Didn't Jesus do away with all the rules? part 12

 Continued from last week…

In last week’s thrilling episode of “The Rev. Know-it-all’s “Young Christian’s Guide to Halakhic Law.” I shared the Jewish concept of the Noachite laws to which non-Jews are bound. Jews, at least as far Jewish orthodoxy is concerned, are bound by all six hundred and thirteen laws found in the Torah, the books of Moses as Jesus called them. If you are wondering about all these 613 laws they are easy to find at 613 commandments - Wikipedia. 

A commandment in Hebrew is called a Mitzvah, plural mitzvoth.  There are 248 Positive Commandments (do's) called ta’ase and 365 Negative Commandments (do not's) called lo ta’aseh. The mitzvoth are further divided into what are call Khukkim and Mishpatim that is decrees and judgments. To these are added eidoth or testimonials.  The decrees are easy. They are extensions of the Ten Commandments. The Torah expands on the prohibition against idolatry, unjust violence, dishonesty and (interestingly enough) sterile sexuality. The many laws regarding sexual conduct and sexual availability indicate a profound respect for the creative role of women and the primarily reproductive role of human intimacy. 

The first hundred laws (give or take) are prohibitions against idolatry, and the sacredness of the Sabbath. The mishpatim, (judgments) all make sense just as extensions of the Ten Commandments and the Noahite laws. Then there are the testimonials, the eidoth. They are bit more of a stretch. The eidoth are rules such as the observance of Sabbath and the Holy Days, or the wearing of tzitzit (tassels on you garments) the wearing of tefilin (little boxes containing the Shema “Hear O Israel” fastened on arm and head by leather straps.)  These are things which mark a person publicly and visibly as part of Israel.

Jesus of Nazareth fulfils the laws prohibiting idolatry as summed up in the verse of Christian scripture found in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians. “He is the visible image of the invisible God.”  Since the dawn of time, men have tried to imagine the creator of all things and the powers that control his life. They have invariably gotten it wrong and have created gods in their own image and not God as He is. We believe that God has sent us His own visible image in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. If you want to know what God looks like, just look at Jesus, the Messiah. God looks like a Jewish day laborer who was born in a barn, had to flee from the authorities on numerous occasions, beginning in his childhood, He finally died after a night in jail, executed for treason and blasphemy.

That’s what God looks like. Heck of a religion, not one that anybody in his right mind would invent. If Jesus of Nazareth is in fact the visible image of the invisible God, all the laws against idolatry are fulfilled in Him. To worship an idol when a divine person, the actual image of the divine, is available would be ridiculous. It would be like the man who has a treasured photo of his beloved at which he stares in her absence. Were she to suddenly appear at his door, would he say, “Go away! I’m looking at your picture?” Nonsense! Go ahead and make all the images you want. Not one of them, be it marble or plaster, a painting, a photo or the finest gold and silver, can compare to the beauty of the Lord himself made available to us in the Spirit and in the Holy Sacrament.

Speaking about Jesus’ human origins there are two interesting laws, one that He fulfills, and perhaps even one fulfilled by his Blessed Mother. I warn you that the following may be disturbing. We must forget, for just a moment, our understanding of the innocence and the moral perfection owned by our Lord and His Blessed Mother. We should look at them the way a harsh and cynical world would have looked at them at the time. “Do not to let a mamzer (a child born due to an illegal relationship, a bastard) marry into the people of Israel.” (Deut. 23:3) We know the truth that Jesus was conceived miraculously, but do you think His neighbors and relatives believed that? Small villages and small minds count the days from the wedding to the birth with great precision. They knew Joseph and Mary had not been married when Jesus was conceived, and I imagine they thought that Joseph was not the father, just an older relative to whom Our Blessed Mother was married to protect her and the child of her womb.

If the first command was to be fruitful and multiply, do you ever wonder that Jesus seems not to have married? Perhaps Jesus bore the stigma of a suspicious birth and so doing cancelled the law that forbad a mamzer marrying into Israel. He was the Bridegroom of Israel, and being innocent Himself, legitimizes all the outcasts of the world who turn to Him and ask for the grace.

