He gave the impression he would return in power and glory within a comparatively short time, which was perhaps a sop to those who had been looking for a warrior king, or at least for dramatic results. But in the symbolism of eating and drinking his flesh and blood he was not caught by the messianic prophesies.
Why did he do it? What were his thoughts as he planned the last supper with his friends, and provoked the crowd in anticipation of it? In effect it was his funeral oration. No-one could eat his flesh if he were still alive, not even in the most symbolic sense. On one occasion apparently he told a group who believed in him that they were bent on killing him, and very nearly provoked them into doing it, by stoning him. No-one can say he did not look for trouble. And once he had uttered these thoughts, and called in aid the symbolism of the corn and wine gods of antiquity, he had to die. He may have known that a powerful faction in the religious authority were determined to kill him; but there must have been a reasonably powerful minority who wanted justice. Why did he want to turn a judicial murder by the High Priests and their supporters, backed by what was probably a small (and hired) mob, into a ritual sacrifice in which the whole world was condemned? Or was this a rationalization by his apologists after his death? We all know, that is those of us who have exercised even a small amount of authority responsibly know, that state-craft on the most modest scale demands a certain inhumanity of conduct. As Agamemnon found, it is impossible to conduct yourself responsibly in any office, without a willingness to be ruthless. Goethe’s view, expressed at the end of Faust in the incident when the cottage of Philomen and Baucis is burned, was that in a scheme of development the consent of all those involved needed to be obtained. I entirely agree; if time and space allow, I think one should be willing to allow oneself to be frustrated. But they may not; and then it is irresponsible to hesitate. Most of us shrink from ruthlessness, if there is another way; but often there isn’t. Then to fail to act only stores up trouble, chiefly for others, but possibly for oneself as well. Was this what Jesus meant: that the Almighty, the Creator, utterly rejected this interpretation of the code of public duty? Well, if you reject it, what do you put in its place, if you are not privileged with the Almighty’s power?
One must not denigrate Jesus, because he made mistakes. The miracle is he made so few. But he did not put everything right; and it is no good pretending he did. On the other hand promising his own imminent return is trivial compared with his supreme promise that if anyone believed in him, his spirit, and the Father’s spirit also, would dwell in the man. Surely this was the private version to his disciples, in the intimacy of the Last Discourses on the night before he died, of the version he gave in public: that a man must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have any part in him? The public version was given to all; and you do not open your heart to your enemy. What mockery he would have subjected himself to, if he had repeated the Last Discourses in public. Of course he used a metaphor which threw down a challenge to his enemies to kill him. Of course he used a metaphor which would remain valid when they had killed him. But was it true, or was it also a mistake? If true what does it mean?
What it does not mean is a facility for asking God to make up your mind for you. Has nobody noticed that in the story of the Temptations, Jesus never suggested that God gave him any answers? Jesus gave the answers himself. It is the same rule for us: we often have to answer our own prayers. So even if Jesus did mean that his God, and our God, rejected that interpretation of performing a public office responsibly, that does not mean we necessarily have to reach the same conclusion. And I for one emphatically repudiate the limitations he sought to impose on a man’s vocation. Jesus is not the only access to the Creator, even if he is the only access to the benign fatherly side of the Creator; the Creator can arrange that a man has access to him in some other way, if he wants to. Furthermore the Creator can give a man a vocation to be employed in a public office, if he wants to. We can all indulge in wishful thinking; but that does not give another the prerogative to say we are wrong. You can either accept that when a man prays, he talks to God, as I gather Jews firmly believe; or you can lay down codes of behaviour which a man must keep, and deny that he has direct access to God.