Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

not only to the priest’s authority, but to the Temple
     itself. Jesus did not only heal the leper, he purified him, making him eligible to
     appear at the Temple as a true Israelite. And he did so for free, as a gift from God—without
     tithe, without sacrifice—thus seizing for himself the powers granted solely to the
     priesthood to deem a man worthy of entering the presence of God.
    Such a blatant attack on the legitimacy of the Temple could be scorned and discounted
     so long as Jesus remains ensconced in the backwoods of Galilee. But once he and his
     disciples leave their base in Capernaum and begin slowly making their way to Jerusalem,
     healing the sick and casting out demons along the way, Jesus’s collision with the
     priestly authorities, and the Roman Empire that supports them, becomes inevitable.
     Soon, the authorities in Jerusalem will no longer be able to ignore this itinerant
     exorcist andmiracle worker. The closer he draws to the Holy City, the more urgent the need to
     silence him will become. For it is not just Jesus’s miraculous actions that they fear;
     it is the simple yet incredibly dangerous message conveyed through them: the Kingdom
     of God is at hand.

Chapter Ten
May Your Kingdom Come
    “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God?” Jesus asked. It is like a mighty king
     who, having prepared a grand wedding banquet for his son, sends forth his servants
     to the four corners of the kingdom to invite his honored guests to the joyous occasion.
    “Tell my guests I have readied the banquet,” the king instructs his servants. “The
     oxen and cattle have been fattened and butchered. Everything is prepared. Come to
     the wedding festivities.”
    The servants go out to spread the king’s tidings. Yet one by one the honored guests
     decline the invitation. “I have recently purchased a piece of land,” one says. “I
     must tend to it. Please accept my regrets.”
    “I have bought five yoke of oxen and I must test them out,” says another. “Please
     accept my regrets.”
    “I myself just got married,” says a third. “I cannot come.”
    When the servants return, they inform the king that none of his guests have accepted
     the invitation, that some of those invited not only refused to attend the celebration,
     they seized the king’s servants, mistreated them, even killed them.
    In a rage the king orders the servants to search the streets andback alleys of the kingdom, to gather everyone they can find—young and old, poor and
     weak, the lame, the crippled, the blind, the outcast—and to bring them all to the
     banquet.
    The servants do so, and the feast commences. But in the midst of the celebrations
     the king notices a guest who was not invited; he is not wearing the wedding clothes.
    “How did you get in here?” the king asks the stranger.
    The man has no answer.
    “Tie him hand and foot!” the king commands. “Throw him out into the darkness, where
     there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many will be invited, but few are
     chosen.”
    As for those guests who refused to come to the wedding, the ones who seized and killed
     his servants—the king unleashes his army to drive them out of their homes, to slaughter
     them like sheep, and burn their cities to the ground.
    “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 22:1–4 | Luke 14:16–24).
    Of this there can be no doubt: the central theme and unifying message of Jesus’s brief
     three-year ministry was the promise of the Kingdom of God. Practically everything
     Jesus said or did in the gospels served the function of publicly proclaiming the Kingdom’s
     coming. It was the very first thing he preached about after separating from John the
     Baptist: “Repent, the Kingdom of God is near” (Mark 1:15). It was the core of the
     Lord’s prayer, which John taught to Jesus and Jesus in turn taught to his disciples:
     “Our Father, who is in heaven, holy is your name. May your Kingdom come …” (Matthew
     6:9–13 | Luke 11:1–2). It was what Jesus’s followers were told to strive for above
     all else—“Seek first the Kingdom of God, and God’s justice, then all these things
     shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33 | Luke 12:31)—for only by forsaking everything
     and everyone for the Kingdom of God would they have any hope of entering it (Matthew
     10:37–39 | Luke 14:25–27).
    Jesus spoke so often, and so abstractly, about the Kingdom of God that it is difficult
     to know whether