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4. In Human Terms The Prophetic Mission of Christ

The walker who is lost in the fells may draw some comfort from their map, but interpreting the abstract symbols on the paper is not always straightforward. Which hill does one set of gradients represent? What is the meaning of the shaded areas on another part of the map? What do all the tiny dots mean? The walker might well find another document of more use, the guide book. This will be an account, by someone who has walked this way, of what it is actually like from a human and practical point of view to follow this route. The guide book will say when to turn left and when to turn right and when to look up and take in the view.

In a similar way the doctrine of the Trinity, as comprehensive as it is, can only be of limited use as a guide to mission. It is a general and abstract doctrine and cannot answer a key question: How in practical terms is the Christian community to engage in mission? How is it to serve the flow of God’s Trinitarian mission as it reaches out into the actual world with its array of specific needs?

The Fourth Gospel begins to provide one answer to this question when it shows Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to his disciples with the decisive words ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you’ (20.21). His followers, then, are to continue his mission, the mission that he received from his Father. They are to continue doing what he did during his own life: his ministry of teaching, healing, caring, listening and giving of all. So the Church, as the successor of the first disciples who received this commission, is to continue this work.

The question, then, becomes this: what are the key features of Christ’s mission that should govern the mission of the Church?

Bearing in mind that Trinitarian mission is all about participative relationship, it is to the ways that Jesus relates to those around him that we must pay attention. We shall not look for a certain kind of institutional life or legal code that must always be present to authenticate mission, but for the distinctive ways he interacted with the people he encountered.

A good place to begin is Jesus’ Galilean ministry. This is because the first three Gospels, and especially Mark, make it clear that the Galilean period, before Jesus’ journeys further afield with his disciples, was a defining moment in his ministry, a moment in which the kingdom of God drew near. This is seen in Jesus’ comment at the last supper when he tells his disciples that after he is raised up he will go ahead of them to Galilee (Mark 14.28): According to Morna Hooker, a recent commentator on Mark, Galilee in Mark’s Gospel is ‘the centre’ of Jesus’ ministry and of discipleship, in contrast to Jerusalem, which is the place of suffering (Hooker 1991, p. 345). Also, after the resurrection the messenger in the tomb says to the women to go and tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee (16.7): Galilee is to be the place where the resurrection is witnessed, which means the Galilean ministry of healing and feeding the crowds and preaching the gospel is being resurrected with renewed vigour. The Galilean ministry is therefore paradigmatic of the whole of Christ’s missionary enterprise.

A survey of this ministry can begin with Mark 1.14–45. This is because this passage provides a summary of how Jesus went about his preaching and healing in Galilee (Myers 1988, p. 149). In its pole position, in what is generally regarded as the first written Gospel, it becomes a keynote chapter, introducing a whole range of missionary encounters between Jesus and a variety of different people. It provides an overview of what Jesus did and said before his ministry became dominated by the growing opposition of the religious authorities.

The first two verses (vv. 14–15), describing his entry into Galilee, are a good place to begin. They provide an initial and defining expression of his mission, acting as a summary of all that follows. It is important to spend some time analysing the nature of this entry:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.’ (Mark 1.14–15)

Jesus’ words make clear that the subject of his ministry is not to be his own rise to power or glorification; he is not launching a campaign centred on himself and his own authority. Instead he is launching a campaign about something much wider and bigger – a new reality that is beginning to break into the life of the world, namely the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus points away from himself to this overarching reality. All that he says and does is not an end in itself but a pointer or sign to what God is doing universally. He is taking up the role of a herald, one who goes around announcing a forthcoming event. One commentator expresses all this in the following way:

Everything that Jesus says and does is inspired from beginning to end by his personal commitment to the coming Reign of God into the world. The controlling horizon of the mission and ministry of Jesus is the Kingdom of God. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus derive their meaning from the announcement of the Kingdom of God. (Knitter 1996, p. 89)

But he is not just announcing something. He also calls for a personal response among his listeners: they are to ‘repent and believe’. He calls on the people to change the direction of their lives, as John the Baptist had been doing, and prepare for the coming of the kingdom. So he is combining a ‘macro’ dimension, of announcing God’s will and purpose for the nation and the world, with a ‘micro’ dimension, of calling for a change of consciousness and outlook in people’s own hearts and lives.

