And precisely in that way he loses everything. He belongs to a company that values lightning-fast action, initiative, pleasure in risk, and—high returns. When his master returns from abroad, the third slave is kicked out. His professional existence is destroyed.
Thus in telling his parable, as he sometimes does, Jesus makes use of unusual, tension-building material. The stuff of the story he tells is neither religious nor moral. Jesus places his listeners in a world that is harsh and reckless. People there who do not risk everything cannot last. They will be fired.
What a bold move, to make a statement about the reign of God in terms of immoral material, a story from the world of speculators and players! And what a demand lies behind this parable! For what it means to say should be clear in the context of the other parables we have already discussed. Jesus is talking about the plan God has for the world. He speaks of the new thing God wants to create in the midst of the old society. This, God’s cause, Jesus says, will not succeed with cowards, with people who are immovable, who are constantly trying to make themselves secure, who would rather delay than act. God’s new society only succeeds with people who are ready to risk, who put everything on the table, who go for broke and become “perpetrators” with ultimate decisiveness.
A Paradox
Thus in his parables Jesus can say that the reign of God comes as a pure miracle “of itself” (recall the parable of the seed growing secretly), but he can also say that it must be seized with ultimate decision if it is to come. Is that a contradiction? Not necessarily, but it is a paradox. Apparently both things need to be said if one wants to speak accurately about the reign of God. The paradox must not be resolved, any more than the tension between the present and future natures of the reign of God may be relaxed.
Jesus was a master of brief, striking sayings and skilled at telling stories in images and parables. Obviously, he did not invent the parable form, which had long existed both in the ancient world and in Israel. But Jesus took old, existing forms to a new level. The number of parables we have from him is also outside the norm. If we exclude the similitudes and images in the Gospel of John, which have an entirely different character, we come to a total of about forty parables in the Synoptic Gospels. That is unique in antiquity.
But it is not simply a matter of quantity. Jesus’ parables and images have never been equaled in quality either. With them he leads his listeners into a world with which they are already familiar or at least one they have heard about, a world he describes with accurate realism. But at the same time he makes that world alien and thus blows up the well-worn paths of customary pious thinking. Jesus wants to show that the reign of God has its own logic. It does not fit in the usual molds of religious talk about God. Jesus’ saying also applies to his own language: “no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins” (Mark 2:22).
Chapter 8
Jesus and the World of Signs
Jesus didn’t just talk. He didn’t just announce the reign of God. He acted not only through words but just as intensively through gestures, symbols, and signs. Obviously, language itself is a system of signs, but this chapter is about Jesus’ physical conduct, which surprisingly often was concentrated in formal “symbolic acts.”
The Bodily Sphere
Jesus embraced children when they were brought to him, laid his hands on them and blessed them (Mark 10:16). He embraced1 the rich man who asked him about eternal life (Mark 10:21). He sat at table with toll collectors and sinners (Mark 2:15). He washed his disciples’ feet and dried them (John 13:3-5). He healed sick people, not through mere words, but usually by touching them as well. He laid his hands on them (Mark 6:5). He took Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up (Mark 1:31), just as he did the daughter of Jairus, the head of the synagogue (Mark 5:41). He touched a leper to heal him (Mark 1:41). He put his fingers into the ears of a deaf man with a speech impediment and touched his tongue with his saliva (Mark 7:33). He spat2 in a blind man’s eyes and laid hands on him (Mark 8:23). For another blind person he made a paste of dirt and saliva, spread it on his eyes, and ordered him to wash in the pool of Siloam (John 9:6-7).
Of course many of these physical actions were simply part of ancient culture: before a formal meal one had to wash one’s feet; people embraced each other in greeting; laying on of hands was part of healing, and saliva was used therapeutically on the eyes. All that may be quite usual and a matter of course.
And yet there is more here, as is clear in the healing of the leper as told in Mark 1:40-45. Jesus touches the leper, and that was not common. It was, in fact, forbidden and shunned. According to Leviticus 13:45-46 lepers had to wear torn clothing and leave their hair unkempt, men had to cover their beards, and they must call attention to themselves by shouting “unclean! unclean!” No one was to come near them. Jesus’ touching of the leper was a gesture that overcame a deep social rift in antiquity. It is a helping, healing, community-creating deed.
Just as people were supposed to stay away from lepers, they were also supposed to keep their distance from public sinners. In the Israel of Jesus’ time it was simply not “the thing” to eat with “toll collectors and sinners.” The view of Jesus’ contemporaries in Judaism was that the tax and toll collectors made their money in dishonorable ways. They were looked on as thieves and robbers. One who followed the Torah would never, ever eat with them.
It was customary as well to wash one’s feet before a banquet, but it was certainly not customary for the one called master and lord to wash the feet of his table companions. That was something for servants or slaves to do. Thus, many of Jesus’ little gestures and signs broke through what was customary, even though they were still embedded in the culture of the world of the time.
But above all we must see that, for Jesus, behind the gestures and attitudes that were otherwise well-established in antiquity stood a biblical awareness of the human being. For in all this he was always also making a statement about the bodily nature of the human and thus about a crucial dimension of human existence. The human is dust and earth, but earth into which God has breathed his own breath (Gen 2:7), and therefore Jesus can make a paste of earth and spread it on a blind man’s eyes. This act is more than an instance of natural healing, and it has not the least thing to do with magical practices. It makes it clear that healing and liberation are not something purely spiritual or merely internal. Earth comes to the aid of humanity (Rev 12:16), and the body is to be redeemed just as is the soul.