Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Something else must be added. In New Testament exegesis atonement often appears as a theological construct with whose aid the post-Easter community interpreted the otherwise unfathomable execution of Jesus on the cross. They thus gave meaning to Jesus’ catastrophic death. Jesus himself understood his death much more simply—perhaps in the sense of the eschatological view in Mark 14:25 (“I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the [reign] of God”). When we deny that Jesus thought of atonement we degrade the idea of atonement from the outset. We no longer need take the concept seriously since Jesus himself did not use it and the early church only did so in order to give a deeper meaning to Jesus’ death.

That Jesus remained firm in his message of the coming reign of God and his love for human beings even to death is something we can appreciate, but not the thick theological web of blood, atonement, representation, and covenant embedded in the saying over the cup in Mark 14:24. After all, during the whole time of his previous activity Jesus never said anything of the kind.³

So it is that, for example, Herbert Braun’s book on Jesus sees the Last Supper as nothing more than a banquet with friends, in continuity with Jesus’ previous meals. After Jesus’ death his followers took up this meal custom again and in doing so looked forward with great joy to Jesus’ return. There were not yet any words of institution or “sacramental” food, nor was there any special “remembrance of Jesus’ death,” but simply a “breaking of bread.” Only later did the Palestinian community interpret Jesus’ death as atoning. The Hellenistic community then did something more: they saw these meals by analogy with the meals of the Greek mystery cults and “set back” the institution of “this sacrament, perceived in Hellenistic terms,” to the last hours of Jesus’ life.⁴

Nothing in this description can withstand a sober historical examination, from the schematic and undifferentiated distinction between Palestinian and Hellenistic communities⁵ to the derivation of the early Christian eucharistic celebration from the meals of the Hellenistic mysteries.⁶ It seems that for Braun the Old Testament had no part to play, nor did the fact that Jesus was a Jew who lived wholly on the basis of the Old Testament.

There is one position that radicalizes the objection to the idea of atonement in Jesus’ Last Supper still further. It says that the idea of an atoning death was not only fully improbable for Jesus but is incompatible with his proclamation of the nature of God. Jesus, it is said, preached a Father who was ready to forgive without condition. That this loving Father then one day was no longer so generous and suddenly demanded atonement simply does not fit with Jesus’ message and practice.⁷

A Gospel of Death?

Obviously this position says something correct with regard to Jesus’ preaching. He by no means came preaching the message that “I have come into the world to suffer and so to atone for the sins of the world; follow me and suffer with me!” He certainly did not preach, “I have come into the world because God desires me to be a sacrifice for the redemption of the world. Death on the cross is the goal of my life.” If Jesus’ message had been anything like that it would have been masochism, glorification of suffering, a culture of death. That is not how Jesus spoke and acted. From the very beginning his proclamation was evangelium, Gospel, “good news.” We have seen that Jesus saw himself as the messenger of joy in Isaiah 52:7. He summarized his activity with elements of Isaiah’s text: “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matt 11:5). The blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, and the dead represent the suffering and misery of Israel and the world. Jesus acts against that suffering. He desires that God should be master of the world so that creation might become what it is really supposed to be. That is the impetus of his message and his actions.

This transformation of the world does not, however, come about by magic. It is brought about by Jesus’ surrender to the will of God, his surrender to Israel, his living with his whole existence for the sake of the people of God. This “for” is realized in a great many ways, for example, in his healings of the sick or in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. These instructions, such as love of enemies, Jesus not only preached; he lived them. The disciples he gathered around him learned from him trust, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, service, turning away from the self, and turning toward the people of God. They are to make God’s concern for the world their own.