Dr. Freeman

Jesus and the Kingdom of God

In a way that seems to go beyond the requirements of any other of the world’s religious faiths, Christianity stakes its truth-claims on certain historical events – particularly the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. As the event of God’s most explicit self-communication to human beings, Christianity is about something that happened in world-history, where the person of Jesus is the Christ – the “Logos made flesh”, the embodied story of God in time.

So it is this Jesus, the one who absorbs evil with love, that one whois radically present in the tangible depths of human suffering and death, that we must turn to if we are to speak about God from a Christian perspective.

And when we begin to peel back the layers of literal-mythic Christianity (amber), with the tools of post/modern critical Jesus scholarship (orange science, green hermeneutics) the most uncontested fact today is that Jesus of Nazareth is the one who announced the Kingdom of God (basileia tou theou).

References to “Kingdom of God” are found more than one hundred times in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and so our ability to understand who Jesus is and the origins of his historical mission is intimately linked to his understanding of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that is disclosed to us today in the enigmatic twists and turns of his recorded parables.

So with the tool of post/modern critical-historical scholarship, I want to briefly re-construct here what Jesus may have actually meant by the Kingdom of God, in order to isolate the Founder of Christianity from what was Founded in his name (the Church) in the hope of getting a discussion started on what an Integral Christianity might look like…

The Parable of the Leaven - Luke 13:20-21 (also see Matthew 13:33, Gospel of Thomas)

“What shall I compare the Kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount[i]of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

The parable of the leaven received the highest number of red votes of any parable among the participants of the Jesus Seminar, and is therefore considered (arguably) the most authentic of the sayings that have been attributed to Jesus in the gospels and handed down to us.

Leaven is made by taking a piece of bread and storing it in a damp, dark place until mould forms, and in the ancient world leaven was a well-known symbol or metaphor of moral corruption.[ii] So in 1st century Israel there’s an ancient association between leaven (moldy yeast) as “profane” and the un-leavened as “sacred”, e.g. the holy Jewish festival of the Unleavened Bread.

In this parable Jesus invokes a deliberate and unexpected reversal of the old standard, whereby leaven – which is held to be corrupt, is really the source of what is sacred. With Good News for those who are considered corrupt/sinful/degenerate by the established structures of power, the shocking reversal of expectation uttered with the simple word “leaven” would have thrown Jesus’ audience utterly off guard.

And just as the process of leavening is worked through until everything is corrupted[iii], those relegated to the outside of the Jewish socio-religious code would have been are astonished and overjoyed, while those inside the Temple would have been perplexed and confused, as Jesus overturns and abolishes and the boundary between the sacred and the profane and offends the deeply held religious sensibilities of the status quo.

For this itinerant Jew is essentially saying the last thing that people want or expect to hear about the Kingdom of God: it is in the concealment of something small and corrupt that the revelation of the Kingdom becomes manifest.[iv] The parable of the Leaven is typical of many of Jesus’ many pronouncements[v] and it provides a very good indication of precisely what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God. It is a decidedly “un-kingly” kingdom, one that explodes our assumptions about the very meaning of Kingdom, and one that offers a permanent challenge to our religious and political convictions about precisely who or what is sacred and profane

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Mark 4:30-32 (also see Matthew 13:31-32, Luke 13:18-19, Thomas 20)[vi]

30Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”[vii]

In this parable Jesus again reverses a 1st century symbol for the Kingdom, this time the mighty cedar of Lebanon, which was widely regarded to be a central guiding metaphor for Israel’s messianic hopes. However Jesus “lampoons the whole apocalyptic tradition”[viii] by comparing the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds while finishing with images of ‘trees’ where ‘birds made their home’ in the same breath to conjure up conventional associations with the mighty cedar of Lebanon (in Ezekiel and Daniel).

But it not simply that the mustard plant starts as the smallest of seeds and grows into a large tree for the birds of the air, it’s arresting impact is further witnessed in that the mustard plant is a relatively short lived shrub or tree that tends to take over domestic agricultural areas[ix] and grow out of control precisely where it is not wanted.

