Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

It appears that the Sanhedrin thought they had to defend the temple, the Torah, and the people against Jesus. But Jesus had not questioned the temple, the Torah, or the people of God. He did want to gather Israel together so that it might finally become what it was intended to be in the eyes of God. And he did not destroy the Torah but interpreted it radically in terms of God’s will. He wanted the temple to finally become what the prophets had longed for: a place of true worship of God in whose forecourt even the Gentiles could worship. Certainly, behind all that lay the claim that the fulfillment of the Torah had arrived in his own person and that where he lived out the reign of God with his followers “something greater than the temple” (Matt 12:6) was present. Israel, and with it the Sanhedrin, were faced with this tremendous claim.

This makes it clear that the question of the guilt of Jesus’ opponents is much more complex than it at first appears. For if all this is true, then it is a conflict we all face and in which we all must find ourselves guilty: we too constantly hear God’s true claim, fully evident in Jesus, but we cover it up with our own ideas, habits, and convenience and so shove it out of the world. Therefore an examination of the passion of Jesus cannot be about diluting or downplaying the guilt of Jesus’ opponents. On the contrary: it is about uncovering the depths of that guilt, because that is how we will uncover the guilt of us all.

Chapter 18

The Easter Events

This book is about Jesus’ public life: What did he do? What did he want? Who was he? Is it even permissible to introduce the Easter events into this context? Shouldn’t we stop with Jesus’ death? Doesn’t something completely different begin with his resurrection—something that can only be grasped in faith?

Such questions are urgent, and yet they only partly touch the reality of Jesus, since ultimately his activities in Galilee and later in Jerusalem can also be understood only by faith. Nevertheless, those matters have to be examined historically. In the same way, Jesus’ resurrection belongs to the realm of faith, and yet theology, insofar as it works historically, may and must ask: what really happened among Jesus’ followers after Good Friday? How can we understand the phenomenon that they first separated and then came back together again? How can we explain that, despite the catastrophe of Good Friday, they suddenly became a community? That was anything but a matter of course. It was evidently connected to the Easter faith. But how did that Easter faith come to be? And what did it look like in the concrete?

The events after Jesus’ death are certainly part of his “life.” Without those events he still could not be understood, even if we reconstructed only the external sequence. And within the imponderable history of Jesus’ actions, which still goes on, these first days and weeks are a time of special focus. It is this particular period after Good Friday that the present chapter attempts to grasp.

The Flight of the Disciples

The evangelist Mark does not make the slightest attempt to conceal the dreadful loneliness in which Jesus’ life ended. Judas Iscariot, one of the group of the Twelve, handed him over; he made Jesus’ nighttime arrest possible. Then, when Jesus was taken into custody, all the disciples left him and fled (Mark 14:50). Only Peter followed at a distance, to the court of the high priest’s house. Then he too left Jesus in the lurch—after having denied him. According to Mark, not one of the men from the group of disciples was present at the crucifixion, but some women from among Jesus’ followers watched from a distance (Mark 15:40-41).

Jesus’ burial was carried out, as we have seen, by Joseph of Arimathea, a Jesus sympathizer but not a member of the group of disciples (Mark 15:42-46). According to Mark, the Twelve took no part in the events at the empty tomb.¹ The oldest tradition associates those events exclusively with the women, especially Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:1-8).