Matching all these texts is the remarkable circumstance that it was precisely this original Jerusalem community—which, as we saw, expected the return of the Risen One and the end of the world in the immediate future—that stood up before Israel, preaching and missionizing (Acts 2:38-40). The expectation did not falter; rather, it compelled them to gather Israel and lead it to repentance in light of the approaching end. The same can easily be demonstrated in the case of Paul, who in spite of his imminent expectation of the end traveled the Mediterranean world to win as many people as possible for Christ (cf. Rom 15:17-21).20
Real, genuine biblical expectation of the approaching end does not grow lame, does not allow one to stand idly looking up to heaven, but instead draws our eyes directly to the world and its distress. So it was in the early communities; so it had already been for Jesus. We have seen that his proclamation of the reign of God (cf. chap. 2 above) was tied to the most intense expectation of the approaching end imaginable—namely, an expectation that was constantly being fulfilled “today.” That kind of expectation knows that it must act because it is about “now,” and because there is no time afterward. Every hour is then precious; the time must be used up entirely just because it has an end-time quality. Jesus’ purpose was nothing else but to gather Israel in view of the already approaching reign of God and to lead it to repentance.
Jesus’ disciples had experienced all that intimately; they had internalized it, and with the appearances of the Risen One it broke out in them anew. Their urgent expectation of the Parousia was therefore never pointed only to what was to come, but instead, just as in the mind of Jesus, always also to today. This is evident in their idea of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments. In earliest Christianity the Holy Spirit is certainly the beginning of the end time and the deposit on fulfillment, but at the same time that Spirit is the power of God for the new creation of the world. When the Spirit is received and given room in the church, the world will be created anew—toward its perfection.
The sacraments too are eschatological. That is evident in the Eucharist, which is characterized by the cry, “come, Lord Jesus!” and yet this very sacrament binds Christians together as brothers and sisters and so creates new community. Something similar is true of baptism. It is an eschatological sign; it seals one for the end, and yet precisely this sacrament obligates us to a new life in the world. Whoever has died with Christ in baptism is born into the new society of the church. The sacraments contain eschatological dynamite, and yet they are the place where the earliest church made real its present eschatology.
It is against this horizon of the coming of Christ, already being fulfilled and yet again and again delayed, that the anticipatory texts of the New Testament must be interpreted. Then the Easter expectation in Christian communities would mean anticipating that at every hour the Spirit of Christ will show the community new paths, expecting new doors to open at any moment, counting on it that at any hour the Spirit can transform evil into good, hoping at every hour that the impossible will become possible, and never saying “later!” but always “now!” Then the texts of expectation in the New Testament are not something embarrassing, something we need to be ashamed of, and also not something time-bound that we can leave behind us; instead, they are at the center of what it means to be Christian.
From this point of view I would never say that Jesus and the earliest church were misled or disappointed in their imminent expectation. Jesus was profoundly certain that God was acting now, and acting with finality and in unsurpassable fashion. He was certain that in that action God was expressing God’s very self in the world, totally and without reservation. This “totality” and “finality” are, however, faced with the fact that human beings normally reject such a “totality” insofar as it applies to themselves and their own response. They do not want to commit themselves definitively but prefer to delay their own decisions and leave everything open for the time being. So there arises a deep discrepancy between God’s “already” and the human “not yet.” But because God has expressed God’s self wholly and absolutely in Jesus there is no time left for “delaying the decision.” Jesus’ hearers and the apostles had to decide now, in this hour. And they had to decide not only for God’s sake but also because of Israel’s need and the immeasurable suffering of the world.
I wonder whether, within the eschatological thinking of his world, in which he himself was deeply rooted, Jesus could have formulated and expressed this urgent “now” for decision in any other language than that of imminent expectation.21 We ourselves stand within an imaginative horizon of endlessly extended time in which there is no genuine kairos, but only events. Are we really closer to the truth of our existence and of human history than Jesus, with his eschatological emphasis? I doubt it very much indeed. Obviously we have to translate the eschatological language of Jesus and the early church. When we do, we see that it was not Jesus who was mistaken; it is we who constantly deceive ourselves, not only about the fragility and exposure of our lives, but also about the nearness of God.
Chapter 19
Jesus’ Sovereign Claim
This chapter was originally to be titled “Jesus’ Self-Awareness,” but I erased that. “Self-awareness” is too close to “self-assurance” or “self-importance,” and if we scarcely dare to say anything about the innermost thoughts of people around us we most certainly can say nothing about Jesus’ self-awareness and “inner life.” All that is open to a historical view is what emerges in Jesus’ speech and action as his “claim.”
Obviously we have spoken repeatedly about this claim in previous chapters; after all, it expresses itself in every one of Jesus’ deeds and words. But now it needs to be addressed again as a single topic. Why only now? Why only after an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of the Easter events? Simply because for Jesus’ disciples the appearances of the Risen One put everything in motion again. Only now did they begin to really understand. Only now could they see Jesus with complete clarity. That is by no means to say that in the time before his death he was a blank page that was only written on after and through Easter. No, everything was there before Easter. What Jesus wanted and what he was—all that was there to be heard and seen. But the disciples had not yet really grasped it.
The dialogues Jesus conducts with his disciples in John’s gospel, as he approaches death, reflect this “already” and “not yet” with the finest theological precision. The Holy Spirit whom the Father will send will indeed “teach everything” to the disciples, but that teaching consists precisely1 in “reminding” them of all Jesus had said (John 14:26). Thus after Easter nothing new is taught the disciples about the mystery of Jesus’ person. They do not receive any new revelations, as the later Gnostic gospels would say they did. It was simply that the full profundity of who Jesus was became clear to them.
So this chapter (together with chaps. 20 and 21) belongs at the end of the book, in the time after Easter, we might say. But the method remains the same. My principal questions will be historicaclass="underline" what claims to sovereignty are evident in Jesus’ words and actions?