How about this one from NT Wright’s “Big Red,” The New Testament and the People of God:
Jesus seems to have believed himself to be the focal point of the real returning-from-exile people, the true kingdom-people; but that kingdom, that people and this Messiah did not look like what the majority of Jews expected. Jesus was summoning his hearers to a different way of being Israel. We now have to come to terms with the fact that he believed himself called to go that different way himself as Israel’s anointed representative and to do for Israel – and hence for the world – what Israel could not or would not do for herself.
Joe Skillen 