How can this dynamic and complex interaction be characterized as a whole? What kind of role was he expressing? Was he primarily a rabbi figure, teaching a new kind of wisdom, or a political figure, canvassing for a change in government, or a healer and exorcist, bringing healing to individual people’s lives? The figures in the Old Testament who both announced God’s forthcoming purposes for the people and called on them to respond in their hearts were, of course, the prophets. They also combined a ‘macro’ dimension, of announcing God’s will and purpose for the nation and the world, with a ‘micro’ dimension, of calling for a change of consciousness and outlook within the lives and hearts of their listeners. Walter Brueggemann’s famous definition of prophetic ministry, based on his own extensive studies of Old Testament prophecy, expresses this well:

The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us . . . [it] serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness . . . [and it] serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move. (Brueggemann 2001, p. 3)

Jesus, it seems clear from the first chapter of Mark, was taking up this type of role: his ministry was to be a prophetic one.

Other Gospels and commentators

Many passages from the Gospels confirm this by making clear how his contemporaries saw him as a prophet: Matt. 16.14 / Mark 8.28 / Luke 9.19; Luke 9.7. See also Mark 6.15; Matt. 21.11; Luke 7.16; 24.19. Jesus describes himself as a prophet in Mark 6.4; Luke 4.24; 13.33. The Fourth Gospel also uses this term to describe Jesus in 4.19; 6.14; 7.40; 9.17. Peter and Stephen refer to Jesus as a prophet in Acts 3.22; 7.37.

Matthew’s Gospel summarizes Jesus’ ministry in a similar way: ‘And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people’ (4.23; see also 9.35). And in Matthew’s Gospel the disciples are also given, as their first priority, the task of seeking the kingdom (6.33), and proclaiming it and working for it (10.7–8).

Luke also emphasizes the kingdom of God as central in the proclamation of Jesus (see 4.43; 8.1; 9.11). In the important opening scene of Jesus’ Galilean ministry in Nazareth, as Graham Stanton points out, Luke’s presentation stresses how the coming of Jesus marked the fulfilment of the promises of Isaiah 61.1–2. Even though ‘the word “kingdom” is not used . . . many of the main points of this passage are related to “kingdom” sayings which Luke includes elsewhere’ (Stanton 1989, pp. 189–90).

Hooker, in The Signs of a Prophet: The Prophetic Actions of Jesus (1997) shows that the symbolic actions were an integral part of Jesus’ identity as a prophet. For the vast majority of times that he was called a prophet – Mark 6.4, 15 and parallels; 8.28 and parallels; Matt. 21.11; Luke 4.24; 7.16 and 24.19; John 6.14 and 9.17 – refer to or are juxtaposed with accounts of what Jesus did. Jesus was regarded as a prophet, not simply because he spoke like a prophet, but because he acted like a prophet (Hooker 1997, p. 16).

Other recent scholarship has supported this view of Jesus (see Powell 1999, for an informative introduction to the whole field). One example is the historian E. P. Sanders, who concludes his penetrating study of the Gospel evidence by describing Jesus as a prophet of the end-time:

Jesus saw himself as God’s last messenger before the establishment of the kingdom. He looked for a new order, created by a mighty act of God. In the new order the twelve tribes would be reassembled, there would be a new temple, force of arms would not be needed, divorce would be neither necessary nor permitted, outcasts – even the wicked – would have a place, and Jesus and his disciples - the poor, the meek, and lowly – would have the leading role. (Sanders, quoted in Powell 1999, p. 123)

Another well-known example is N. T. Wright (1996), who surveys the historical evidence surrounding Jesus’ ministry and draws the following conclusions:

How then was Jesus perceived by the villagers who saw and heard him? All the evidence so far displayed suggests that he was perceived as a prophet. His speech and action evoked, even while they went beyond, contemporary pictures of prophetic activity. Furthermore we must conclude that Jesus was conscious of a vocation to be a prophet . . . it is possible to explain a good deal of his career, not least its dramatic conclusion, from this basis. (Wright 1996, pp. 196–7)

Wright also shows how Jesus’ messiahship and his message about the inauguration of the kingdom of God were part of this prophetic vocation:

Jesus saw himself as a prophet announcing and inaugurating the kingdom of YHWH; he believed himself to be Israel’s true Messiah; he believed that the kingdom would be brought about by means of his own death at the hands of the pagans. (1996, p. 612)