But what of our Blessed Mother? Israelites must fulfill the laws of the Sotah. (Num. 5:18ff)

“The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel and the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle... the priest shall cause her (the suspected adulteress) to swear, and shall say unto the woman: ‘If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness…. be thou free from this water of bitterness that causeth the curse…. He shall write down these curses and blot their ink into the water of bitterness… And when he hath made her drink the water, then …if she have acted unfaithfully against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away; and the woman shall be a curse among her people!!!’”  

(I purposely left this in King James English. It sounds so much more curse-y that way.) 

What has this to do with the Blessed Mother? The name Mary, in Hebrew Mariam, means “bitterness.” She was the sorrowful mother, made to drink the water of bitterness as she stood at the foot of Her Son’s cross. She was proved innocent and faithful despite the bitterness of her life and is today honored in all the world.

To be continued...

Didn't Jesus do away with all the rules? part 11

The Rev. Know-it-all’s “Young Christian’s Guide to Halakhic Law.” continued

In last week’s thrilling episode, I pointed out that the Ten Commandments are immutable because they flow from the very nature of the Almighty. Amazingly they make a point about humanity, namely that humanity is meant to reflect this same immutable nature.

The Hebrew sages speak of the Noachide laws, laws that are required of every human being.  If all people are descended from Noah, the laws of the covenant with Noah are required for all human beings, so goes the reasoning:

The seven laws of Noah are these:

Do not deny God.

Do not blaspheme God.

Do not murder.

Do not engage in illicit sexual relations.

Do not steal.

Do not eat from a live animal.

Establish courts/legal system to ensure obedience to said laws.

The sixth forbids cruelty to animals and hints at our duty as stewards of the earth. The seventh, regarding legal systems, in effect takes care of the commandments forbidding covetousness and dishonesty. One must be answerable to law and thus is held to a standard of honesty and respect for the property and relationships of others. These same laws are essentially what are meant by natural law. This very phrase “natural law” is earthshaking. It means that we have a nature, and that this nature is not totally different from God’s nature.

We Christians believe that Jesus did not come to destroy or change nature. He came to restore it. To recognize and reverence something greater than one’s own self, to treat others fairly as we would be treated ourselves and to respect the life-giving nature of human sexuality are the bedrock of human civilization and the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian law. Break these laws, or still worse, deny them and you do so at you own peril, and at the peril of the civilization. They are laws that are bound up with our nature as beings.

The world at present denies that we even have a nature, particularly in matters reproductive and intimate. The Scriptures tell us that “God said

to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’”  (Gen 1:28) and again, “He created them male and female and blessed them.”  (Gen. 5:2)

Jesus of Nazareth, who I happen to think was God, reiterated this law when He said, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’” (Matt. 10:4, 5) 

I think that there are now 52 or more genders that progressive people insist we recognize. Jesus, the Torah, natural law and the covenant with Noah say that nature gave us two genders. I mention this not just to be difficult, but to point out a whole spectrum of Torah laws which are designed to protect the purpose of human intimacy. These old desert laws written by ancient patriarchs are no longer adequate for life in these modern times, so we are told.

I grind the following ax constantly. All our gender and reproductive confusion is about to bring on one of the greatest crises in human history, perhaps the greatest since the flood itself that engendered the Noachide laws. I just got back from visiting the cousins in Lower Upper-Hessia. I finally understand Angela Merckl’s insane immigration policies.

After the wars, the German people rejected human life by rejecting children. I remember it. When I first visited the old country in 1973, people were having ZERO children. Now they have a few. I just got back from another visit (2017) and Germany has become a retirement home. Tourist sites are mobbed by vigorous German old folks, striding about and having a good time with lots of beer and gemütlichkeit. (Gemütlichkeit is the mood brought on by lots of beer.) They all look like those horrible commercials wherein laughing old people eat healthy cereals and drink protein and fiber drinks and use products that cause them to sit in tubs on beaches holding hands, the specifics of which I will not mention here!

