God's Commandment and Human Precepts

15 Pentecost Cycle B proper 17 September 1, 2024
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9Ps. 15
James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Lectionary Link

If we live and move and have our being and becoming in God, the vastness of God is mediated through the language that is used to give us identity within the lesser concentric circles of existence within the vastness of God, like the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the earth, our hemisphere, our flora and fauna environments, our country, state, and neighborhood.

We also live in concentric circles of humanity with all of the specific sociological identities which come to define us.

Jesus came to a situation of conflicting sociological, religious, ethnic, and political identities.  The very Jewish identity as formed within the communities based upon the Hebrew Scripture is about an identity of a people concurrent with the promulgation of the identity of the One Lord God who came to be known as the God above all gods and goddesses.  Such a God, and the people who understood their mission to bear witness to this One great God faced the constant challenge of peoples who had identities based upon the pluralities of god and goddesses who functionally provided local and regional identity.

When it came to the Roman Empire and their theologies, the Roman pantheon was receptive to the worship of many gods and goddesses, and this was coupled with a political regulatory theology in the cult of the Emperor.  A divinized Emperor was to be given devotion and allegiance, and one could perform devotion to a variety of gods and goddesses in various Temples to their honor along with devotion to the cult of the Emperor.

If we understand the Roman Empire's tolerance toward all gods and goddesses contrasted with the exclusive God of the Jews, then perhaps we can understand and appreciate the precarious situation which Jesus arrived at in first century Palestine.

The Jewish people needed strategies of resistance to assimilation into the Greek and Roman Empires which had successively controlled their land.  How could they maintain crucial features of their ancient identity?  The council of the Sanhedrin, made up of various members of diverse religious parties functioned to negotiate the survival status for the Jews in Palestine who lived in their homeland which under Roman control.  How could exclusive devotion to the belief in one God be maintained in a situation that asked that their God be but one of the god and goddesses in a pantheon which co-existed with a religious cult of the divinized Emperor?

How could Jews live lives separate from their conquerors?  It was hard to do.  Their own ritual purity rules did not allow them to interact closely with Gentile soldiers, government administrators, and people of commerce.  Some Jews who worked with the Romans authorities had to forgo ritual adherence required to be as it were "Jews in good standing."

We can perhaps understand Rabbi Jesus and the Jesus Movement to be a compromising reform.  It involved being realistic about the fact that the Romans were not going to go away.  The ones who were unrealistic were those who sought comfort in apocalyptic hopes for a quick end of the world which would address the isolation issues with the hope of cosmic intervention.  Quite quickly the obvious delay in the end of the world, meant that a strategy for realistically dealing with the conditions which existed was required.

The Gospels were written during the time when it was obvious that the delay of the end of world was an unending delay.  How could a person of faith live in the Roman World and yet not be personally ruled and persuaded by the polytheism of the Roman Empire?

The Gospel writers understood Jesus of Nazareth to be an innovative strategic thinker for living within the Roman situation while retaining what they believed to be the deepest godly principles from the traditions deriving from the Hebrew Scriptures.

A major issue became, How do we convert Roman and Gentile peoples to a life style which honors the divine principles of the great God of the Hebrew Scriptures?

There occurred an analytical approach to using the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions of practice as precedence for establishing new community practice.

As the Gospel states it, one had to have the wisdom to distinguish between human precepts and God's commandment.  God's commandment was to love God, and love one's neighbor as oneself.   The human precepts included the accrued cultural practices which pertained within a perceived ideal community which could be shielded from having contact with "foreigners and outsiders."

How could people of the Hebrew Scriptures live within the Roman Empire and make the great commandment to love God and one's neighbor accessible to Gentiles and to Jews who were not devoted in their ritual purity because they had to interact with too many Gentiles in their daily lives?

The Gospels present Jesus as the strategic break through for people who believed in the singular God who invited non-adherent Jews and Gentiles to a community of faith committed to the great commandments of loving the One God and loving one's neighbor as oneself.

The Gospel writers presented conflicts which occurred in the strategic love campaign of Jesus in inviting new people, different people to a community based upon the great summary of the law: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And you could do this as a Gentile and Roman citizens and as Jewish persons who were not keeping the ritual purity codes within the synagogue.

We need to admit that the love strategy which derived from Jesus of Nazareth gave Christians a different mission than the Jews of the synagogue had and have continued to have.  Too often people have used the "family religious" dispute found in the Gospel to justify an endless antipathy between Christians and Jews, and the cruelties of anti-Semitic behaviors witness to the failure in loving of one's neighbor and accepting the different missions which Jews and Christians have in how we strategically practice the love of God and our neighbors.

Religious Movements, even different Christian Movements have continued to evolve and differentiate in their mission strategies.  It is important not to make cultural, liturgical, or linguistic features of our smaller strategic communities in this great love mission the litmus test for the validity of how the message to love God and one's neighbor is being promulgated elsewhere.

We should continually look to the great divine commandment: Love God and our neighbors, and while we can enjoy and appreciate the features of our particular cultural strategies of our own faith community, let us not make our limited "human precepts" a replacement for the great commandment of God:  To love God and our neighbor as ourself.  This is the strategy of Jesus, and it should be ours as well. Amen.