This conclusion is important for our purposes because it allows us to clarify the type of role Jesus called his followers to continue after the resurrection. It is, as argued, the role of a prophet, one who ‘forth tells’ God’s purposes for the world in word and action and who calls on people to respond in their hearts and lives. This is not to deny that he was also Messiah and Son of God but these were not roles that could be passed on to the disciples: they describe what was unique about Jesus, rather than what was transferable to others. A different title, the one most commonly used by others of him in his own day and the one scholarship today uses to sum up the generic character of what he was doing, is that of prophet. If we are to characterize the kind of ministry Jesus lived and bequeathed to his followers, it is that of prophecy.

Mission principles

Mark 1.14–45 also reveals a number of other practical principles within Jesus’ Galilean ministry:

1. His mission arises out of the 40 days of fasting in the wilderness, which was a time of listening to the silence, to his own thought and temptations, to Scripture and to his Father. He returns to such places at various subsequent points (e.g. 1.35). Also it is noticeable how, more often than not, he listens to those who come to him with their needs and requests and pays close attention to what they say (e.g. 1.30–1). Contemplative listening therefore frames the action of his ministry and is a key part of all that follows.

2. The manner in which Jesus moves around Galilee is significant. There is no mention of any retinue or court following, let alone security guards or militia or army. He comes simply as a wandering preacher, in the clothes he is wearing, at the mercy of the people he is addressing. This shows he was vulnerable – he comes with no wealth or status or arms. He is powerless, relying simply on the message he is preaching. (This vulnerability would later have drastic consequences for Jesus, showing how profound it was.)

3. Jesus calls a band of helpers – the disciples – to live, work and assist him in proclaiming the kingdom of God (Mark 1.16–20; see also 3.14). He is not undertaking this ministry on his own but in a dedicated community of men (and women, according to Luke) who share the burden and support each other (as well as have their disagreements). Furthermore he calls both the kind of fisherman who do not have boats and must cast their nets, and the wealthier kind who not only have boats but hired servants as well. He even calls an outcast tax collector (2.14). It is clear from these invitations that a shared or collaborative type of ministry is to be fundamental to the whole enterprise.

4. Jesus goes to where people are, where they live, work and gather for worship in their synagogues (1.21, 38–9). He does not wait for them to come to him. He becomes immersed in their life, speaking their language, and talking to them at the time of the week, on the Sabbath, when they will give him a hearing. The fact that they do give him a hearing shows that he has gained their respect as one of their own with the right to address their community. He even follows the custom of requiring a cleansed leper to go to the priest for verification (1.44). This shows the principle of identification with the community and that his ministry was locally rooted or incarnational.

5. The proclamation of the kingdom involves not just preaching and teaching, but surprising and powerful signs as well, in this case the exorcism of a possessed man in the synagogue at Capernaum (1.21–8). Words are combined with unexpected actions to show that the reign of God is breaking into people’s lives. So the proclamation of the kingdom is through signs that help to effect what they are pointing to. In different language it can be said that his proclamation is sacramental, where a sacrament is defined as an ‘effective sign’ (as in Article 25 of the Articles of Religion in the The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, for example).

6. But who initiates the powerful signs? It is important to note that Jesus does not approach the possessed man but the other way round (1.23): Jesus is almost forced to release him from the possession. So this powerful and saving sign is not planned or sought out by Jesus – it just seems to happen when another comes to him with their need. This happens time after time during the Galilean mission: it is the principle of surprise. While his own imperative is to get around as many villages as possible with the message about the kingdom of God (1.38–9), unexpected and wonderful things start to happen within this mission, which he then accepts and works with.

7. At many points Jesus seeks to stop news of the spectacular aspect of his work spreading beyond his followers. He tells those he heals not to publicize the great healings but to keep quiet (1.25, 34, 44). He openly proclaims the kingdom but also tries to suppress the spread of news about the miraculous ways that that arrival is taking place. This shows a principle of secrecy about the spectacular at work in his mission. The interpretation of this feature of his ministry has been debated extensively among scholars and it is not possible here to open up that debate again: only to note that there is a determined attempt by Jesus to keep the focus of his mission on the proclamation of the kingdom rather than on the mighty acts taking place through him.

