Lessons from the Capernaum Crisis

In this series on Jesus as a crisis leader, the previous video, podcast episode, and blogpost presented the crisis that broke out in the Capernaum synagogue, where Jesus’ enemies were gathered and mobilized. 

The highpoint of Jesus’ response was his public breakthrough to a new and advanced phase of the gospel. “Very truly I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. . . . I am the bread of life.” 

Watch the new 9:46 video or listen to the podcast episode.

Some of these enemies knew Jesus, his teachings, and his actions well enough to have glimpsed his divinity. They were self-deceived; in other words, they did not allow themselves to face their intuition honestly and allow its implications to change them. Some of them were conspiring to kill him. Their hatred and plotting amounted to sin, deliberate rebellion against God. Therefore, if they were to be saved, they needed to accept Jesus himself—one with God—as the bread of life. 

Jesus chose to respond to his enemies by clarifying the stakes: he was offering them eternal life, which they could accept or refuse. He revealed what they needed, but not in the form of literal doctrine that his enemies could use against him to the Sanhedrin and to political leaders including the Roman governor Pilate. Instead, Jesus communicated in a symbol, the bread of life, that could touch the heart and save the soul. 

He gave his enemies another chance to wake up, turn around, and nourish themselves on the bread of life. He thereby also strengthened and protected his true followers by giving them the empowering revelation of his divinity of the one they had chosen to trust. 

Reacting to the higher level of conflict, many of Jesus’ disciples turned back and stopped following him. They were willing to be fed, but not to go against their leaders and traditions to any significant degree. The parable of the sower told of the gospel seed falling on rocky soil and springing up enthusiastically until the scorching sun would expose how shallow their roots were. The lukewarm would fall away; the wholehearted would endure. Regardless of how unpopular it might be, Jesus was totally dedicated to the Father’s will in proclaiming the truth whose time had come. 

Just reading text on the page hardly conveys what it would have been like to see and hear him when he was functioning in high gear. Simply reading about these events leaves me wishing for more. I once participated in a workshop led by an actor and theater director who assigned pairs of us to read aloud stories of brief interactions between individuals and Jesus. It was fascinating to have to decide how to say what Jesus had said. All of a sudden, we had to stop and think. He communicated not only ideas in words that can be written down. He also communicated attitudes and feelings. Reading silently, we normally do not ask ourselves about such things. But if we understood Aramaic—the language in which he taught—and could watch a videotape of Jesus and hear his voice and see his gestures, we would recognize how incomplete our reading is, and perhaps how much we unconsciously fill in the feeling dimension of the story with our own emotions, perhaps projecting a note of fury into a warning or adding sentimentality to a word of compassion. But what faith would an actor need to play this role? But it would not do to imitate Jesus’ voice or gestures. He would want each one to express living faith through our own unique personalities.

Lessons for leaders and their team members

In the early skirmishes we can find several lessons for leaders and team members. From the first, Jesus’ qualities as a leader were evident. His responses to his critics were immediate, spontaneous, strong, clear, positive, limited, and spiritual. He showed the calm dignity of one who was completely secure in the Father. And his response did not include counterattack. He did everything he could to avoid matters escalating to the level of crisis.

The responsibility of Jesus’ followers was to pay attention, listen well, and let the new truth of divine sonship sink in—while staying grounded in the ways of the original gospel. 

From the crisis at Capernaum come more lessons. Now when the opposition is gathered and mobilized, Jesus takes the initiative. He publicly proclaims the advanced level of the gospel, the cluster of teachings that will center around Jesus’ being the divine Son of God, come down from heaven. Second, he begins vigorous counterattacks, drawing a clear line between the way of life and its alternative for those who know him enough to recognize his divinity and nevertheless fiercely oppose him and his gospel movement in attitude, word, and deed. 

Today the responsibility for leaders and those who cooperate with them is to pray at length to discern whether conflict is moving toward a clash between the new wine of the religion of the spirit and old wineskins of tradition that refuse to moisten and flexibly embrace timely change. Have the courage to take and defend unpopular positions. Do not expect things to go smoothly. Understand and persist if many fall away. And nourish yourself on the bread of life. 

Image credit (in the public domain) Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, by a German American history painter, Emanuel Leutze.