Jesus lived and died a devout and practising Jew, a teacher,
a young rabbi. Christians need to be
reminded of this, even more so in our day.
Jesus never heard of the Christian Church or the New Testament. To 1st century Jewish ears, his
teaching was fresh, startling, often radical.
A lot of it exists for us in the form of sayings, aphorisms, and of
course parables. Blessed are the poor in spirit… those who mourn… the meek… You see
how it is relentlessly counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the pure in
heart… the peacemakers…[1] In large sectors of American and other faith
communities today, to be blessed is to be comfortably off, to be happy, and
safe – more or less the opposite of what Jesus taught.
You shall not kill,
said the Law of Moses… Well, said Jesus,
if you’re angry you are already in peril.
The point, he taught, is to be reconciled with your adversary. You
shall not commit adultery, says the Law...
Well, says Jesus, lust, greed and possessiveness condemn you, whether
you commit adultery or not. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, decreed
the Law… No, says Jesus. As Gandhi put it in our day, an eye for an
eye simply makes the whole world blind -- which is more or less what is
happening. You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy, said the
Law… Love
your enemy, said Jesus. He stood
conventional wisdom on its head.
When you give money…
do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing… When you pray, do not heap up empty words --
go into your room and shut the door… Do
not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…
Life is more than food, and the body more than clothing… Do not judge; first take the log out of your
own eye… If you forgive others, your heavenly
Father will forgive you… as though the unforgiving are simply unforgiven. Of course all this is hard, and complicated,
in practice. It is a lifetime of effort
– made simpler for us, many have found, in a discipline of prayer and silence
in which we are open and consenting to these changes being built in us by God’s
Spirit, the same Spirit who empowered, motivated and taught Jesus. He said, My
yoke is easy, my burden is light.[2] But it is not that we are trying our best to
imitate him – that would indeed be a heavy burden -- it is that we are learning
to receive the spiritual power and inspiration he knew. We are learning to set ego aside, to take
ourselves less seriously.
I think the Spirit can use the experiences we have
accumulated by our senior years, and the lessons we have learned along the
way. We can be alert to this. We have, if we’re halfway sensible, developed
a sense of what matters and what doesn’t and perhaps never did. The many ways in which human frailty and
error surface, in cruelty and stupidity, selfishness and blindness… there are
few surprises for us now. The way of the
Jewish Jesus makes profound sense, especially in the context of the prayer of
silence and stillness he himself used.
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