Pastoral ponderings
Pastoral ponderings
I recently finished an excellent book called Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. It was written by a leading Bible scholar named Marcus Borg and gives a wonderful look at the current thoughts in the old ‘quest for the historical Jesus.’ The last 20 years or so have reshaped Jesus studies, and what is coming out now is making a big difference in how we think about Jesus and the culture he lived in.
Some of this is challenging to church traditions. That shouldn’t be too surprising though, because Jesus spent his whole ministry challenging religious institutions. The same issues he debated with the religious authorities of his day continue to show up today. While they take on different forms today, the same issues are still with us in the modern church.
Borg talks about two strong themes in the Bible, the desire for purity and the desire for compassion. Purity (which is also translated as ‘holiness’) is a serious concern in Leviticus and the other priestly books of the Old Testament. The idea is that purity is God’s most important attribute. God is so pure that mortals cannot even approach him without becoming physically, morally, and ritually pure themselves. One becomes pure by following all of the laws and rituals spelled out in the priestly books.
There were many people who were considered impure and the Israelites were warned not to have anything to do with them or the impurity would contaminate them. Foreigners, criminals, people who were physically or mentally ill, and people whose jobs or behavior broke the holiness rules were ‘unclean’. For that matter women were always considered less pure than men and so were the poor (who didn’t have the resources to follow all the rituals).
Jesus’ way of looking at God is very different. For him, God’s most important aspect is compassion. God loves us and cares about our suffering. That’s more important than he rules and rituals can ever be. Borg points out that Jesus lives such a compassionate life that he’s always breaking the purity rules. He heals on the Sabbath, touches, eats with, and accepts people who are considered the worst of the impure. It scandalized the purity-obsessed religious leaders, and can scandalize modern Christians too, if we think about it.
Borg points out that it’s easy for religion to fall into the same habits of thought. It wasn’t just the Jewish leaders of Jesus time who wanted to make purity the highest value, Christian groups in every generation since have also focused on the rules that allow them to shut out the ‘impure’ people who might contaminate their relationship with God. It’s an easy thing to do because the focus on purity is simple, easy, and has a lot of scriptures that can be used in its defense.
But when we begin to shut out the people we deem impure, we can easily miss the compassion that was the central thrust of Jesus’ ministry. His call to us, Borg says, is to follow him in reaching out, touching, listening, welcoming and embracing those who the world despises. It’s a huge challenge, and can one that can create a scandal, but it’s also one of the most important ways to follow where Jesus leads us.
Blessings and Peace,
Matthew
