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Mauro Pesce and Adrianna Desto, Encounters with Jesus: The Man in His Place and Time.

Fortress Press, 2011.

Chapter Two

In this section P. and D. offer readers their view of the itinerant lifestyle which Jesus adopted and

what that lifestyle choice says about him. They commence

We may wonder why Jesus began this way of life. An anthropological

analysis of places and mobility allows us to get a better grasp of his experience.

From this perspective, Jesus refusal of a stable residence can be defined as a

continuous calling into question of the relationships and the bases of humanexistence (p. 25).

So, there it is, the reason that Jesus became a wanderer. And even more precisely

It is, in fact, this absence of a network of pre-existing relationships that gave those

whom he met greater freedom to welcome or to reject his message and hislifestyle (p. 27).

So what does all this mean? It means that an anthropological examination of the life of Jesus

shows him to have been a driven man a man driven with a sense of urgency and mission whobasically just could not be still.

But Jesus was not merely a nomad or a traveler or a pilgrim. His itinerant life was totallyuncertain and

exclude[d] fixed relationships (p. 29).

To be sure, he had disciples who traveled with him but the usual fixed relationships of life

(home, family, workplace) were abandoned by him in his quest to fulfill his mission.

Jesus did not travel. He moved from place to place, he pressed forward. He went

quickly not to see places but to meet persons. [And because country people

could not travel easily, given the fact that they had to tend their farms and

families], anyone who wanted to meet the country people had to go where theywere (pp. 31-32).

At this juncture P. and D. may have buttressed their already overwhelming case by noting theconstant use ofimmediately in Marks gospel. Marks use of that word certainly does portray a

Jesus who is on the gowhich is exactly what our authors wish to show.

Having shown Jesus as itinerant in a bold and provocative way, P. and D. do a bit of exegesis onLuke 12:22-28, which they call the code of the itinerant.

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Every day, Jesus starts walking again. He realizes his plan afresh, sustained by

his hope in God (p. 33).

But, so very interestingly, when Jesus shows up in your town it isn t exactly a welcome thing.

Hes a disruption.

Jesus called people from their work to follow him: there was a collision between

two trajectories, two practices, two conceptions of time. Jesus time was not

cyclical. His itinerancy had unforeseen elements His conception of time wastotally dominated by something urgent: the kingdom of God is close at hand

Jesus had little time, and he could not waste the time that still remained to him (p.

37).

What strikes the reader here is the sense that Jesus proclaimed the inbreaking of the kingdom of

God by breaking into peoples daily routines and disrupting them: just as God disrupts this world

with his world.

But Jesus, P. and D. insist, also was a man of solitude. In fact, they see it as immensely

important that

We must not underestimate the significance of this search for solitude, because it

shows us that Jesus was very much aware of being different from others. It is the

symptom of his need to situate himself in a space and a time of his own (p. 38).

Thats insightful! Further-

His entire religious experience moved between the two poles of attention to the

people and concentration on his own inner life (p. 39).

In sum, this particular chapter opens a quite intriguing window on the life of Jesus. It offersreaders a perspective which they may not have considered previously and in Historical Jesus

scholarship that is quite an accomplishment.

Jim West

Quartz Hill School of Theology