Revisiting Jesus' Pedagogy as Teacher
 U Kyaw Than [1]

"...the harvest is come" (Mk .4.29), "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13.14).

Introduction

It is a blessing that Mahidol University continues to use me for teaching religious studies. In the course on 'Methods of Teaching Religion,' I have been asked to dwell on the 'Teaching Method of Jesus.' I told the class of Christian, Muslim and primarily Buddhist students that while Jesus was a teacher, he was also more than a teacher. His pedagogy was oral and unpremeditated, elicited by casual incidents and events. His teaching was always adapted to his audience, and figurative element was predominant in his pedagogy. There were paradoxes, parables and illustrations. His teaching was authoritative, but not overbearing; neither didactic nor dogmatic. He inspired people to think for themselves. He lived what he taught and loved those whom he taught. Here are two of his parables of growth.

"The Kingdom of God is like this: as if a man should cast seed on the ground, and go to sleep and wake night and day; and the seed germinates and grows, he knows not how. Spontaneously the earth bears fruit � first blade, then ear, then full corn in the ear. But when the crop yields, at once he applies the sickle, because the harvest has come".  [Mk. 4:26-29]

"How shall we liken the Kingdom of God, or in what comparison shall we place it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the ground � being as it is, smaller than all seeds on the ground � when it is sown, it shoots up, and becomes greater than all herbs, and puts out great branches; so that the birds of the air can roost under its shadow."  [Mk. 4:30-32]

The Kingdom Community which is Built

The parables do not refer to the future history of the Kingdom of God in the world. If Jesus declared then that the Kingdom of God had arrived, interpreters understood the Kingdom was present only in germ, before an indefinite period of development, before the consummation of history. The view of C. H. Dodd (written nearly seven decades ago), then Emeritus divinity professor in Cambridge University, England, is that Jesus' explicit statements about the coming of the Kingdom is neither in terms of an evolutionary process nor a catastrophic event in the future, but a present fact, a tendency towards righteousness always present in the world. We may remind ourselves about 'moral humanity in immoral society'. The Kingdom of God is already present in the sense that something has now happened which had never happened before.

Sowing the seed is God's initial act which is prior to all human activity. Growth is a mysterious process independent of the will and act of human beings. Jesus sends his disciples not to sow but to reap. "Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and observe the fields, that they are white for harvest" (Jn. 4.35). Christ did not call for sowers but for more labourers, reapers. In Dodd's view, the work for which Christians are sent has the assurance that the grace of God has been before them. It is their task to claim for God that which God's grace has prepared.

This is a new departure in relations between God and humanity; and new especially in that God's grace is exhibited (offered) to the undeserving. There is no such thing as merit in God's sight. God bestows God's gifts upon people who have done nothing to deserve them. God is like that surprisingly generous employer who pays a full day's wage for the labourer who had only done an hour's work!

I want to link Dodd's exegeses with Pandipeddi Chenchiah's understanding of the Kingdom. A layman, distinguished lawyer, and for a time chief judge of Pudukkottai State, India, Chenchiah, who died some four decades ago at the age of 73, was a leading figure in a group of thinkers who produced the 1938 publication, Rethinking Christianity in India. It was an Indian Christian response to Hendrik Kraemer's The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World.

For Chenchiah, the Kingdom of God comes on earth, whose members are Christs, 'new creatures,' not those wearing the labels of Christianity, but who live according to the yoga (discipline) of the Spirit. He was strongly opposed to the idea of the systematic explication of Christian belief. He advised that people get away from doctrinal statements and confessions of the church to what he called "the raw fact of Christ". For him Christianity is not primarily a doctrine of salvation but the announcement of the advent of a new creative order in Jesus. This is for him the thrilling discovery imparted to humankind. The time comes when through the power of the Spirit, not only those who are united with Christ, sharing in the life of the Kingdom, but the whole cosmos is incorporated into Christ. He said Hinduism often speaks of the religious life as the flowing of a river into the sea, the sea of unity with God where all distinctions are obliterated. For Chenchiah, "eternal life is not a flow back of the river into the sea, but of the sea flowing back into the river. It is not the release of the bounded spirit into the expanse of the uncreated absolute. It is the clothing of the absolute in creation".

Chenchiah felt that "Christianity took the wrong gradient when it left the Kingdom of God for the church (i.e., the organized church). Christianity is a failure because we make a new religion of it instead of a new creation. He mourned that the "birthday" of the church arrested the Kingdom when Peter added 3000 unto them � a fatal day for the Kingdom community, and a glorious day for the church. The frontiers of the Kingdom community are not congruent with those of the institutional church. Christian life must be demonstrated as the yoga of the Spirit, the life of the members of the Kingdom in a living Spirit-filled fellowship.

