Jesus the Riddler

Jesus the Riddler: the power of ambiguity in the gospels.  By Tom Thatcher, Westminster John Knox, 2006

I bought this in 2006 before getting the axe by the Community of Christ, and it has been kinda rattling around for the past few years. I would pick up, read a chapter and lose interest again for several months. Then a few weeks ago it finally got past the mouldering cob-webs in my brain and it registered.

The thesis of Tom Thatcher is that we can learn more about Jesus' environment, his way of teaching, etc and eventually (this was the "bingo moment") what was the core of his message. It of course is not a big statement to say that Jesus spoke ambiguously. It was in the first chapters of the book that I was stuck for years as Thatcher explained the riddle not just as a literary element, but as a cultural element.

Before I lose you, dear reader, I can only say that this book is quite recommendable, especially if you have a penchant for the "historical Jesus" and thinking about what Jesus was saying and doing in his context, separated from the many impressions that we have of him today. If I said that this was about Jesus, not necessarily Christ, would you understand?

While it appears that Thatcher is probably a pretty straight theologically (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminar) the book certainly shows thinking outside the box (my opinion). Without the space or time to do a full summary of 'Jesus the Riddler' maybe I can do a severe summary:
1) Jesus was an ace riddler, both in being able to defend himself and by using riddles / parables & ambiguity to make a point and/or verbally skewer his opponents.
2) His closest traveling companions clearly did not "get" many of his riddles and had to ask for private interpretation. Worse for us is that the ambiguity is not easy to resolve without having Jesus to explain this to us.

3) Thatcher uses some of the elements of John Crossan's analysis / opinion of what Jesus had in mind in his ministry. Specifically Thatcher echos Crossan's summary of the "four kinds of Kingdom". Thatcher places our riddling Jesus in the quadrant of "Sapiential" <=> "Peasant" This vision of the Kingdom is "...(to) teach and practice an alternate lifestyle that defies current social norms" in the here and now. No pie in the sky Kingdom here, but rather a roll up your sleeves and get after it NOW.
4) The riddling Jesus created basically an "insider's club" of those who could understand what all the riddling and ambiguity was all about. Or maybe it was not so much an insider's club but rather that those other guys, those ignorant dolts outside were NOT a part of the inner circle.

Okay up to this point. I'm okay with the idea that Jesus was hard to understand (and most don't understand him even now) and that he was a peasant who appealed to the outsiders of his time (sinners, unclean persons like fishermen, etc). And that certainly he was sapiential (wise). My immersion in the historical Jesus over the years has taught me that indeed Jesus was so many things that there is no one "historical Jesus" that we can identify. 

Where my path diverges is the Pentecostal event and what happened afterward. At the Pentecostal event the sapiential Jesus (now physically gone) is supplemented / augmented by the Spirit. Before Pentecost we have a riddling Jesus that verbally challenges us all. But following Pentecost the insider's club of those saavy to Jesus' riddles, sayings and parables are joined by those touched by the Spirit. It is like maybe the inherently limited insiders club of Those Who Understand Jesus' Riddles is now augmented by all those touched by the spirit.

And maybe we can still see this tension today: those that take the words of Jesus and try to turn it into a coherent Word of God in contrast with those who are led by the spirit only. The uneasiness between the Bible literalists and those in the Pentecostal camp that allow for more contact, more rapport with God than just the words on a page.

So my take on Jesus the Riddler is this: fine and good. Another source that helps us understand that we really can't understand in a perfectly logical & explanable way what Jesus was saying. Amen. But the challenge is to imagine what the churches would be like if we were the remnants of Jesus old riddling buddys. Somehow at Pentecost the Riddlers Club got disbanded. We can still hear Jesus teaching via parables and riddles. But the movement blasted out of Israel and within a couple of generations had spread to much of the region. It was not pushed so far and so fast by the Riddlers Club, but by the Spirit. It was certainly not impulsed by the Bible which was still a few hundred years from being written and agreed to. 

Steve Bootman
Cochabamba Bolivia