As Crossan describes it, the mustard plant is a “pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties, something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses - if you could control it”[x] while also attracting birds within these cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired.[xi]

Moreover the mustard plant is a weed, and in ancient Jewish times the planting of mustard seeds in a garden is prohibited by Mosaic Law (Leviticus 19:19).[xii] So the paradoxical shock of Jesus metaphor is not simply that the mustard seed starts small and becomes the largest of all garden plants (which is true enough) but that its bigness is dangerous, deadly and illegal.[xiii]

We can therefore see that Jesus again invokes an arresting reversal of his audience’s background assumptions regarding the Kingdom of God. With a comic inversion of traditional assumptions Jesus pokes fun at the messianic expectations of 1st century Jews by saying that the smallest seed – and that one which grows into the most unruly and undesirable of all plants - is really the new symbol of God’s Kingdom (Empire, Caesar).[xiv]

Of course, by the time the New Testament was written (100 AD), Jesus’ early followers had buried and domesticated the radical edges of these and other subversive teachings. But in it’s original context, it now seems that Jesus used the term Kingdom to express his paradoxical wit, to given added intensity to his provocative message, to pop open awareness with a new configuration of reality that discloses to us what the world would look like if God was running the show…. The fact that much of our current language on the Kingdom of God is no longer dissonant or paradoxical only shows us how we have domesticated it over the last few thousand years…

As an Integrally informed scholar/practitioner, the most perplexing aspect of the Gospel story for me is that the Kingdom of God is not for the best and brightest, not for those who meet the requirements of second-tear awareness, and not for those with turquoise qualifications and credentials, as Paul said of the early Christian apostles,

“Not many were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world… to bring to nothing things that are.” (Cor. I:27-28)

In his privileging of those without privilege, Jesus of Nazareth was more of a Rebel than a King, and his parabolic discourse consistently challenges and overturns this implied structural network of associations between kingdom, power, sovereignty and God. As one recent Jesus scholar put it:

“The Kingdom of God was made – 1st, for children, and those who resembled them; 2nd, for the outcasts of the world, victims of that social arrogance which repulses the good but humble man; 3rd for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and Pagans of Tyre and Sidon… The doctrine that the poor… alone shall be saved, that the reign of the poor is approaching – was, therefore, the doctrine of Jesus.”[xv]

The point here is that the story of Jesus is still a strange, foolish, awkward and dangerous story when read through an Integral (AQAL) lens… The love of God in the scandal of the Cross defies logic while subverting many of our religious, cultural and philosophical assumptions in ushering in a revolutionary understanding of God. For in Christ God is now fully identified with the god-forsaken - as Chesterton said: from all the religions of the world it is only in Christianity and Jesus’ cry of desolation from the Cross does it look like God, for an instant, became an atheist…

So the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a radical paradox – it does not make everything make sense, it disturbs and unsettles and throws everything off balance… So for me (and I would appreciate any comment on this thorny issue) there is this deep tension between the second-tier “elitism” of Integral - an excellence to which everyone is invited, and the undeniable privileging of the outcast, the afflicted, the powerless in the Gospel story of Jesus – who is for me the human face of God…

As Paul writes, those who find their righteousness in Christ “glory in their weakness”… where the love of God is freely given in suffering and the Cross – and where the boundless love of God is revealed to us in the form of an executed criminal, a despised and abandoned heretic…

So there is no getting around the fact that Christ shows up not at the top of the socio-cultural pyramid, but on the margins, as the menace at the Temple gates, or as the mustard seed that slip through the crack s of the established order and de-centers all fixed enters of power and privilege with good news for the poor and the permanent possibility of offense for the sanctified who put themselves on the throne of the divine…

In contrast to meeting the requirements of an ILP as one who follows the way Jesus, my main form of spiritual practice is to risk letting go of my confidence and eloquence, and to confess not the abundance but the exhaustion of my verbal, intellectual and spiritual resources… I am only really praying when I acknowledge that I do not know how to pray.

Cameron

[i] The Greek here is “three satas” which is about 22 liters – a very large amount and enough to feed about 100 people. It also reminds Jesus’ listeners of the story of the angels who give a prophecy concerning Issac’s birth in Genesis 18, among the items Sarah prepares for them is cakes made from “three satas” of flour…

[ii]For more see Bernard Brandon Scott, Hear Then the Parable: A Commentary on the Parables of Jesus (1989)

[iii] Scott 2001, p.27-34

[iv] The leaven is “concealed” krypto (Luke), enkrypto (in Matthew) is a much more negative word for hiding (it means to keep secret) than the more neutral kalypto. The phrase “by a woman” is also an unexpected reversal and a problematic representative of the sacred. Woman as the un-favored gender role in the Roman Empire, subject to fathers and husbands and at a disadvantage when it comes to purity codes, so Jesus’ use of woman as a symbol of the sacred is again arresting and provocative

[v] Funk 1996, p.157

[vi]Thomas has ‘falls on disturbed ground’ which is absolutely right, botanically. Mark has ‘is sown’ which is absolutely wrong… it’s a weed… but this fits with Mark’s chapter 4 ’sowing’ theme. Matthew and Luke (who used Mark) also have ‘sown’.