Angela and her government have got to pay for all these vigorous old Germans, and there are not enough young people to do so, thus she must import other countries’ extra young people to work to support the vigorous old Germans.

It seems to me that this is a cynical reworking of the motto of previous German institutions, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work makes Free.)  Most of the world is running out of young people or soon will because we have defied our nature, and worse we have denied it. The chaos engulfing a large part of the world is a very direct result of the demographic shift that results from our failure to heed the very first law of the Torah. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”

“Nonsense!” I can hear the more enlightened among you say. “The world is full of people!” At present, yes, but look down the road a little, the train may be chugging along nicely right now but just around the bend, the bridge is out.

We may not be in trouble, but our grandchildren and great grandchildren are.

Didn't Jesus do away with all the rules? part 2

Continued from last week...

Again, natural law is the fulfillment of our humanity, not a limit on our freedom. If our Christian theory is correct, that man is made in the image and likeness of God, then we are human only to the degree that we reflect the divine nature. If God is the author of life, then the murderer diminishes the divine image in himself, and is thus less fully human. God is undying and faithful love. Thus the adulterer is less fully human. The enslavement to passion and pleasure of which our generation is so fond, is not freedom. It is suicide. It kills the eternal person made in the image of God.

 

Jesus said “I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” (Matt 5:17)  There are Christian sects that maintain Jesus meant we must still obey all the minutiae of the Old Testament, No pork, no shrimp, worship on Saturday instead of Sunday, etc. This completely misses the point as far as I am concerned. I believe that Jesus not only fulfills the law, but Messiah Jesus IS the fulfillment of the law. I once said this to Rabbi Lefkowitz.

He said quite pointedly, “What does that mean?”

Good question. How can a person be the fulfillment of the law? First what is the law? The word translated law in English is Torah. Torah refers to the first five books of the Bible, sometimes called the Pentateuch. The word “Torah” does not quite mean what we mean by the word “law.”  “Torah” in Hebrew means “teaching”, or “instruction.” Webster defines law as, “…a binding custom or practice of a community: a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority.”

In our understanding, then, law is to be defined as “the rules.” There are rules in the Torah, certainly, but Torah is a lot more than rules enforced by an authority. Torah is divine instruction on how things work here on spaceship earth. It is meant to be the user’s manual for human life.  Perhaps the idea is made clearer by the Hebrew word “Halakha.”  “Halakha” is the collection of Jewish religious laws derived from the written and oral Torah. It includes the 613 mitzvoth. Mitzvoth means “commandments.” This is an important word. As I understand it, a mitzvah, (singular of the word “mitzvoth”) means not only a commandment but also implies that its very observance is a blessing. The Halakhot are found in Talmudic legal interpretation and the customs gathered in the book, “Shulchan Aruch” (Hebrew for the prepared table, the Torah being a banquet).  All this comes from a Hebrew verb, “halakh” which simply means to walk.  The Jews often speak of Halakhic law, no meat and milk together, no cheeseburgers no shrimp tacos.

The Torah thus teaches us how to walk, how to make our way in the world.  If one understands that Torah is infinitely more than a rule book, but an instruction about how to walk in the world, how to live, then to say that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law is much more understandable, at least to one who is His follower. Moses gave us a book to teach us. In Himself, Jesus gave us a vision of the Almighty.  “He is the visible image of the invisible God.” (Col 1:15)  One might say that He is the Torah come to life. His way of life is the perfect instruction.

The Torah is not a rule book, but it most certainly contains rules, or mitzvoth, 613 of them to be precise. I maintain that Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of all of them together and each of them individually. There’s the word again: fulfillment. What does that mean? I was at Passover at the Rabbi’s house one year a while ago, and though the little congregation in my neighborhood was very small and very poor — mostly old Russian exiles —they splurged and got a fancy schmanzy Khazzan (cantor) for the Holidays. The cantor, a bit of a stickler (actually he stickled a lot) was also at the Passover Seder (Seder, Hebrew for order of service). At a certain point in the dinner the cantor started to stuff as much Matzo (unleavened bread) in his mouth as he possibly could. I thought we were going to have to perform a Heimlich maneuver as he turned red and continued to jam matzo into his already stuffed mouth.