8. The releasing from possession is not the only sign that takes place. These verses show that all manner of different kinds of healing and release take place through Jesus: the cure of a fever, healing of ‘various diseases’, making a leper clean, raising a paralytic to his feet (e.g. Mark 1.29–34). Jesus seems to respond to different needs in different kinds of ways, bringing whatever type of healing is most appropriate. His is a multiple or varied kind of ministry which addresses many kinds of physical and mental need. It is, in other words, all-inclusive: every kind of ailment from every kind of person is included within its scope. This is confirmed in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus, referring to his own ministry, tells John’s disciples to ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them’ (Matt. 11.4–5). (Bosch especially emphasizes the all-inclusive nature of Jesus’ mission: see Bosch 1991, pp. 28–9.)

9. One further dimension of Jesus’ mission in Mark 1 comes to the fore in his healing of the possessed man (and later in the Gospel in his conflict with the Pharisees). It is a political agenda of challenging and seeking to re-form the corporate relationships of the Jewish community. Ched Myers has drawn attention to the way Mark’s Gospel highlights this:

The demon in the synagogue becomes the representative of the scribal establishment, whose ‘authority’ undergirds the dominant Jewish social order. Exorcism represents an act of confrontation in the war of myths in which Jesus asserts his alternative authority. Only this interpretation can explain why exorcism is at issue in the scribal counterattack upon Jesus later in 3.22ff. (Myers 1988, p. 143)

John Dominic Crossan has also drawn attention to this political dimension, especially laying emphasis on the ways Jesus was a social revolutionary (see Powell 1999, ch. 5, and references there). Similarly, N. T. Wright points to the political dimension of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees. As a party within Judaism the Pharisees were working to an agenda of maintaining the separation and distinctiveness of the Jewish nation from the pagan races that surrounded them in Palestine. Through upholding Sabbath codes and purity laws around meals they sought to maintain clear boundaries and avoid gradual assimilation into the pagan gentile world. But for Jesus these practices had become

a symptom of the problem rather than part of the solution. The kingdom of the one true god was at last coming into being, and it would be characterized not by defensiveness, but by Israel’s being the light of the world; not by the angry zeal which would pay the Gentiles back in their own coin . . . but by turning the other cheek and going the second mile . . . the clash between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries must be seen in terms of alternative political agendas generated by alternative eschatological beliefs and expectations. Jesus was announcing the kingdom in a way which did not reinforce, but rather called into question, the agenda of revolutionary zeal which dominated the horizon of, especially, the dominant group within Pharisaism. (Wright 1996, pp. 389–90)

Jesus’ politics, then, was to be one of changing the way Israel related to the nations around it. He was seeking to transform those relationships from differentiation and exclusion to openness and integration, so that the truth of the dawning kingdom would become more and more widely known. Jesus was ‘offering an alternative construal of Israel’s destiny and god-given vocation, an alternative way of telling Israel’s true story, and an alternative to the piety which expressed itself in nationalistic symbols’ (Wright 1996, p. 390).

Three players

Mark’s overview of Jesus’ mission in his first chapter therefore shows an unfolding drama with three main players. The first player is the society in which Jesus’ ministry takes place. This is the Jewish society of Galilee, from which Jesus comes and to which he addresses his ministry. He does not seek to remove himself from this society, like the Essene sect at Qumran, but seeks to change the consciousness of everyone within it. And because the whole society is addressed, the marginalized and excluded are especially included. The inclusiveness of his ministry will later be symbolized by his choosing of twelve disciples, representing the twelve tribes of Israel and signifying that what he was bringing was for everyone within his society.

The second player is the kingdom of God, the incoming divine reign that is going to change everything. The full arrival of this kingdom is still awaited, but there are instances of its saving transformation already appearing among the needy and repentant. Its arrival has begun and this provides a powerful sense of urgency to what Jesus is doing.