[vii]Only the version of this saying in Thomas refers to the herb as a “plant”. Mark 4 refers to is as a “shrub”, Matthew 12 as both “shrub” and “tree” and Luke 13 as a “tree”. In actual botany, the plant is called SINAPI (Greek) and in this parable it was an annual wild herb that never grew to a size that any Mediterranean person would ever call a tree. (Mahlon Smith CrossTalk - 14 Jun 1998)

[viii]Crossan 1991, p.277

[ix] Funk 1996, p.157

[x] In putting the distinction between insiders and outsiders into question, the mustard seed is “is a startling metaphor, but it would be interpreted quite differently by those, on the one hand, concerned about their fields, their crops, and their harvests, and by those, on the other, for whom fields, crops, and harvest were always the property of others.” - John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)

[xi] Crossan 1991 as Roman natural historian Pliny the elder (23-79AD) writes, mustard “with its pungent taste and fiery effect is extremely beneficial for the health. It grows entirely wild… when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.” Pliny (the Elder) in Natural History 29.54.170 (LOEB), p.170-171 quoted in Scott 2001, p. 37

[xii] Douglas Oakman, “It is hard to escape the conclusion that Jesus deliberately likens the Kingdom of God to a weed.” (1986, p.127 quoted in Crossan 1991, p.278)

[xiii]Crossan 1991, p.278 In further establishing the mustard plants (Brassica Nigra) subversive meaning, it has been likened by Smith to “a colonizing annual that appears in disturbed ground and, often, after sturdier plants appear in a few years, disappears. This might have parabolic implications.” (CrossTalk - 14 Jun 1998)

[xiv] Funk 1996, p.157

[xv]Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus 1972, p.194-196

Jesus of Nazareth was brutally executed for treason and blasphemy - that is on both political and religious grounds. As the leader of a messianic movement growing in popularity and influence in and around Jerusalem he was a threat to both the Roman Empire, under which Augustus Caesar was said to be the one and only ‘Son of God’ and also the Jewish Temple authorities who alone mediated access to the divine through various religious rituals and sacrifices.

His public crucifixion outside the city walls of Jerusalem was therefore a decisive public statement by the Jewish priestly collaborators with the power structures of Rome that Jesus was a god-forsaken pretender to the messianic throne, just another one of the many Jewish insurgents and failed revolutionaries that were crucified under the Roman Empire and thrown on the scrap heap of history in the 1^st century.[1]

So where the messianic claims made about Jesus only began to crystallize amongst his followers in the wake of those radically unforeseeable events we now call the Resurrection (i.e. the Empty Tomb and the Appearances), during his public life and earthly ministry there was no substantial social consensus or agreement that this man - Jesus of Nazareth - was the ‘only begotten’ Son of God, the long awaited messiah and promised liberator of Israel from Roman occupation.

As Dietrich Bonheoffer, one of the twentieth century’s greatest theologians maintains, Jesus of Nazareth did things which looked, at least on first impressions, very much like he was a sinner (religiously), or a rebel (politically). He became angry, he was harsh to his mother, he slipped away from his enemies, he befriended prostitutes and undesirables, he broke the Law of his people, he stirred up revolt against the rulers and religious men of his country[2], and he even called God “Papa” (Abba), a blasphemous term denoting unusual intimacy with the Creator of the universe in a Jewish cultural matrix in which the name of God was not to be even allowed to be uttered by mere mortals.

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But not only must Jesus have appeared a sinner and rebel in the eyes of his contemporaries, we must also acknowledge the disturbing possibility that for many in 1^st century Palestine Jesus of Nazareth must have embodied the very archetype of evil: Satan, where Lucifer comes as a fallen angel, an associate of outcasts, and an antagonist of the existing order who seeks to overthrow the powers that be in the name of his own Kingdom. The demonic, the diabolical God-like pretender to the throne of the divine, is exactly how Jesus must have come across to many of his contemporaries, so much so that Jesus himself must have been personally aware of the seeming lunacy of his single-minded mission and the radical content of his life’s work.