For him, "the negative plate of Jesus developed in a solution of Hinduism brings out hitherto unknown features of the portrait and these may prove exactly the gospel for our time"! It speaks volumes about the attitude of a convert from Hinduism to Christian discipleship, and his approach to Hinduism as a Christian. This reminds me of what M. M. Thomas, whom I looked upon as my guru and colleague in the past EACC years, said about "Christ-centred secular fellowship outside the church, a fellowship of faith and ethics in the Hindu religious community".

What all these seem to point to is that we are not building communities. Rather we are to discern the Kingdom community into which we are incorporated because of what Christ had already done. The reflections of Indian Christian thinkers indicate the expanse, extent or width of the Kingdom community. Hence, we may not speak of 'encounter' as 'confrontation' with our neighbours of various religious commitments or those who are looked upon as marginalized or discriminated against because of gender difference, health condition or disability. Rather, we are to foster relations within the community.

I remember an old theme of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches on 'unity of the Church and the community of humankind'. In one discussion session among Christian executives of UN and international organizations, Mr. Fonceca of Freedom from Hunger Campaign (FFHC) commented that we were talking not about "Ecumenism" as such, but the "larger ecumenism." There was a time in the World Student Christian Federation of the olden time when we talked about the wholeness of knowledge and the relation between Christ the TRUTH and the different facets of truth we pursue according to the variety of intellectual disciplines in the university. The concern was about the departmentalization and the specialization scholars had to cope with, while the university as a community was increasingly becoming an anomaly. In my mind the members of the Kingdom community are those who pool their insights and concerns in an inter-disciplinary setting, akin to what Visser't Hooft called "the common market of the charismata".

The perspectives of the Kingdom community would include not only of those knowledgeable about facts and prospects of ecology but also of those concerned about stewardship of the cosmos and the whole creation groaning in travail. There would be not only the perspectives of those trained in health sciences but also of those with the depth of concern for victims of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, for the deaf, the blind and those with different abilities. We may say the same about those not only qualified in economics and social sciences but also concerned about areas of discrimination and injustice in the global village.

Conclusion

I hope my references to the exegeses of Dodd and the reflections of our Indian Christian thinkers will not lead us to think that everything is done or thought through and a certain type of quietism will be the order of the day. Adapting the words of Karl Barth as he responded to such a comment by a student in a seminar on eschatology, I would say, the arrival of the harvest and the sure hope of the Kingdom when taken seriously will press us all the more to be active to join in the harvest and prepare for the return of the Master. Then the time of harvest also means the separation of wheat and tares. Then there are those, as in the parable of the Great Feast (Mt. 22:1-13), those who though invited to come to the banquet still opted not to be part of the invited community. Their places were taken by the marginalized, the poor, the maimed, the blind, and those looked upon as not possible to be in the company of the chosen. The instruction of the Lord of the Feast to his servants to go out to the streets and lanes, to the highways and hedges, showed that it is not merit but the loving intention of the host which brought the gathering together.

Chenchiah said the Kingdom of God comes on earth, a Kingdom whose members are Christs, new creatures, who live according to the yoga of the Spirit. As there are those who opted to be out of the Kingdom community, there is also the case of the person who does not have the wedding garment, a guest who has not put on Christ. That person gets rejected.

Lastly, the term pedagogy in the theme needs to be reflected on. The term pedagogy (the science of teaching, or teaching method) is based on the Greek word paidagogos i.e. a slave who leads a pupil to the school, or I would say to, the school master. Koyama once said, 'Christianity suffers from a teacher complex'. We are often too ready to be concerned with teaching others. I want to underline the etymology of pedagogy by stating that we are not talking about a teacher or teaching technique. Actually we are slaves in the service of leading others to the Master.

I would like to think that our concern is not about a pedagogy of encounter. Rather we are pointing to the Kingdom community which is already built by the Master-builder. We seek new forms of service and relationships, not 'confrontation' with those who are being gathered by the Lord of the harvest. We are involved in a confident task for the fields are already white for harvest. The Lord of the harvest has asked for more labourers. We are involved in a humble task as slaves leading those needing to approach the master. We are involved in a crucial and joyous task telling those who do not yet realize that they are in the Kingdom community to become who they already are, by putting on Christ, the crucial garment for the great wedding banquet.

The Master says to us: Lift up your eyes and observe the fields, that they are white for harvest... (Jn. 4.35)...  First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear...the harvest is come (Mt. 4.29).

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Notes:

[1] Dr. U Kyaw Than <[email protected]> teaches at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand.  He gave this reflection during the opening of the Fourth Congress of Asian Theologians.