The third player is Jesus and his followers who point to the inauguration of God’s kingdom (the macro dimension) and call for a response to this in the hearts and lives of all the people (the micro dimension). It is a ministry that is not primarily about creating a sub-culture within the wider Jewish society of his day, but of working to change the consciousness of everyone within that wider society. Jesus does not do this through force and coercion but through being vulnerable; he does not work alone but includes others within a collaborative ministry; he does not wait for the people to come to him but goes to them, to where they live and work, and so becomes locally identified and rooted; he does not just preach but finds surprising symbolic actions taking place, actions which show the saving reality of the kingdom breaking into people’s lives; he does not seek to be sensationalist and is secretive about the wonders, keeping a low profile on occasions; he addresses the actual needs people have, and includes the marginalized and excluded in this ministry, pointing to the holistic liberation of the kingdom. Finally, he incorporates periods of retreat, listening and contemplation for his followers and himself within this mission.

Some Galilean principles

If, as John 20.21 makes clear, Jesus’ followers are called to continue his mission, what does all of this imply for the Church?

It shows that the Church is only one among three players, the other two being the society in which it lives, and the coming kingdom of God, which is the participative and saving movement of the Trinitarian God within the world. The Church must always see its place and role within this wider drama: it does not exist to serve its own ends but has been formed to point to the inauguration of that kingdom within that society. This is a prophetic role expressed through word and deed. It is one that calls for a response in the hearts and lives of the people of that society, and will result in surprising instances of the kingdom’s saving presence in those lives. It is not, then, primarily concerned with creating a special society within the wider society of the day, but has a vocation of working to assist the transformation of everyone within that wider society.

The Church is therefore called to a kind of diaconal activity, of being an ambassador for the coming of the kingdom, rather than of being a static institution that exists to serve its own life. (See Clark 2005, for an exploration of the diaconal dimension of the life of the Church.)

This prophetic role continues the mission of Christ. Based on exegesis of Mark 1 with its overview of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, and drawing on the insights of contemporary biblical scholarship, we can deduce that it will embody the following principles of interaction with others, principles that can be used to assess subsequent developments in mission:

Contemplative listening, which frames Jesus’ ministry: listening to God, to other people, to himself, especially in times of prayer and retreat.

Addressing society as a whole, at points where people live and work, including and especially the marginalized. This results in being received and accepted by some but rejected and opposed by others.

Pointing to the inaugurated yet still awaited kingdom, in word and in surprising saving deed (symbolic actions) which address the actual needs of people (both individual and structural); but without publicizing the wonders.

Calling for a personal response to the coming of this kingdom by those who hear and see what he is doing.

Doing all this through a collaborative team, who themselves are powerless and vulnerable and must suffer the consequences.

Taken together, these principles show that mission encompasses every aspect of who Jesus’ followers are as well as all that they do: it encompasses their being as well as their doing. In other words the principles show that Christian mission can no longer be seen as one discrete aspect of church life alongside others such as worship or pastoral care. Christian mission will encompass the whole way the Church lives out its life in society, including its internal life as well as its outreach. Its congregational worship, music, social life, administration, stewardship of buildings, and at a deeper level its spirituality, are all part of mission. At a wider level the whole network of ways it relates to its surroundings, formally and informally, is part of the picture. It will also include the whole difference the Church makes to the community and society in which it exists. This is not just a sociological question about things that can be measured and quantified, such as attendance or giving, but is an ethnographic question about the difference a church makes to the lives of the people it touches within the complex web of relationships within a community (see Jenkins 1999, for illuminating explorations of this dimension).

But this introduces a further dimension, for communities and cultures do not stand still but are continually evolving and developing through time, sometimes in dramatic ways. They are formed by shifting currents of social and cultural change, so that the way the Church participates in mission in one culture and at one time will need to be different from the way it participates in mission in another culture at a different time.

The five Galilean principles provide general guidance about the nature of this participation but they do not provide detailed guidance about its expression within different cultures and regions, among people of different languages and customs and peculiarities. For that kind of guidance it is necessary to visit the currents and cross-currents of human history, where Church, culture and kingdom interact in different ways at different times. Through the study of this changing interrelationship it will be possible to get to know the specific ways the Christian community has participated and does participate in the missio Dei. As Bosch writes,

the Christian faith is a historical faith. God communicates his revelation to people through human beings and through events, not by means of abstract propositions. This is another way of saying that the biblical faith, both Old and New Testament, is ‘incarnational’, the reality of God entering human affairs. (Bosch 1991, p. 181)

The study of the history of this participation and communication is the subject of the next and central section of this Studyguide.

Discussion questions Are there other important mission principles within Jesus’ Galilean ministry? In what order would you place them and why? Which episodes from the Gospels especially exemplify them?