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The church needs to help people make sense out of life and the faith she represents. She needs to see the opportunity such specials provide to tell her story to those who may only know the prime time version of events. Sometimes such specials can be a good starting point for discussion.

Jesus and the kingdom
We start where the special does, with Jesus. The idea of a crucified Jesus as a surprising idea opens the special. It is an idea the disciples also struggled to accept as numerous gospel units tell us. They eventually got it. The opening scene begins with the song "What if God Was One of Us" in the background, an appropriate question as an opening. The early scene of Sepphoris looks at a city Herod rebuilt that the Bible never discusses but that introduces the complex Roman-Jewish world of Jesus. Marcus Borg is cited for infancy mortality rates, statistics that are likely correct to show how tough first century life was.

The move then comes to the kingdom of God, which primarily is discussed as a political concept. The kingdom is the overthrow of evil, no disease or starvation, a miracle. This is what Jews expected. This is also correct. Tom Wright notes how filled Judea was with rebellion in its recent background, another point that is correct. Next comes the various Jewish views of Messiah, of which there were several. Judaism's expectations included a political Messiah, a transcendent messiah, as well as a priestly messianic hope. This ended the first block of the first hour.

The picture of Jesus' coming is set against the backdrop of Jewish expectation, the hope of vindication and deliverance at a political level. This is all on target with first century Jewish expectation, as Jesus' message was enough of a contrast to elements of this that many Jews had trouble perceiving how he could be their Messiah given this expectation.

The second block on Jesus opens with what Jesus looked like, a rather theoretical question of modern interest as there is no physical description of Jesus in the Bible. John the Baptist briefly comes next, then a discussion of population in the villages. The kingdom is raised again. Tom Wright notes how differently Jesus presented the kingdom from Jewish expectation, a contrast to the earlier context. The radical idea is to embrace other humans beyond social convention. Luke Timothy Johnson makes this point. It is a key ethical dimension to the kingdom. God has come and made his hope available to all, not only to Jews. It is available even to sinners.

How the healing ministry illustrates this is also noted. O'Conner fuses sickness and possession. This is sometimes done in the gospels, but not always, as Luke's gospel distinguishes the categories. Jesus' effort to be inclusive is exemplified with Jesus cleansing the lepers, which highlights how Jesus embraced the unclean in contrast to the Dead Sea Scroll community, which excluded them. So we see Jesus as one concerned about offering the hope of God to all kinds of people. Here the second block on Jesus ends.

This portrait of the kingdom is incomplete. There is nothing about the work of the Spirit, a key that John the Baptist and Jesus pointed to in such discussion. Here is where God and humanity connect, a key omission, about the personal dimensions of one's relationship to God that also is a part of the kingdom's hope. This is the appeal to the new covenant of Judaism, a covenant Jesus says he initiates at his last supper and that he discusses in the Upper Room discourse.

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48