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v Jesus Answer To Christianity - Compassion v
by Wells Behee
READING -- Meeting Jesus AGAIN For the First Time" Marcus J. Borg of the Jesus Seminar-page 59
"The struggle between compassion and purity goes on in the churches [WB1]today. In parts of the church there are groups that emphasize holiness and purity as the Christian way of life, and they draw their own sharp social boundaries between the righteous and sinners.
It is a sad irony that these groups, many of which are seeking very earnestly to be faithful to Scripture, end up emphasizing those parts of Scripture that
Jesus himself challenged and opposed. An interpretation of Scripture faithful to Jesus and the early Christian movement sees the Bible through the lens of
compassion, not purity.... It is not only in the church that the politics of purity remains alive, but also in our culture as a whole with sharp social boundaries...A politics of compassion shaping our national life would produce a social system different in many ways from that generated by our recent history." SERMON: During the past couple of years we have heard many
references by various speakers from this pulpit about the ancient Purity Laws
against which Jesus rebelled. I now
wish to explain them relating (1) their source, (2) a small taste of their content (3) how to remedy violations
of the Purity Laws (4) Jesus’ relation to the Purity Laws. I. Source of the
Jewish Purity Laws The Torah, (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy) were written as a guide for moral living and to provide direction
in personal, national and religious affairs.
The Torah exemplifies the perfect mind and character of God; and through
Torah, He has given us direction that mankind may live in peace, health, and
happiness. I have in my hand 15 pages
of God’s commandments to the Jews taken from the Torah containing 613
commandments of which the familiar commandments we consider as Ten are only the
beginning of 603 more. There are 101
Positive commandments and 365 negative commandments. It is appropriate to ask at this time that if the commonly
accepted Ten commandments are accepted as God’s commandments, why then does the
Christian community reject the other 603 of God’s commandments? Oh yes, there is one more commandment
selected out among the 603 that is retained by the Christian community. It is the commandment that 1/10th of all
income must be given to the House of the Lord. Strange is it not that only that one and only that one of the
603 Christian churches so earnestly seek to enforce. That makes 602 rejected commandments given to Moses by God. Contents of the Purity Laws There are many commandments regarding worship, national
policies, Swearing, conduct of the priests, procedures of sacrifices, tithing
and offerings, conduct of the Priests, agriculture, loan and business affairs,
treatment and release of slaves, Judges and rulings by judges, 30 commandments
on preparation and serving of food and the dietary regulations, 47 commandments
concerning family, 15 commandments dealing with our duties to our Fellow Men. Many of these are GOOD for human relations
even for our day. But some are very negative such as a women in her menstrual
cycle are unclean for seven days, unclean after childbirth, anyone coming in
contact with semen, anyone coming into contact with a corpse or dead carcass of
any animal are unclean. These are among the best of the Purity
Laws. But like our Constitution, there
developed thousands of other laws expanding and explaining the first. These purity laws were used by the powerful
priests to be in power and to maintain almost absolute power over everyone else
in the country, rich and poor. III. The Remedy In many cases, if a
person becomes unclean, the condition remedies itself during a designated
period of time. When a husband and wife
have marital relations, they are unclean for the remainder of that day and the
uncleanness wears away by sunset. But
they must be careful not to touch a child or another person, or to have someone
step in their footsteps or that even person shall unknowingly become
unclean. If a mother births a son she
is unclean for 7 days, and birthing a
girl child makes her unclean for 14 days.
Then the mother may ritually bathe saying the correct prayers to become
clean again. But the condition of
uncleanness was constantly on every person’s mind. And even if you were at the
moment clean, there was constant fear of becoming unclean by association with
others
Then
there are more serious unclean conditions. Jesus was born a mamser, i.e. of an unknown father. Even if the birth stories of Jesus were
true, how many people in Jesus’ home town Nazareth would believe the virgin
birth tale? Just let a young unmarried
girl try telling that story in New Madison or Greenville. And again if the story were true, Jesus
was still born of an unknown father (I am not saying illegitimate or a bastard,
but just an unknown father). To the
community this still made him a Mamser who was denied admittance to the Temple
at Jerusalem, ostracized and rejected by other children. He was a loner and forced to play by himself
as he was unclean. And by association, all the rest of the family was unclean
and therefore publicly shunned. There was absolutely no remedy!
It must be said that the Jews
were joyful in their submission to God
for observance of the multitudes of the commandments and ensuing laws, They
were a small gesture in return to God,
who, all the peoples of the earth, had selected the Jews as his
Chosen People.
The commandments were but small
atonement, recompense and restitution for such an honor and a privilege
for
such a prestigious and august honor—God’s Chosen People.
Jesus and
the Purity Law
Jesus was
unclean not only by birth, but in reading the Old Testament Commandments, Jesus
violated a very large share of them. He
ate with those hated gentiles (non-Jews).
He praised the hated
non-Jews such as the Good Samaritan. He
ate with his disciple Matthew, a tax collector.
