'O my father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will but as thou wilt': thus Jesus in Gethsemane, as told by Matthew. Jesus who, for the first time, doubts his mission. Jesus who has become 'very sorrowful and very heavy'.
But God does not answer, as he did Moses. No angel appears, not in this gospel, when Jesus speaks to God.
And the second moment of doubt, on the cross: 'My God, My God why has thou forsaken me?' That in the ninth hour, just before death. He cries again, Jesus and, as Matthew says, 'gives up the ghost'.
Jesus becomes very real for him in these moments of doubt, W. says. Other than that … What does it mean to call yourself the Messiah and the son of God? What, to persuade others that you are the son of David and the son of God?
For the Jew, the messianic can have nothing to do with a particular person, W. says. The messianic is about time, he says. The messianic epoch: that's what he loses sight of with the figure of Jesus, W. With Christianity. A sense of a time, of the openness of time rather than what is taken to be its fulfilment.
And what is this openness but speech? What is it but the openness of dialogue, in which one places himself in service before the other?
The parables: those are the other moments when Jesus seems real to him, W. says, when he speaks in simplicity to simple people. When everyday speech is his medium, and he opens himself in dialogue with all comers, with anyone at all.
Just as he, W., speaks with great simplicity to me! Just as W. tries to explain things to a simple person like me!
Lars Iyer's Blog 