The way Jesus rereads the Hebrew Scriptures

This Sunday we turned our attention to the beginning of mark chapter 3.

The Gospel writer records an incident early in Jesus ministry in the synagogue on a sabbath.#

The scriptures would be opened and read out loud for commentary and discussion.

So too we do that on a Sunday morning in church.

At its best this is an open ended participative engagement with the words and the one who stands behind them.

On this occasion there was a man with a crippled hand and the leaders of the people are looking to see if Jesus will break the sabbath by healing him.

Jesus asks them a question from the end of Deuteronomy, the sermon of Moses to the people before they enter the promised land.

Is it better to save a life or to kill, to do good or evil on the sabbath. The answer od course is obvious and confounds his opponents.

But here is where legalism has driven the religious interpreters of their scriptures.

They are occupying a place of condemnation of the Deliverer, the Christ who comes to release the oppressed.

They are occupying a place that seeks to establish their security and identity at the expense of a crippled man who is excluded from their proceedings on the basis of their interpretation of the law.

Jesus calls all this into question. He commands the man t stretch out his arm like Moses did when the people passed through the red sea.

He turns round upon his accusers and tells them that it is their hard hearts that have gotten them into this place.

They are furious because they know that he is casting them in the role of the Pharoah in their story of the deliverance of Israel.

The story has been completely recast by Jesus who sides with the oppressed man as God did in the exodus.

He highlights that the religious leaders have lost their way and are behaving more like the oppressors.

They want to kill Jesus who is saving a life and doing good.

This is perilously close to the sin against the Holy Spirit that reversed good and evil.

Jesus wants them to ‘see’ that God does NOT take sides.

The God of Israel is not a God of violence for in Jesus’ anger at them he will submit to their violence rather than visit it upon them.

And then once raised rather than being vengeful and vindictive be forgiving.

All of this is enacted in the synagogues before their very eyes.

The love and forgiveness of God in the face of the darkness within all humankind.

For whilst we want to identify with the one delivered from his oppression too often is it not the case that we are as guilty of the religious leaders in Jesus day of preferring the status quo rather than  resisting it for the sake of those oppressed?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus' Mission

Jesus came proclaiming and Incarnating an alternative empire to Rome. It was an Empire characterised by service and love rather than by domination and cruelty. He came to his own people, largely, and incurred the wrath of the authorities by threatening the establishment. Not only did he reject their interpretation of their own scriptures but he established an alternative purity system. At that time there was a very narrowly defined set of conditions of and for those that were deemed acceptable. Acceptable to the power brokers who controlled the means of access to God, namely the Temple. Those who were untouchables, sinners, women, tax collectors ie agents of Rome, Samaritans and so forth. It should be clear that this was a patriarchal structure, defined in terms of gender and race that was intended to exclude. Similarly it should be clear that in word and deed Jesus exploded such exclusivity and inequality. Indeed at one point Jesus suggested that were the Temple to
Read more

Sidonians

So who has heard of the Sidonians? Perhaps if I say the cities of Tyre and Sidon some might get the Gospel reference to the travels of Jesus. That said it is somewhat strange that he did travel to that part of the ancient world. Again unless we are familiar with the Hebrew scriptures we would miss this as well. For Tyre and Sidon were regarded at the time of Jesus by the people of God as, as good as, or rather as bad as the Samaritans. And I suppose I assume that most people will have heard of them because of one of Jesus’ most famous parables about good neighbourliness. Albeit that once again I suspect most of us will not have a clue that to Jesus’ audience a ‘good Samaritan’ was a contradiction in terms, san impossibility. So Jesus deliberately chooses a Samaritan for his parable just as he deliberately journeys to and through the region of Tyre and Sidon, it is calculated. The Gospel writer Luke as well as Jesus anticipates that we will make these connections. In
Read more