I asked the Rabbi’s son, Levi, what the cantor was doing. Levi said, “He’s fulfilling the mitzvah. Moses told us to eat unleavened bread during Passover, He didn’t say how much. The cantor is trying to make sure that he has fulfilled the mitzvah by doing as much as possible, just to be on the safe side.” 

Bingo! Light goes on over my head! In my soul I am doing the dance of joy.  To fulfill the law! To do more than is required. Most of us want to know the rules so we can do the bare minimum. To fulfill the law is to want to do the maximum. If the law is a good thing, and teaches us how to live and walk, we want more of it, not less. “Teach me, O Lord, your ways!” (Psalm 86:11) The Torah and its mitzvoth are not rules applied by an external authority. They are insights into the very nature of reality. It is fascinating that in the very attempt to fulfill the Law of Moses, the cantor admitted its incompleteness.

Moses told us to eat unleavened bread. He didn’t say how much. The Torah is thus lacking. Jesus answers that question when he says, “I am the bread come down from heaven…. The one who eats my flesh will have life eternal.” (Jn 6:54) the verb here is very strong. It literally means not eat, but “to chew continuously.”  That pretty much answers the cantor’s question.  Exodus (13:6) says, “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.”  Thus Jesus fulfills one of the mitzvoth by becoming bread, and by bread becoming the messiah.

Now we only have 612 more laws to explain.

A rabbi asks a priest a question... part 6

Continued from last week…

Modern Judaism discourages gentile conversions to the religion of Israel.  One who is not Jewish should simply be a good Noahite, following the universal laws of God’s covenant with Noah, the new founder of the human race after the flood. The laws of the Noahite covenant are:

1.Do not deny God.
2.Do not blaspheme God.
3.Do not murder.
4.Do not engage in illicit sexual relations.
5.Do not steal.
6.Do not eat of a live animal. (i.e. cruelty to animals is forbidden)
7.Establish a legal system to ensure civil order and justice.

Israel is bound to the Law of Moses, but a gentile who follows these Noahite laws is considered righteous. It is unnecessary for a gentile to convert to Judaism. This was not always the case. In the second temple era when Christianity emerged there was a time in which Rabbinic Pharisees invited conversions to the religion of Israel. Ancient Greco-Roman religion was a crazy quilt of competing gods and goddesses and in most cases religion was not connected to moral behavior in any way. The gods of the nations were principally capricious nature spirits and religion was a way to get the gods to do your will, or least to leave you alone. The gods did not love humanity. In fact, the gods could be dangerous. The point of pagan religion was to placate these powerful capricious forces.

The incoherent nature of paganism made the religion of Israel very appealing to the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, one all powerful, all knowing God who intentionally created and loved mankind, a reasonable moral code and a coherent religious literature. This was certainly better than traditional religion with its “once upon a time” myths of gods who often took vengeance on humanity. There was a problem, however. This one reasonable God demanded some very odd things.

There were dietary restrictions on quite a number of foods, especially seafood and pork, two of the staples of Greco Roman cuisine and, still worse, the god of the Israelites demanded male circumcision which the ancient Greeks and Romans considered barbaric and obscene. There was, however, a whole class of gentiles who tried to live an Israelite life. They read the Hebrew Scriptures, attended synagogue and worshipped the God of Israel. They did not, however go the whole route. They were called God-fearers and could be found throughout the Greek and Roman world. Israel had never been as universally respected in the world as it was at the time of Jesus and the second temple. Then along came Saul of Tarsus.