To further unpack this disturbing ambiguity, from the very outset of his public ministry Jesus’ messianic identity was intertwined with the voice of Satan. After being rejected as a prophet in his hometown of Nazareth[3] and moving to Capernaum about twenty five miles away on the Sea of Galilee, even Jesus’ own family came to his house to seize him and take him back home under the belief that he was suffering from a severe delusion and had gone insane.[4] Not only was he accused of being demon-possessed by those closest to him, after his initial rejection in his Nazareth, the very first to proclaim that Jesus to be the Son of God were not his immediate followers but those tormented souls that were possessed by evil spirits. We see this in Mark’s gospel, where Jesus drives out an evil spirit from a demon possessed man who violently shrieks “I know who you are - the Holy One of God!”[5] This confession by a man driven to the extremes of inner torment is the earliest Christological statement in the historical development of the Church, and it comes directly from the voice of Satan. However, this is not an isolated example for Mark goes on to say that “Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God’. But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.”[6] That is. Jesus explicitly denied that he was the Son of God and told those inwardly disturbed souls who proclaimed this publicly to be silent, and not because his messianic identity was a secret but because those who made this claim were simply wrong…

So at the earliest origins of the Christian movement it was demons and evil spirits proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God. And rather than confirming their claims, this strange itinerant preacher immediately tells them to be silent, and moves on to another town before local townsfolk attempt to domesticate him and turn him into a guru or prophet to be worshiped, a decision that evoked vociferous public debate about the true identity of this singularly enigmatic figure.

The Gospel narratives are punctuated with many similar examples where Jesus refuses to claim the Messianic status attributed to him by others. In Luke’s gospel Jesus heals a leper and then tells him to go and make customary sacrifices to the priestly authorities that Moses commanded to deflect attention away from himself and his own healing powers. As soon as news about Jesus’ miraculous healing powers started to spread he withdrew to lonely places to pray[7], a clear indication that early in his ministry this all too human Jesus seems himself uncertain of his own true vocation and self-understanding.

Later, as Jesus’ earthly mission moves towards its unpredictable climax in Jerusalem, and with his messianic identity still clouded in mystery, he asks Peter (his closest disciple) the question that sits at the very core of any Christian faith commitment: “Who do you say that I am?”[8] In all three Gospel accounts of this dialogue (Mark 8:30, Matt. 16:20, Luke 9:21) as soon as Peter says “you are the Christ”, Jesus rebukes him, telling him that he has it dead wrong and then commands him to remain silent.

Having denied the messianic status attributed to him by Peter, Jesus then goes on to interrupt his disciples inflated expectations of a militant messiah that would liberate Israel from Roman occupation and institute a royal kingdom of sovereign power by explaining that he is now to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die because of his passion for the Kingdom of God. This reversal of expectations is a stunning declaration that again throws his privileged messianic identity into question, and is encapsulated in Jesus’ severe rebuke to Peter – the one that had just called him “Christ”, for as soon as Peter attempts to deter Jesus from his inevitable suffering and death he is told by Jesus in no uncertain terms to “Get behind me Satan”.

And in a final astonishing example of holy blasphemy, it was the Roman centurion at the foot of the Cross, perhaps the very man who drove the nails into Jesus’ tortured flesh, that first confessed that “truly this man was the Son of God”[9] From beginning to end, in true paradoxical style, Jesus’ messianic identity was shrouded in ambiguity and inextricably intertwined with the voice of Satan – from the demon possessed, to those (including his ‘virgin’ mother) who thought he was insane, to his deluded disciples, to his executioner, the utter lunacy of Jesus’ earthy mission always shadowed him…[10]

However the messianic expectations and assumptions projected onto Jesus by those around him were consistently frustrated by this subversive Jewish teacher. In fact, what makes the Jesus of history so authentic - so intriguing and unique, is that he shows up as the exact opposite of what a God-man or Savior figure would look like if we were to create him in our own image. For in our all too human seeking for God we normally construct idealized visions of an almighty and sovereign power beyond the mortal terrors of time and embodiment, and like to identify ourselves with one that displays his infallible divine status through signs of supernatural glory and miraculous interventions in the natural order – just look to the disturbingly popular ‘Left Behind’ series of novels for a contemporary example of Christ coming again in violence and glory to smite his enemies and carry off his chosen few into the eternal bliss of paradise - while the only world we know goes to hell.

