Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

The whole is still clearer when we consider, for example, miraculous phenomena known in Hinduism.³³ Here the divine is present as “power” in every living thing. Therefore everyone, through religious practice and appropriate application, can acquire superhuman abilities that are regarded as miraculous, becoming a yogi. Then one can supposedly make oneself tiny or enormous, heavy or weightless, present in many places at the same time and having control over everything—in short, such a person acquires an irresistible will. That too is “private” in an exalted sense.

The contrast to the biblical miracles hits you in the eye. The latter happen in and for Israel and are part of a long history of rescue, of salvation. That is what I mean by the phrases “referential context” and “frame of reference.” Jesus’ miracles cannot be understood outside this referential context. “Reference” is the inmost center of his mighty deeds. His miracles point to the reign of God, now breaking forth: “if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). But they also point to the new creation of the people of God now coming to pass. They are in service of the gathering of Israel, and in them the world to come is already shining forth, a world in which everything will be made whole by God—not only human beings but all creation. Every miracle of Jesus reveals a bit of the new heaven and the new earth.³⁴

Without this reference there is no such thing as a miracle in the Christian sense. It is therefore no accident that in the theological language of the gospels Jesus’ miracles are not only called “mighty deeds” but also “signs.” Apparently this word intends precisely what I have here called a “referential context.”³⁵ If the gospels, in their description of Jesus’ miracles, had been concerned only with what ruptures the norm they could have spoken of Jesus’ paradoxa erga or his thaumasia. But, apart from Matthew 21:15, they do not do so, for the unusual and marvelous is not what makes Jesus’ miracles. Otherwise, the healings achieved by the emperor Vespasian would also have been real miracles. But they lacked the sign-context we find here. Vespasian’s healings point only to the god-given luck of Vespasian, his fortuna.

In every New Testament miracle the referential context of the inbreaking reign of God and the eschatological new creation of Israel is present. The wonder worker believes in that context, and the recipients of the miracle believe in him. We see this very beautifully in the Gentile woman who begs Jesus to heal her sick daughter:

From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has [already] left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. (Mark 7:24-30)

Jesus does not want to heal the daughter of the Gentile woman. When he at first refuses the woman it is not, of course, because he does not care about Gentiles. On the contrary: precisely because he cares for the Gentiles he must concentrate on Israel, for if God’s new world does not shine forth in Israel it will not be manifest to the world of the nations either. That is why Israel has the primacy. It is a primacy for the sake of the world.

Certainly Jesus says all that in an image that comes close to being offensive: children sit at table, and one must not take the bread from them to feed the household dogs. But this woman is quick-witted. She counters Jesus with his own weapons: even the dogs get a share of the little crumbs that fall under the table when children are eating. In this the woman reveals her faith, and still more: she puts herself in Jesus’ frame of reference.

That context must exist both for the wonder worker and for the recipient of the miracle. If it is present in both, will the miracle happen? No. Not always. It can happen, but it need not, for as with the gift of grace, so it is with every genuine miracle. Two freedoms encounter each other: human freedom and the freedom of God.

Chapter 10

Warning about Judgment