Saul was probably born around 5 AD in what is now southern Turkey. He was a second generation Roman citizen, a mark of probable wealth and distinction. He was clearly educated in Greek literature which he quotes in his epistles, and was by his own admission a zealous Pharisee, the son of Pharisees. He was sent back to the Holy Land to be educated in the rabbinic school of Gamaliel or so he claimed. There is a very unusual story in the Talmud that may refer to Saul as “that student” ( oto hatalmid):

Rabbi Judah used to pray as follows: May it be Thy will, O Lord our God, to save me this day from the impudent, and from impudence in learning. They asked, what is meant by impudence in learning? He answered as follows, Rabban Gamliel would sit and teach ... but OTO HA-TALMID scoffed at him.” (Sabbath 30b)

It is pure speculation to suggest that Saul of Tarsus was “that student’” but one would not be surprised. Gamaliel was the most flexible and generous of teachers. Saul/Paul was not. One can see Saul, if indeed he had been sent study at the feet of Gamaliel as he claimed, soon parting ways with his moderate teacher. Perhaps Saul became “radicalized” in his devotion to the religion of Israel, and perhaps he understood that this ridiculous sect of the Nazarenes would make the God of Israel available to the gentiles in a way that was entirely unacceptable. All speculation aside, it was clear that Saul was an impetuous young man who could be used by the temple authorities to nip this thing in the bud.

One of the miracle-working preachers of the new sect was of particular concern, a certain Greek speaking Israelite named Stephen. He was hauled before the court and was promptly taken out and stoned by a mob who “laid their coats at the feet of a certain Saul” (Acts 7:58). I suspect that Saul was the organizer of the lynch mob. Saul is a young man on the move. We next hear that he is ferreting out Nazarites and has been deputized to go north to the Hebrew community living in Damascus where this nonsense had taken hold.

He makes it to Damascus, but not the way he had expected. He is knocked down and blinded by some strange vision and is taken to Damascus. There the Christian community makes contact with him and he becomes one of them. He receives his sight back and begins to make the situation in Damascus worse by telling everyone that He has seen Jesus, who is the Son of God and risen from the dead. He has to escape Damascus by being lowered over the walls in a basket. He seems completely unhinged by the experience and travels to the desert of Arabia (probably Sinai). He goes back to Damascus, then to Jerusalem where he again upsets the locals and is sent back home to Tarsus for his own good. Essentially the leadership of the Nazarene movement told him, “Go home. Don’t call us. We’ll call you.” Which they did, ten years later. Saul has been doing nothing much other than causing trouble for about 15 years since his experience on the Damascus road.

At about that time, the Church was growing especially among Greek speakers in the area of Antioch, not far from Saul’s home town. The leadership of the movement sent Barnabas, a leader, to check things out and while he was there he might as well look up that hot-head Saul to see what he was up to. Saul accompanied Barnabas back to Antioch and eventually back to Jerusalem.

At about this time Simon Cephas had an amazing experience. He is invited to preach at the home of a God fearing Roman centurion who had been studying Judaism, and lo and behold the prophetic spirit seems to take hold of this uncircumcised Roman and his non-Jewish household, just as it had when the Church had gotten its start on Pentecost years beforehand. Cephas (Peter) lets them all join the Church just as they are.

Saul and Barnabas begin their missionary travels at about the same time. They go out into the world preaching that anyone can be saved with or without circumcision and halakhic law. This is wonderful as far as the God-fearers and some of the Jews scattered throughout the empire are concerned. You could be an Israelite and still eat pork, not to mention the advantages of remaining uncircumcised. The Christian/Nazarite movement took off exactly among the people with whom Rabbinic Phariseeism had been making real headway.

Just imagine! If you were a Greek who wished he could be an Israelite, now it was possible with just a simple baptismal ceremony. Imagine the difficulty of being an Israelite in a hostile society. Circumcision made sure you didn’t get too friendly with your gentile neighbors. You weren’t going to the gym with them where Greco Romans met to wheel and deal, and you weren’t going to dinner parties where very non-Kosher things were eaten. Until now, no self-respecting Israelite was going to join paganism with its ridiculous gods, but now one could still read the books of Moses but, according to Saul and Barnabas, pork and circumcision were optional. Thus was born Christianity, the first reformed Judaism and a universal religion that made the treasure of the Hebrew Scriptures accessible to all. Things had gone from bad to worse.

Next week: things go from bad to worse to even worse.