But in contradiction to this fundamentalist distortion of the founder of Christianity we only have to look at the earliest written account of the historical Jesus in the Gospel of Mark to find the story of a strange, enigmatic, and even restless figure, a solitary individual constantly misunderstood by those closest to him. It is Satan (in various disguises) that calls him the Son of God, and everything he tries seems to fail, until in the end there is just the agony of crucifixion and three terrified women fleeing from an Empty Tomb…

If Jesus is the Christ it is only because he is a scandal – a kind of obstacle, an unfathomable X who slips through the cracks and disturbs the complacency of the moral order of things. That’s why the great German philosopher Hegel called the Incarnation – the revelation of God’s own self in Jesus of Nazareth, a “monstrosity” – as inappropriateness ‘as such’. Jesus comes to us as a madman, as an unspeakable trauma, as a blasphemous fool who does not make things make sense… Against all expectations Jesus does not require success, fame, wealth, or power to justify or validate his privileged status but instead he shatters the security of our predictable common sense world with teachings that embody deeper internal discord than the teachings of any other religious founder or tradition[11], culminating in the shocking monstrosity of his contorted body hanging on a Roman cross and the weird intrusion from some unheard dimension that eventually came to be called the Resurrection… That is, if we are really honest with ourselves, we will confess that an encounter with Jesus is a traumatic experience that shatters the illusions of the consensual social world - he is simply not the Messiah that we either want or expect.

³⁰In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³²So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

³⁶“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

³⁷The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Arguably the most well-known of all of Jesus’ parables, the Good Samaritan is a classic instance of the paradoxical teaching strategy employed by Jesus, as well as a foremost instance of how a moralistic misinterpretation of the early evangelists obscured what his parables are really about. For nearly two millennium the Good Samaritan has been taken by Christians as an example story illustrating what it means to be a good neighbor. We can witness this allegorical veil in its first evangelical interpreter - Luke, who takes it as an example of good behavior with a moralizing admonition appended at the conclusion: “Go and do likewise”.

However contemporary parable scholarship has concluded that in its original setting this narrative was not a pleasant tale about the friendly neighbor who does the right thing by helping a man down on his luck, but rather it is a deeply world-shattering narrative in which Jesus explodes the underlying assumptions of his 1^st century Jewish audience in regards to just who is a ‘neighbor’ and who is a ‘stranger’ when it comes to the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

In summary, a Jewish man having been beaten and left in a ditch to die, is rescued by a traveling Samaritan after two Temple authorities – a priest and a Levite - “pass by on the other side of the road” to deliberately avoid an encounter the half-dead man.

Now what has been overlooked in the historical development of Christianity is the fact that in Jesus’ day the Samaritans were the mortal enemies of the Jewish people and looked down upon as a symbol of moral corruption ever since they split off from the rest of the nation during the reign of King David. So where the Samaritans were a despicable race of half-breeds, the Jewish priests and Levites were considered to be the moral and religious authorities and were thus given a high social ranking within the same cultural landscape. In the context of this parable, then, Samaritan and Judean stand in considerable tension with each other, one a hated enemy of the beaten man and on the other God’s specially chosen instruments of salvation. However in the shocking reversal at the heart of this most memorable narrative, the very structure that defines the world-space of Jesus’ audience is radically inverted as a hated enemy becomes the beaten Jews greatest benefactor while his greatest benefactors (the moral and religious authorities) are exposed as social and religious outcasts.

In asking the provocative question of ‘who is the real neighbor’ the whole thrust of the story confronts its hearers with an impossible decision, one in which their world is turned upside down and radically put into question: goodness and Samaritan coincide, while badness and Jew also go together. As Dominic Crossan puts it - if Jesus’ only intention was simply to take a shot against the Temple authorities “it would have been far better to have made the wounded man a Samaritan and the helper a Jewish traveler from outside of the priestly circles.”

However, when goodness (Jew) and badness (Samaritan) undergo a bi-polar reversal the very meaning of one’s world is shaken in its foundations, and we are faced with a radical paradox that profoundly undermines everyday expectations and opens ones awareness to an altogether new apprehension of reality. For the person struggling to come to terms with the creative tension of Good/Samaritan and Bad/Jew is simultaneously experiencing in and through the language of Jesus the arrival of the Kingdom, where this embrace of apparent contradictories in the deep structure of the parable bursts open familiar ways of seeing the world with new insight and illumination and leaves us “standing firmly on utter uncertainty.”

This basic thrust of this memorable parable of Jesus is pitted against the world as it is - the commonplace myths that are taken for granted in the so-called ‘real world’. For where Jesus’ first century Jewish audience would have expected an Israelite layperson to come to the rescue - one of their own and hence an acceptable hero figure, to their horror a hated Samaritan arrives on the scene! And even as the Greek translation for “came upon him” implies that this unforeseen stranger intends is to finish off the helpless Jew once and for all, against all expectations to the contrary the Samaritan has compassion for the wounded man, his heart is wrenched open, he is “struck in his soul by a lightening flash of mercy” and goes on to exceed all normal requirement in his endeavor to restore his mortal enemy back to health.