He
rejected his family; He lived, associated, and allied himself with all the
other unclean people of his village and other locations
where he preached. He was thoroughly as
unclean as a person could be without blaspheming God or
committing murder. And even if he
wanted, he had no way to
cleanse himself of his hopelessly unclean status. The common persons of Palestine had no
means to
rise above their uncleanness. Jesus
lived, ate, slept, drank, talked, and spent his whole life among the unclean
for he himself was unclean, spoke and preached to his audiences in terms they understood for he was one of them. They were his followers for they knew and felt that he understood
V Jesus’ message
This “unclean” Jesus
prodded the Priests, Saducees, and Pharisees and emulated the poor and
downtrodden. No one could be
worse!!!! This threatened the social,
political, and religious structure of
Israel. And he spoke so
forcefully to the crowds that he upset the social order to the point that he
got himself crucified on a common Roman Cross.
The great parables and the teachings of Jesus which Mike
Short has been explaining to us these past few weeks have demonstrated the central teaching
of Jesus that the poor people who cannot keep the purity laws of the Temple and being forever
doomed to an unclean status are the beautiful (Beautified) people.
Read the Beatitudes with this background and the Beatitudes take on a different meaning. When one reads the Beatitudes in our modern
setting, to a thinking person, they are sentimentally beautiful. So
beautiful that tradition convinces us
to believe them., yet by reason they
are incredibly unbelievable. But now when I read them from
the point of view of Jesus, they are astounding and speak forceful across the ages.
I am now examining just three of the Beatitudes in the few
minutes I have left.
(1)
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT:
FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
Despite your present uncleanliness, the Kingdom of heaven is
made of people like you. The clean
people are no better than you. Jesus
preached the unqualified worth and dignity of every person—clean or unclean.
BLESSED ARE THE POOR IN SPIRIT: FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
(2) BLESSED
ARE THE MEEK; FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
There are more unclean
people than those proud and haughty clean people.
We, Charlie Browns, of the world will always be here; we
shall survive; and we shall win.
BLESSED ARE
THE MEEK; FOR THEY SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH
(3) BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS;
FOR
THEY SHALL BE FILLED.
We unclean try to be as honorable
and noble in every way as do the clean.
We little people love and appreciate
life and what we have, little as it may be, more than the ritually clean. The rich
spend so much time worrying and fretting about their uncleaniness that they never get
to know life. They are never filled.
BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HUNGER AND
THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS; FOR THEY SHALL BE FILLED.
These are the first three
of the eight BLESSEDS. And I leave the
rest to you to read for yourself at home. Read them as if you were like
Jesus. Put yourself into his sandals
and I am certain you will come out with astounding meanings. Messages which we say today, such as “That
CEO is a great man but he is no better than I am. He frets about his wealth
but is not really happy.
The central message of Jesus was that God has compassion and
loves these hard working paupers who are hopelessly and religiously
suppressed. This was the speaking power
that Jesus won the hearts of the people.
In the parable of the Dishonest Servant, Jesus is telling the paupers to whom Jesus is preaching, that they have more sense and more of everything which is important than the rich man who attends Temple regularly and performs all the prescribed ceremonial rites and then stupidly praises the manager for his dishonesty. This happens today. The dishonest gets all the breaks. The pauper can leave the story joyfully thinking,
"I know better than to do that.
I may be
poor and unclean but even I am smarter than that righteous wealthy man.
Indeed, I, too, am a wise person. He is no better than I am”
I am
worthier of the Kingdom of God than that clean wealthy man who praises that employee
for being dishonest.
This man,
Jesus, is my savior; for today, he taught me that
I am HOLY
.
That
feeling is spiritually ennobling.
Now what does this mean
to
us today?
As
Christianity became a religion in its own right and moved away from Judaism,
Paul and the early Christians moved from a status of clean/unclean and
substituted “everyone is a
sinner.” Everyone is a sinner is the
primary purity law upon which all the rest of the Christian rests. Compare this doctrine “All men are sinners”
to Jesus’ teachings for compassion. Because of Paul the people were dumped right
back into the same kind of fears of disapproval, condemnations, and ostracisms
from which Jesus had saved his followers.
Only now, they are called sinners.
Rather than clean/unclean , everyone is declared a sinner. But that is not enough===perpetual sinners, who are damned to the eternal fires
of Hell except for the select few who are predestined to make it to
heaven. At least under the Jewish
Purity Laws, the perpetually unclean were never doomed to some damnation after
death.. Clean/unclean existed only in
this lifetime. Jesus’ message of
compassion for the unclean of his day should be the same message to the little
people in the pew of our Christian churches who are forever condemned sinners by the priests, ministers, Jerry
Falwells, Pat Robertsons, and all the good people who follow the Christian
adaptations of the Jewish Purity Laws and enjoy it . The Christian leaders speak out against the Priests of a former
century but institute the same sort of principles of fear, guilt, human
degradation, and condemnation in this century.
