The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Jesus Begins His Ministry

Not long afterwards came news that John the Baptist had been arrested by order of King Herod Antipas, the son of the Herod who had ordered the massacre of the children in Bethlehem. The king had taken away the wife of his brother Philip and married her, in defiance of the law of Moses, and John had criticised him boldly. The king was angry, and ordered his arrest.

That seemed to be a signal for Jesus, and he began at once to preach and teach in Capernaum and the nearby towns around the Sea of Galilee. Like John, he warned people to repent of their sins, and told them that the Kingdom of God was very near and would be coming soon. Many people were impressed by his words, but some thought he was reckless, because the Roman authorities would not be pleased to hear such inflammatory words, and neither would the leaders of the Jews.

And soon Jesus began to attract followers. As he was walking along the shore of the lake one day he fell into conversation with two brothers, fishermen called Peter and Andrew, who were casting a net into the water.

‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and help me catch men and women instead of fish.’

Seeing these two go with him, some other fishermen called James and John, the sons of Zebedee, left their father and followed him too.

Before long Jesus was renowned in the district not only for his words but also for the remarkable events that were said to happen wherever he was. For example, he went to Peter’s house one day, and found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. Jesus went in to speak to her, and presently she felt well again and got up to serve them all food. This was said to be a miracle.

Another time, he was in the synagogue at Capernaum on the Sabbath, when a man began shouting, ‘Why have you come here, Jesus of Nazareth? What d’you think you’re doing? Leave us alone! Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are! You call yourself the Holy One of God – is that who you are? Is it?’

The man was a harmless obsessive, one of those poor creatures who shout and scream for reasons even they don’t understand, and hear voices and talk to people who aren’t there.

Jesus looked at him calmly and said, ‘You can be quiet now. He’s gone away.’

The man fell silent and stood there abashed, as if he had just woken up to find himself in the middle of the crowd. After that he cried out no more, and people said that it was because Jesus had exorcised him and driven away a devil. So the stories began to spread. People said he could cure all kinds of diseases, and that evil spirits fled when he spoke.

When he returned to Nazareth he went to the synagogue on the sabbath, as he always did. He stood up to read, and the attendant handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

‘Isn’t this the son of Joseph the carpenter?’ someone whispered.

‘I hear he’s been preaching around Capernaum, and working miracles,’ whispered someone else.

‘If he’s from Nazareth, why does he go and perform miracles in Capernaum?’ whispered another. ‘He’d do better to stay here and do some good in his home town.’

Jesus read the words from one part of the book and from another:

‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

‘He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.

‘To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ He gave the scroll back. All eyes were fixed on him, because everyone was eager to hear what he would say.

‘You want a prophet,’ he said. ‘More than that: you want a miracle-worker. I heard the whispers that ran around the synagogue when I stood up. You want me to do here the things you’ve heard about from Capernaum – well, I’ve heard those rumours too, and I have more sense than to believe them. You need to think a bit harder. Some of you know who I am: Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, and this is my home town. When has a prophet ever been honoured in his home town? Consider this, if you think you deserve miracles because of who you are: when there was a famine in the land of Israel, and no rain fell for three years, whom did the prophet Elijah help, by God’s command? An Israelite widow? No, a widow from Zarephath in Sidon. A foreigner. And again, were there lepers in the land of Israel in Elisha’s time? There were many. And whom did he cure? Naaman the Syrian. You think being what you are is enough? You’d better start considering what you do.’

Christ was listening to every word his brother spoke, and watching the people carefully, and he wasn’t surprised when a great wave of anger rose among them. He knew these words would provoke them; it was exactly what he would have warned Jesus about, if he’d been asked. This was no way to get a message across.

‘Who does this man think he is?’ said one. ‘How dare he come here and speak to us like this!’ said another.

‘This is scandalous!’ said a third. ‘We shouldn’t have to listen to this man running down his own people, right here in the synagogue!’

And before Jesus could say any more they rose to their feet and seized him. They dragged him to the hill above the town, and they would have hurled him from the top; but in the confusion and the struggle – for some of Jesus’s friends and followers were there too, and they fought the townspeople – Jesus managed to get away unharmed.

But Christ had watched it all, and considered the significance of what he’d seen. Wherever Jesus went there was excitement, enthusiasm, and danger too. It surely wouldn’t be long before the authorities took an interest.