Where the church remained true to Jesus it was always “all in”; it was a new society.9 It not only demanded justice; it lived justice. It not only preached freedom but was itself a place of freedom. It saw itself not as a place for reflection where one was armed and equipped for the building sites in the world but as the building site itself. It hoped not only for a future life in heaven; it knew that in the common life of the baptized heaven is already revealed and the precious treasure has already been found. It was certain that within the space of its communities creation was already on the way to its integrity and the form planned for it. In short, it saw itself as the beginning of the eschatological, liberated world, the beginning of the “new creation” as “new earth.”
Now all of a sudden a book that is supposed to be about Jesus is talking about the early Christian communities! But the two are inseparable. In the physicality of the church, in its firm insistence that redemption must begin here and now, in its holding fast to visible community, what Jesus began with his disciples is continuing. We cannot avoid it: anyone who really wants to talk about Jesus must always have the church in view as well, because we have Jesus through the church or not at all.
That is why it was so tiresome when older scholarly commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels continually asked whether in this or that case we were dealing with authentic sayings of Jesus or not. Obviously Jesus’ response to Peter in Mark 10:28-30 also distills the experiences of early Christian communities, and especially the early itinerant missionaries—the persecutions they suffered as well as the experience of a new brotherhood and sisterhood that far surpassed all physical relationships. But all that had begun with Jesus—with the fire he had kindled.
Overflowing Abundance
In the double parable of the treasure and the pearl the two actors make a hundredfold or even thousandfold gain. The pearl is incomparably beautiful and the treasure in the field will fundamentally change the life of the day laborer. The reign of God appears in an astonishing and positively overflowing abundance.
But that is not only the case in Matthew 13:44-46. The superfluity of the reign of God is found in many other gospel texts. Jesus was continually describing it, especially in his parables. We are moved to suspect that he described this abundance so often because he himself had experienced the reign of God that way: as brilliance, beauty, overflowing riches.
The land that was sown in the parable of the great harvest of wheat, despite all the opponents that threatened the seed from beginning to end, produced a mighty yield: one grain brought forth thirty, sixty, or a hundred more grains (Mark 4:8). From the tiny mustard seed, no bigger than the head of a pin, grows a great shrub under whose branches the birds of the air build their nests (Mark 4:30-32). On the shores of Lake Genesareth mustard bushes could achieve a height of two to three meters. In Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels the mustard bush even becomes a world tree (Matt 13:32 // Luke 13:19). In the parable of the leaven (Matt 13:33 // Luke 13:20-21) the small amount of leaven is contrasted with a huge amount of flour (three measures [Greek sata] = fifty kilograms). What is interesting is that Jesus pays no attention to the negative connotations of leaven or yeast in Israel. He illustrates the coming of the reign of God by describing how the trivial amount of yeast (or sourdough) leavens the whole quantity of flour.
A man who has wasted his inheritance and tossed away his rights as a son remembers that in his father’s house even the day laborers “have bread enough and to spare” (Luke 15:17). He returns home and is immediately taken back into the family by his father, who runs to meet him. The lost son receives a signet ring and a new robe; the fatted calf is slaughtered, and a feast of joy begins (Luke 15:11-32). A king forgives a failed debtor who has wrecked his whole life by running up a debt of ten thousand talents (or a hundred million denarii). A whole day’s work was required to earn even one denarius, so the king forgives a sum corresponding to the value of a hundred million working days (Matt 18:23-35). A property owner treats the day laborers he has hired at the very last hour of the afternoon to work in the harvest in his vineyard as though they had worked all day: when evening comes he pays them a full day’s wage (Matt 20:1-16).
Wherever we look we see that the gospels speak of overflowing abundance, extravagance, and superfluity. And it is not only the parables that do this. In Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, a woman breaks an alabaster jar of the costliest nard oil and pours it on Jesus’ hair; some of those present are upset and speak of meaningless waste, but Jesus defends the woman (Mark 14:3-9). Peter and his companions, after having worked all night without success, put out to sea again at Jesus’ command and soon draw to the shore nets filled to the point of breaking with fish (Luke 5:1-11).
The disciples of John the Baptizer and the Pharisees fasted regularly as a sign of penance and humility before God; the Pharisees went so far as to fast two days a week. Jesus was once asked why his disciples did not keep fast days, and he answered, “The [sons of the wedding banquet hall] cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?” (Mark 2:19). The “sons of the wedding banquet hall” are the friends of the bridegroom and all the guests at the wedding. So Jesus sees the time that has arrived with his preaching of the reign of God as a wedding, God’s wedding with God’s people—and a wedding means abundance, generosity, and superfluity. It is impossible to fast during the days of the wedding feast!
This motif of superfluity that runs throughout the gospels culminates in the stories of the wedding at Cana and the so-called miraculous multiplication of the loaves. With regard to these two narratives I follow the principle I laid down in the first chapter: the historical reality cannot be grasped independently of the interpretation. Whatever lies behind these two narratives, historically speaking, they reflect, concentrate, and interpret the extravagant fullness of the reign of God as Jesus proclaimed and lived it.10
A Wedding
At the very beginning of Jesus’ public activity the Fourth Evangelist tells of an event that culminates in an extravagant abundance (John 2:1-12). It takes place in Cana at a wedding that threatens to end pathetically because the wine has run out. The surplus associated with Jesus’ coming is shown here in a wine miracle he performs. The narrative carefully develops the fact that he gives the wedding company a huge quantity of wine, for it is not the clay jars ordinarily used to hold wine that are filled with water at Jesus’ command, but six stone jars meant for ritual purification, therefore hewn from stone and unusually large. Each of these vessels, according to the evangelist, contained two to three metretes, or about a hundred liters. Thus in total about five to seven hundred liters of water are changed into wine. But the narrator not only states these detailed amounts; he adds very deliberately, “They filled [the jars] up to the brim.”
Such details reveal the narrator’s intention, which is to say that Jesus’ gift is lavish. Here there is no thought of restriction, measuring, limiting, hoarding. The huge stone jars are brimful. And yet it is not enough that the abundance of wine be made evident. The narrative is just as explicit about the quality of the wine. It even introduces a separate person, the architriklinos—the one who supervises meals, and especially the mixing and distribution of wine. The architriklinos does not know where the wine in the stone jars has come from, and he is extremely offended that he is just now being told about it. The “wine rule” he pronounces (good wine is offered at the beginning and not at the end of the feast!) serves within the narrative to say modestly that the wine now being poured is a good, indeed, an outstanding vintage of the finest quality.