Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

There is a simple explanation.¹¹ We have already seen that Jesus was often attacked in scurrilous ways by his opponents. They called him a “glutton,” a “drunkard,” a “friend of sinners.” Apparently they had also called him a “eunuch” to make his celibacy a matter of ridicule. Jesus takes up this calumny in a way characteristic of him and turns it to positive purpose. Yes indeed, he says, there are castrati who are mutilated from birth, and there are castrati who have been mutilated by other people. But there are also those who are castrated out of pure freedom, by their own free decision—for the sake of the reign of God. Let those accept it who can. What is crucial in our context is that here Jesus associates his own celibacy and the separation of his disciples from their families with the reign of God. He asserts that there is such a thing as a free choice of celibacy for the sake of God’s reign. Grasping that, he says, is not for everybody. But whoever can do so has understood something essential about the reign of God.

In this way Jesus made an indirect statement about his own celibate state. Despite the drastic nature of the statement, he remains utterly discreet. But whoever wants to hear can do so: his celibacy was not blind fate, and it was certainly not accidental; nor was it a marginal phenomenon in his individual life story. It was connected with his absolute surrender to the reign of God. Celibacy is central to the person of Jesus. From that point of view it is also more profoundly understandable that Jesus can also ask others to abandon their families, breaking off their marital ties or giving up all their links to house, profession, and home.

Nevertheless, the question remains: Does all that make any sense? What will become of someone who sets aside all natural ties? Are they not essential to human existence? What happens to someone who thinks she or he can do without marriage? These are deep questions, and very serious ones. Their virulence is evident from the way the majority of books about Jesus today are simply silent about Jesus’ celibacy. Has it become an embarrassment? Not long ago a wise man, a believer, whose judgment I esteem most highly, said to me:

I am having a harder and harder time with Jesus. The older I get and the more I reflect on him, the stranger he seems to me. And yet Jesus is a typical case of a young person who was not permitted to grow older and thus mature. After all, he did not live to be much more than thirty. But that isn’t enough.

It is only later that we acquire our real experience of life. Only when we grow older do we comprehend the fragility and limitedness of human existence. As we get older we become more tolerant, more generous, more lenient. By then we have learned that life without compromise is not possible. We see things with completely different eyes.

But Jesus’ uncompromising attitude, his radicality, his harshness, his unbending nature, this “either-or,” this “all or nothing”—all that is typical of a young person who does not yet really know the reality of love and death, guilt and suffering. Jesus—no matter how great and incomparable he is—is still a typical case of a young person, and the older I get the less I know what to do with him.

At first, when I heard that judgment, I was impressed, but now I consider it simply false, because obviously not everyone grows more generous and tolerant with age. But above all, I know people who live with ultimate certainty and radicality for the Gospel and the church and yet are full of kindness and concern.

This interweaving of certainty and concern we find also in Jesus. We only have to consider his attitude toward the desperate, the lost, the guilty. Here Jesus is not rigorous, unbending, severe. In the picture of the merciful father who runs to meet his lost son, refuses to let him finish speaking his confession of guilt, and immediately restores his rights as a son (Luke 15:11-32)—in that picture Jesus portrayed himself.

Still, there remains that other picture: of the one who “recklessly” goes his way, attacks Peter and calls him Satan, and summons individuals to follow him without any condition whatsoever. So the question must be raised again: Is this not too much to demand of human beings? Is such discipleship not utterly inhuman? Wouldn’t anyone who lived that way become a spiritual cripple? And where would anyone get the strength for such discipleship? Above all: How did Jesus himself come to terms with such a life? Or did he? We will pursue these questions in the next chapter.

Chapter 14

The Fascination of the Reign of God

Where does anyone get the strength for discipleship such as Jesus demands? Is someone who abandons profession, house, and family not living contrary to every measure of humanity? Can anyone live that way? How did Jesus himself deal with such a life? Or did he? Those were the questions with which we ended the previous chapter.