With the unexpected arrival of the Samaritan, everything is thrown off-center as Jesus directly and repeatedly challenges the dominant religious and political structure with an “imaginative shock that can overturn worlds,” where esteemed neighbors become hard hearted strangers and a worthless stranger becomes a revered neighbor. We can see here, then, an initial demonstration of Jesus’ paradoxical reversals in the universally recognized story of the Good Samaritan: the one deemed to be a despicable social and religious outcast (Samaritan) is foremost in doing the will of God, just as those who are deemed to be foremost in doing the will of God (Temple authorities) are despicable social and religious outcasts. Or in other words, the Jewish religious leaders who initially seem to be the agents of holiness and divine favor are really objects of scorn and religious derision; while the Samaritan who at first appears to be an object of scorn and religious derision is really the agent of compassion and grace, and a foremost example of neighborly love.

In a similar vein, another key message of the Good Samaritan is that in the Kingdom help is perpetually a surprise. For after the initial shock of hearing about a fellow Jew being robbed on the road to Jericho and left to die in a ditch in a ditch, Jesus’ audience is then told that the secret of this man’s healing is in receiving help from the place he least expects - his social enemy, and that healing and grace comes only when we are powerless to refuse it. The Kingdom of God may therefore be most active in what is most unacceptable to us, and most present to us when we are forced to acknowledge the goodness of those we detest or distrust, and perhaps even to accept compassionate service from them, as Funk writes:

“God’s domain is open to outcasts, to the undeserving, to those who do not merit inclusion. In other words, all who are truly victims, truly disinherited, have no reason and are unable to resist mercy when it is offered. The despised half-breed becomes the instrument of compassion and grace – Judeans would have chocked on that irony.”

So, in reiterating the paradoxical shock of Jesus’ time honored narrative, just as a respectable Jew on his way to Jericho becomes an untouchable victim cast aside the road, what initially shows up as an untouchable victimized outcast (Samaritan) is really the respected agent of healing and a fore-runner in the ways of the Kingdom.

Therefore, by disclosing the underlying structure of Jesus’ all too familiar story of the Good Samaritan, we can now see this parable as if for the first time, as a wisdom teaching that presents an explosive paradox to Jesus’ audience in a double-edged reversal of their commonplace expectations. For whereas the forces of good (Priest, Levite) do evil; and the forces of evil (Samaritan) do good, our preconceived assumptions and unquestioned values are torn asunder and we are invited to participate in a profound shift in consciousness, an unexpected reversal where that which appears at first to be unmitigated horror is really a wonderful disguise in which the inscrutable mystery of God enters our lives in the fullest possible manner.

As such, this well known parable of Jesus is not an example story or an allegory, as has been thought throughout the development of much of the Christian tradition. For where the loaded terms of the parable (Jew/Samaritan) have lost their original strong values, the paradoxical tensions of the story have been lost. So much so that for most Christians it has become little more than a story of the friendly neighbor and we seldom realize that as it was first uttered it was more like a ‘square circle’. So the widely held literal reading that interprets this (and other) parable(s) of Jesus as only a form of moral instruction or examples of ‘right action’ (i.e. help a man in need) derives not from the Founder of Christianity – Jesus of Nazareth, but only from what was Founded - the Church. Such moral or allegorical readings thereby diminish the original intent of Jesus’ radical paradoxes, which were originally invoked to directly attack conventional structures of meaning in a “damning indictment of social, racial and religious superiority.” And by overturning our man-made religious boundaries and prepackaged value-hierarchies, there is no way of deciding who is an insider and who is an outsider in the Kingdom revealed by Jesus, which is likely to come to us like a thief in the night, and often from the place that we least expect…

Thomas Keating “The Kingdom of God is Like”

Crossan 1973, p.64

Crossan 1973, p.65-6

Giles Gunn cited in Crossan 1973, p.53-4

Crossan 1973, p.55

Scott 2001, p.60

Scott 2001, p.61

Benedict XVI 2007, p.197

Tannehill in Perrin 1974, p.180

Funk 1996, p.180

Thoman Keating, “The Kingdom of God is Like…”, K, Ch. 1

Funk 1996, p.177

FTK, Ch. 1

Crossan quoted in Perrin 1976, p.257

Crossan 1973, p.57, 65