I now speak about the universalism of Jesus. I am
not so vain as to compare the Universalism of our denomination. I speak of Jesus’ universalism with a small
“u”. Though I must say that a large amount of his universal compassion has been
retained through the centuries within our churches until consolidation when
Universalism became so overpowered by the rationalism that the universal
Universalist spirit of ultimate compassion
became submerged. Even our
denominational president recognizes this when three weeks ago at General
Assembly, he quoted from The Rev. Doctor David Bumbaugh, professor at Meadville
Lombard Theological School in Chicago, the following “We have manned the ramparts of reason and are prepared to defend
the citadel of the mind. But in the
process…we have lost… the ability to speak of that which is sacred, holy, of
ultimate importance to us….”
In the full context of the speech, Dr.
Sinkford is leading our denomination to revive this universal
compassion.
More and
more of our ministers are recognizing the truth of the statement from a speaker
in the Cleveland GA three years ago that reason has come full term and
Universalism is now where it’s all at.
In his
Easter sermon this past April The Rev. James Walters of the UU Church of the
Restoration stated the following: “Unitarian Universalism is not doing enough
to nourish the spirits and hearts of our lives. Can’t we be something more than
a “refuge from”? Can’t we be more a “sanctuary for”? Of course we must continue
to celebrate and cultivate “free thought,” but clearly we must do more to
celebrate and cultivate “freed hearts,” – not just free minds, but freed spirit
expressing and living compassionately!”
It
overjoys my heart to report that the central message of the universalism of
Jesus and our denominational Universalism is stirring to life in UU. I cannot stress enough that the signature
trademark of Universalism is UNIVERSAL COMPASSION--- God is ultimate compassion
in God’s love of man that all souls shall be restored in holiness and
salvation.
And Jesus commands us to be like
God—compassionate
Be
compassionate---learn to regard each person as being the best person , the
person knows. understands, and feels himself to be this point and time of the
person's
life. I know that I often fail to do this myself. But I try.
If we all tried, how much better a world we would live in. Imagine a world built around COMPASSION
for
all.
This is
the task of our church ---to bring the exciting and liberating Gospel of
universal compassion expressed in heartfelt love, and self respect. This is
still the gospel of good news to the world. We must not only know (reason) but
feel (compassion) and proclaim the GREAT religion. A much better world is not driven by submission, fear and
damnation. On this religion, the Great
Teacher like that of Jesus elevates the heart of all people with joy and praise
of living. Jesus’ universalism is still
the great message of hope and well being to all people emulating the supreme
worth and dignity of every person in THIS day. The once popular book “I’m O.K.,
you’re O.K.” was a book which hit on a powerful truth, but it ignored the
ultimate essence of religion and the universalism of Jesus. Its great truth lacked spiritual content for
deep inner strength for the book to endure as a text for superior living by the
human soul. The book rang the bell of truth but missed the essence of that
truth for human love and compassion
The universalism of Jesus and our Universalism combines the truth of
“I’m O.K.,
You’re O.K.” with the core
of spiritual enrichment.
Universalism, it's just
like the sun's rays. It reaches all the people of the earth regardless of their
fame or insignificance. Do you have to believe in the sun for it to shine on
you? How do you receive sunlight? Even on an overcast day, the solar rays
reach the planet, and you will see them and feel them and receive them. You
have no choice or vote on the matter. From its 1st century beginnings when the
earliest church fathers advocated universalism, universalism, by its very
nature, has been as inclusive and non-discriminatory as the light and warmth of
the s-u-n. You don't have to do anything or believe anything, reason anything.
You can be born blind, but the sunlight will still shine on you. Then this enhanced self respect becomes
light and love for others. This is what
our world needs---everyone to have a healthy love of self and love of others.
In this light, the Bible certainly has much to say to us. Also, our faith,
universalism, has the spiritual value of a message for which the world is still
searching. Instead we need the
recognition and implementation of the Supreme worth of every human
personality. Except for our own individually imposed religious limitations, we have within us to be giants of unlimited potential with the
inner power and strength to endure all life’s greatest disasters and to be equal
partners with God in building a world of our dreams.
An after thought to my sermon:
It has come upon me as
to why Christianity rejected 602 of the commandments God gave to Moses, as it
was reported in the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible).
Of course, since Jesus disobeyed so many of the
commandments such as picking wheat (working) on the Sabbath, came in contact
with the dead (raised Lazarus from the dead), destroyed a fig tree, ate with
Gentiles, the Gentile woman in memses touched his robe, ate with his disciple a tax collector, born a Mamser
(of an unknown father), defiled the Temple, and many more. These many Purity Laws made Jesus unclean
according to the commandments of God.
Therefore, many and most of the commandments (602) had to be ignored, overlooked,
and degraded to permit Christianity to create a perfect and pure Jesus (clean
up his past), to be able to elevate him
to the status of one in the Trinity of God.
But we as Universalists can love Jesus, have him as
an example, and learn from his
teachings despite his past.
Wells
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